Thanksgiving... Chili and Burgers?

Hey y'all! 

Well, first of all, happy thanksgiving! I hope you all had a great
week and were able to think about what your are all grateful for in
your life :) I'm very grateful that I can be here on my mission, that
I have so many supportive friends and family members here and back
home, and I'm especially thankful for my sweet mother who is just the
best mom ever! I love you!! :)

Once again, we were super busy this week. We had a zone conference,
which means we had to drive to Berlin again! That's three trips to
Berlin this month! It's crazy, how many different meetings we've had.
They take up a lot of our time, but they are always wonderful,
spiritual experiences. This time we talked about the new Christmas
initiative, "a Savior is born" and we watched the new videos for it.
If you haven't seen it yet, then repent, and go look it up! Haha :)
but really though, it invited the spirit so strongly, just by sharing
a simple message about Jesus Christ. Wonderful :)

After this we did an exchange, and I got to go to Jena with elder
weber. Jena is a giant international university city. There are 60,000
students there from all over the world! No joke!! It is totally a
party! I was really excited for this, because the senior couple there,
the Ybarra's, were making a thanksgiving dinner for institute that
night, and it looked really good! But, elder Anderson, elder Weber's
companion wanted to be back for that, so we let him enjoy that, and
instead we had a nice thanksgiving chili with a wonderful family in
Erfurt. 

I'd also like to tell you about an experience this week that we had
with Edwin, our awesome friend with a baptismal date. On Friday we had
an eating appointment with an amazing family in out ward, where they
cooked us up real American hamburgers(well, close enough ) and they
also invited Edwin, and another one of our friends! We had such a
great night, and we were able to help our friends feel the love and
joy that comes from living the gospel. So great :) 

I am so grateful that I can service here in Erfurt, there are so many
wonderful things happening, and we are right in the middle of the
Lord's work! There can be no greater accomplishment or calling!

I hope you have a great week, we'll here us next week!

LG Elder Oliphant

(Editor's note: I asked Chase what he wanted for Christmas and/or missed.  I was expecting something like Root Beer or Mac & Cheese.  This is the list he gave me)

10. Being called Chase
 9. Movies
 8. TV 
7. Hanging out
 6. Driving
 5. Partying hard 
4. Music 
3. Girls 
2. Family 
1. Star Wars






Mustard

German Thanksgiving/Thoughts on food

December 1, 2014

Hey mom, 

Sorry I haven´t been as good with pictures/letters. But this week I have lots of pictures with people, so dont worry :) Ok to answer your questions really quick, Yes I know brother Hanson, tell him hi! There arent really that many restrictions on emails, I haven´t written you any bad things because the worst thing that happens is when appointments fall out. Do you want to hear about that? Check the pictures to see what we do on Pday. Besides what´s on the videos we clean, sometimes nap, play the piano (Elder smith is teaching me), and yea! 

OK! So this has been a week of miracles. We found 5 new investigators. 5! That is crazy for us. Normally we find two or three, five is really something, and everyone we´ve found has been so prepared. We are seeing miracles every day out here. The people are amazing. Also this week we´ve had so much food! We bought a ton of food, because we needed to buy more for thanksgiving, but we bought a lot more than we actually needed, so we don´t need to buy food this week. We still will, but we don´t need to. The only problem with all of this food we have also been fed my members a ton this week! We had thanksgiving on Thursday, lunch and dinner Saturday, and lunch and dinner Sunday. We just don´t have a chance to eat all of our food. 

Ok, now I´m going to talk a little about thanksgiving. We had in in Oldenburg (Which is not a walled city) at the home of one the senior missionary couples, the Bensons. They are so nice, and there was so much food! Everyone was supposed to bring something that they normally would have at thanksgiving. I brought a salad, Elder Smith made chicken dumplings (SO GOOD!), Elder Wilde made potato dumplings, Elder Williams brought mashed potatoes, Elder Rasband made a fruit salad, Elder Youngblood brought chocolate chip cookies, the Porters (our other senior couple) brought green beans, banana bread and a chocolate cake, and the Bensons had the turkey, stuffing, gravy, and pumpkin pie. Oh it was all so good, and man, we all ate so much food. On the train ride back I thought I was going to throw up! It was a great experience, but it was awful. 

So yesterday we had a farewell for a sister in our branch who is going to Scotland on her mission. This family (the F******s) invited us over for a little dinner after church, and when a member offers to feed you, you never turn it down. Not just because it´s free food, but because sometimes they actually will get offended, and it´s really important for us to keep a good relationship with our ward. So we went to dinner, and this family is amazing. They are the German equivalent of the Meyers. They have a little farm house which he built, and they have a bunch of old cars. He says he is the most redneck a German can be. I said "no way, you don´t even have a gun" his response was "Boy, I don´t need one." He then took us into a back room where he keeps his Swedish throwing ax. He claims to be able to stick it into a log from 20 meters, but I think I´ll have to see it to believe it. I´ll probably have the chance to see it later, but not yesterday.

I love this place. I´m having spiritual miracles every day, and we´re really making a difference here. Tomorrow we have 3 appointments (Wish us luck!) and it can only get better from there.

One quick story from this week.

We were going to an appointment on Friday, and it didn´t take as long as we thought it would to get there. We had ten minutes, so we decided to do some dooring for a little bit. 1st door, no answer. 2nd door, Kein interesse. 3rd door. Hallo! du bist mormon? Oh ich habe eure bibel, und ich liebe es! She had received  the book of mormon from missionaries a year ago and she has been waiting for them to come back ever since. We made an appointment to teach her tomorrow! The Lord truly works miracles for us out here!

We have this little lego policeman in our apartment

Oh he´s so great. We use him for roleplays. He´s a great listener, and friend. But sometimes, he just looks too mean. Sometimes he´s just a bad cop. I decided to give his a little help with this :) 

​Great fun with him now :) He´s so much nicer

Ich habe euch lieb. So viele! Ich wunsche euch ein shönen tag, und woche! Bis später! 

Elder Oliphant

P.S. Ich kann deutsch :)