Schönen guten Tag Moin Moin!

Elder Griffin with all of his companions (notice how they've been
getting progressively taller)

Wet Elders

Traffic on the AutoBahn

Sister Ibrahimi

Well, another week down, and we have had a bunch of stress with it!
But mostly because we've been really busy teaching, and finding, and
doing missionary work. So it's good stress!
This week started off pretty sad, we had to say goodbye to sister
Ibrahimi. She is one of the new converts that we've been working with,
and she's also been helping us teach her son. They came here as
economical refugees, but because of all of the new refugees coming in
from Syria and the Middle East, the German government doesn't have
enough resources to support all of the other refugees from other
countries where there isn't any war. So, the Ibrahimi's are being
deported. Sister Ibrahimi left on Tuesday, and her two sons will be
following next week. It's very, very sad. I've become such good
friends with them, and I hate to say goodbye, but I'm sure we'll see
each other again :)

 However, with goodbyes, there are always new hellos! We made contact
with a new Albanian family! Woo hoo! This family came to Germany at
about the same time the Ibrahimi's, and they also were being taught
together with them. At the end of the teaching, the Ibrahimi's decided
to be baptized, but this family decided to wait a little longer. After
this area changed missions they got lost, and haven't had contact with
the church for the past 10 months. Then, last week the wife met our
relief society president on the street, and told her she would like to
meet with us again. Score!! They are a super, super sweet family. They
know the gospel, and they told us that they miss the good feelings
that they had while they were investigating the church. There's only
one problem: they speak almost no German, or English. But, the wife
speaks Italian! And one of our members speaks Spanish! And through the
similarities in the languages (and a lot of divine intervention I'm
sure) they can understand each other. This week in our lesson we were
speaking English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Albanian...
#CultureSplash 

 So, quick update with Edwin, WE FOUND HIM! He came to soccer, and
church, and we had a great talk with him. The baptism is now scheduled
for next week, and everything's looking good! So excited!

We have so much fun, and success here. 

I ️ Erfurt

 LG Elder Oliphant

Visit to Buchenwald

Hello!

So, I want to apologize in advance for the short letter, but we're a
little short on time today.

We had a really good, and busy week. We had leadership training in
Berlin, and I got to go and take part in that. Lucky me! I really
enjoy big mission meetings like this, but I just wish they didn't take
as much time as they do. We had to stay the night with some other
elders in Magdeburg, and then I drove to Berlin with elder casperson.
We had a really good meeting, then we came back. I like meetings like
this, I just wish they didn't take so much time out of our week. We
lost a day and a half for it. :/ But we wouldn't do it of we didn't
need it.

One of the best parts about being a missionary here in Germany is
being able to experience so much of the German history. This last week
we had the privilege of being able to visit Buchenwald, one of the
concentration camps of world war 2. Words can not describe the
thoughts and emotions that one has when he is there. The camp was
bombed shortly after its liberation, so there isn't much left, but
what is there they've made into a memorial. It is so hard to imagine
that so many thousands and thousands of people were killed there
because of their race or faith. I will never forget that experience,
and I think it's important that everyone understands just how that
feels, so that nothing like that ever happens again.

Just an update on Edwin, his baptism should be this week, but he
didn't come to our appointment this week, or soccer, or church, and we
haven't been able to contact him yet, so... Please pray that
everything will work out!

Well, I hope you have a great week! Love ya!

I can sum up this week in two words: Flipping awesome!

Schönen guten Tag! Wie geht's euch??

I can sum up this week in two words: Flipping awesome! Definitely a
week to remember. Elder Griffin and I have started doing a lot of less
active work this week, which is great, because I love less active
work. We had the opportunity to meet with 8 different less active/
part member families, and some of the experiences we've had are just
amazing. With most of these people we're at the "get to know you/feel
our love" stage, and the amazing stories that these members have
shared with us have really touched me. Our current plan is to help
these members come back, and then, in the words of elder Nielson,
"baptize their friends and family". We'll keep you updated on that one
:)

Everything with Edwin is still going great. We had an awesome lesson
this week, where we started teaching the commandments, and he is
totally ready to follow everything that the Lord has commanded. He's
so cool! We're really excited for his baptism in 2 weeks!

So, as I've said before, I currently live in a four-man apartment,
which can be really fun. We decided that we needed to have some more
unity together, and really just find a way to relax and have a little
fun at night during our personal time(after 9:30 PM before we go to
bed). So, we started a boy band (see video) I love these elders,
and I'm super grateful to be able to serve with all of them together.


One more fun event, every week we go and play Fußball (soccer) with a
few members and a lot of their friends. It's actually a really good
opportunity for us to find new investigators and make good friends.
The only problem is that it can be a little dangerous. This week I was
playing in the goal (apparently the Germans think I'm good in the
goal?) and one of the players kicked it super hard, and it slammed me
right in the face! I didn't really see what happened, but apparently
blood splattered all over the place! Haha, I'm like Scott Sterling!
The man! The myth! The legend! (Don't worry mom, it was just a bloody
nose, I'm totally fine.)

Well, yea. That's it from me. I hope you have a great week! I love you!

LG Elder Oliphant

Elder Soup Cube (Elder Bullion)

Edwin! 

Hey y'all!

 We had a great week! But, every week is a great week on a mission :)
Man, I love this city, and ward, and mission! It's the greatest!

We said goodbye to elder Day this week, as we put him on a train and
sent him off to the temple. Then we got to say hello to Elder Soup
cube! Haha, his name is elder Bullion, like the broth cubes. It's so
funny, everyone here has been making jokes about his name. But, I
think Germans just do that with every name haha, I hear stuff about
Oliphant all the time, and I love it! I love my name! But, we've been
getting to know him and he's really funny. He was also elder Griffin's
MTC companion, so that's fun. 

 We also had an amazing opportunity this week to learn from the leaders
of the church in the missionary department. We had a worldwide
missionary training broadcast where we learned from elder Bednar,
elder Anderson, elder Oaks, and other members of the missionary
department. They gave us a great reminder on repentance, and how we
are called to teach repentance. These leaders didn't tell anything
new. They told us exactly what we've heard multiple times, but the
Spirit was so strong when they spoke, and their words rang into my
heart, and I learned a lot from what they said, but more from what the
spirit told me. I learned way more from the spirit than from what was
said, and that's how it always is. It says in the doctrine and
covenants that there is one teacher, and that's the spirit. He's the
one that will teach us what we need to know, and he is the one that
will also tell these German people that our message is true. And it is
true! The church is true and I love it! 

 We did a lot of work this week with some of our less active members,
and one of them came to church this week! Woohoo! I love working with
less active member, I can just feel so much love for them.

 Everything's also going well with Edwin, he still wants to be baptized
in less than 3 weeks now! Woohoo! The church is so true! I know it, I
live it, I love it! 

 Have a great week! 

 So cold!!! Grateful that we have a car!

LG Elder Oliphant

Another Transfer in the Books

Hey y'all!

So, first of all, sorry about last week, i wrote the email, but my
iPad decided it didn't want we to send it, so... yea. Sorry 🙁🙁

But, its ok, because life moves on! And gets better! We had a good
week, first of all, transfer calls came, and Elder Griffin and I will
be staying together for another 6 weeks! Woo hoo! I'm glad we're
getting more time to get to know each other even better, and to help
these people even more! Love it! And I love him! But, there are some
changes happening to the district. I'm still the district leader, but
we will be losing Elder Day, because he's going over to my old area,
Freiberg!! Haha, ever since we got that call I've just been telling
him all about it, and how wonderful it is to serve in the same city
where the temple is. Ah, Freiberg is the best! He will be replaced by
Elder Bullion (I don't know him) And also, sadly, the zone leaders
will no longer be in my district  They had to close one of the
programs in the neighboring district, so there were only 2 elders and
2 sisters left, and DAS GEHT ÜBERHAUPT NICHT!! So the ZLs are leaving
to add more to their district until they can reopen that program.

So, the work. We were really busy this week with Zone training
meeting, two exchanges, and transfers, but we still got a good amount
of teaching in and we found 3 new investigators! One of them is a
super nice woman who has a son that got baptized a few years ago.
She's been learning about the church for a while now and now she's
ready to start meeting with us. The only problem there is that she
lives forever away!! It takes us 45 minutes to drive out there! On the
autobahn! But its not that big of a problem, and salvation is worth
it!  It also gives Elder Griffin and I some good bonding time.

I also got to go on exchange with Elder Greaves. Haha, he's such a
stud! We had a really great time together, and he helped me out a lot.
He's really good at just going out and talking to everybody, and he
always just knows what to say. We found two of our new friends while
we were together! Im excited to get to work with him even more!

There's also been something wrong with my heel for the past few weeks,
I'm not sure what, but it kind of hurts, so this week I went to the
doctor and got it checked out. It's nothing too serious, it's just
from walking too much(shocker). But I got an x-Ray of my ankle!
Don't worry mom, I'm really ok. It's nothing serious at all, I just
need to eat more bananas and drink more tea. Or at least that's what
the doctor here told me.

Well, thats all for now. Haha, even though I've been writing weekly
emails for almost a year and a half now, I still feel like I don't
know how to write them. Oh well, I'll probably perfect it in a few
months, and then I'll go home! 😬😬😬

Love ya

Elder Oliphant

No Email, Just Pictures

All the Lights!!

Hey y'all! 

 Man, what a week!! The end of the year here is always a little crazy!
Just like it's been, all of our investigators were still on their
vacations and what not, so we didn't have a lot of opportunity to
teach, but we didn't let that stop us from getting work done, and had
fun! 

 On New Year's Eve we had to be home by 6:00 PM, which is kind of sad,
but it makes a lot of sense because it's a straight up war zone out
there. People were setting off a types of fireworks from around 4:30
when it started getting dark to well past midnight... Let's just say I
didn't sleep very well that night. At midnight the explosions got even
louder, and that's when we all got up and watched, and my goodness,
that was quite the sight to see. It was incredible, absolutely
incredible! I had never seen more fireworks in my entire life!

 Then on
New Year's Day we hopped in the car and drove to Leipzig, where we did
a New Years fun-run! It was great, and we did it with the Leipzig
north and Dresden zones, so all together there were around 60
missionaries there! It was a great time, and it was probably the best
use of our time for that holiday. 

 We also saw a little miracle this week. As you all know, there is a
very hard situation in the Middle East right now which is causing a
lot of people to come as refugees to Europe, and pat I heard Germany
has taken more in than any other country. In order to support all of
these refugees coming in, the German government has had to deport
several other financial refugees that come from different countries
where it's still safe to live (countries life Serbia, Albania, etc).
We have a family of recent converts in our ward who were in this
situation, and they found out they would have to be deported, unless
they were able to find full time jobs. They looked, and looked, but
they couldn't find anything. So, they put their trust in God, and
started praying, just pleading for him to help them stay. Well, this
week their prayers were answered, and they found full time jobs! 

There
is truly power in prayer! God is there, and he wants to help us! 

 I love you all, and I hope you have a great week!

 LG Elder Oliphant

our car got tagged :(