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 :(

New Year, New Cheer!

Hey y'all! 

Well, I can't believe the year is already come to an end. I can't
still remember back last year when I was still in the small town of
Leer for the new year. That feels like it wasn't that long ago, but at
the same time it feels like a whole other life! Time is strange on the
mission, the days are long, the weeks fly by, and each transfer feels
shorter and shorter. I'm sure these next few months will just fly
right by. 

This week was just a wonderful week of Christmas cheer. We had a white
elephant give exchange at district meeting, but we did it German style
where in order to get a present you have to sing a song, or recite
something. But for us, instead of singing or doing something like
that, we used this opportunity to practice our memorized scriptures ;)
and we all got gifts from "Der Weihnachtsman!" (Santa)
🏻🏻🏻🏻

We also spent a lot of time with the amazing members here, which was
awesome, because the members here have so much love, and they're so
nice to us. Honestly without the members this would've been a sad
Christmas. We got to spend last Sunday with a family, and they fed us,
Wurst, then Monday with a family, and they fed us, more wurst. Then
again on Christmas Eve, with more wurst. Each Wurst was about twice
the size of a Normal American hot dog, and I probably ate over 30 of
them this week... So this week we only bought vegetables to make up
for it, and we're doing a "vegetarian week" to give ourselves a break
from all that meat. 

There was one other moment this week that was just hilarious.
Yesterday Elder Day gave a talk in sacrament meeting about inviting
friends to church activities. It was a really good talk, but he didn't
get to finish it, because right in the middle of it, he fainted! We
all rushed up to the pulpit to make sure he was ok, and then after we
helped him out of the chapel and made sure there was no real problem
we all just busted up laughing. It was so funny! He just locked his
knees, but when the members came to ask what was wrong, elder Day
didn't know to say that in German, so he said it was the spirit!
Hahaha! Oh, such a funny day at church :) but Elder Day is totally
fine now. Some members even took us to the hospital because they
wanted to be sure he was ok, so we went and sat in that awful hospital
waiting room for two hours, just to have the doctor tell us he was
fine and that we should go home... Oh socialism 

Well, that was my week. It was great talking to you on Christmas, I
can't wait for Mother's Day to roll around. And if you have any more
questions, just email them :) and I will answer!

 Love you! 

 LG Elder Oliphant

Christmas Pancakes!

Christmas is Here!!

Hey y'all!

Christmas is Here! Woo hoo! Man, December has just flown right by, but
that's honestly just how it goes on the mission sometimes. It really
feels like I'm still a new trainee. Crazy!!

So, this week was... Interesting. Haha, most of our investigators have
Tschüssed us for the week (said goodbye) because they're all going
away to visit their families for Christmas, or they're finishing up
with finals, or they have other excuses for why they can't meet, but
that's ok, because we still love them, and even the busiest people
have time for a quick text every day :) we've started sending out a
"scripture a day" to members, investigators, and other friends.
Hopefully that will help some of them to focus on Christ and the
wonderful message that the scriptures tell us about him during
Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, we're going to be Skyping on the 25th, at
6:00pm our time, so that's 10:00 for you :) we'll be spending
Christmas with the bishop, and also the Kirchers, we're really
excited, and I'm really happy that I'll get to see you all again! This
will be our third call, only one more left after that!

Today we're going to Eisenach for our p-day, which is 50 km away, and
somehow is still in our area, but Eisenach is a really cool city, it's
the home of Wartburg, the Castle that Martin Luther was hiding in for
a while, and where he translated the New Testament. I'm so grateful
that I can serve in a place where there is so much religious history!
It's really helped me understand more about religion, and the
apostasy, and why Germany is how it is. I love the people, and the
culture, and here you can't understand the culture and history without
understanding the religious culture and history. It's fun :)

Well, have a great week! We'll see you on Friday! :) :)

LG Elder Oliphant