Change is Coming

Hey everybody!

 So, just like the subject says, we got transfer calls this week. I
will be staying in Erfurt (yay!) but, sadly, my companion Elder
Griffin will be leaving. Tomorrow he'll get on a train and had down to
Zwickau. Honestly its not too bad, he's still going to be in the same
zone, but I'll really miss him. He is a great guy. Haha, at first he
was a little different, and really short, but after our 4 months
together I'm amazed at how big of a heart such a little bit can have.
He's wonderful, wonderful!

 My new companion will be Elder Bakly, and Elder Greaves is still in my district. 

 This week we had a lot of fallen out appointments. Remember the new
Albanian family I told you about that replaced the other one that got
deported? Well, this one is leaving too... So no more Albanians for us
 but, we did find a new investigator!

We were out talking on the
street and we stopped this group of people. They didn't really look
like the type of people to accept the gospel, (you know, dreads, lots
of piercings, tattoos, etc) but we stopped them anyway. At first the
group saw us and kind of laughed and then walked away, but then one of
them stopped and asked us to tell him what we were doing. We quickly
taught about the restoration, and then he told us that the night
before he had prayed, and asked God to help him understand more about
him. We met later in the week, and when we introduced the book of
Mormon he got so excited! He loved it, and he's really excited to
learn more!

The church is true!

Sorry for the speedy letter, don't have a lot of time. 

Have a great week!

 LG Elder Oliphant.

Valentine from Elder Bennett

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

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

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!