Immer Noch in Leer

District

Hey mom!

Ok, so I am not being transferred. I will be staying in Leer for at least the next 6 weeks.


I have had quite a week here in Leer. To start off, I´d like to tell you a little story that happened this week that really strengthened my testimony of prayer. 

We decided to go to Meppen on Saturday to visit some less active members. It´s a city about 40 minutes away by train, and we brought our bikes with us, and when we got off the train we went to work. We visited the members, and found out that some of them had moved, and others didn´t want to speak with us. We were planning to go visit some other members who live in a town called Haren. There is a train that goes there from Meppen, but we had just missed it, and it didn´t come for another hour. Well, we had our bikes, and Haren is only 19 kilometers away, so we decided to bike there, to save a little time, and to burn our big lunch. We started off, and it was easy. The path was nice and paved, and it was totally gorgeous. Unfortunately, after about 2 kilometers this path turned into a mountain trail, then into really awful pavement, then into mud, and then into sand... This was very hard to bike through, and we were a total mess, but that´s not really important. About 10 kilometers into the rife my pedal started becoming loose. It eventually fell right off of the bike. So we were in the middle of no where, 10 kilometers from meppen and 9 from Haren, and there was no one around us. I was frustrated, and upset, so we got off our bikes, and said a little prayer, asking for God to help us somehow find a way to repair my bike. After we said this prayer, we went off, and I tried to ride a bike with one pedal. That didn´t work, so Elder Timmerman and I grabbed on to a stick, and he started pulling me down the road. That was hard. After about 2 kilometers we saw a house. We went and knocked on the door, and a lady answered the door. We explained the situation, and she led us to a shed in her back yard. It turns out her husband was a mechanic, and he looked at my bike and was able to fix it. What are the odds that the one house we found had probably the only man with the only tools that could fix my bike in miles. That just strengthens my testimony of how the Lord will bless us, and we just need to reach out to him first. We made it to Haren, where we were able to continue our work.

We also had an exchange this week, and I worked here in Leer with Elder Perez. Haha, he´s a funny one. This exchange actually lasted 2 days, instead of one because Elder Timmerman is now coaching a football team in Wilhelmshaven... I will let you know how this goes, as time goes on.

I actually don´t think I´m going to buy a suit yet. Elder Wilde and Elder Perez said I didn´t need to. Also I took out 100€ from my account because we are supposed to have an emergency fund, just incase we need to go to Berlin. I´m not going to spend it unless there's an emergency. There are some crazy things going on in Europe right now. Anything that I need to know? 

ALSO! We found out that Nizar has been moved by the government. They just moved him, and we have no idea where he is :(

I forgot to tell you. Haren is like a crazy catholic town! There´s a really cool giant church in the middle of the town, and there were nuns EVERYWHERE!

Ciao for now ;)

Elder Oliphant

Smoothie accident

December 8, 2014

The District

Ohhh mom, you´re KILLING ME! You bought an x box now? :( Man, oh well. It´s ok because I´m here and I love it! This week was so interesting! We took a different approach to our finding. Instead of knocking on doors and asking if we could share a message that will help them, we´ve started asking people if we can serve them. Most of the people we talk to are very proud and are thankful for the offer, but respectfully decline. Even when this happens, it´s still a little success, because now their vision of Mormon missionaries is nice young men who just wanted to help them out, so even if we can´t teach them it gives them a good thought for the next set of missionaries who come around. 

While it´s great when these people say no thanks, it´s awesome when they say yes, and that´s what happened this week! We were on our way to an appointment, and we saw a woman sweeping her driveway. We stopped and asked her if we could help. At first she was all weird about it, and thought we were just trying to get money out of her, but then when she realized we were just trying to help her out she really opened up to us, and she let us come back and help her rake her leaves! We´re also planning to go back this week and clean out her gutters, and then we´re starting an English class for her, because she want´s to learn English! Man, I´m loving these Ammon Experiences :) 

Elder Mitchell finished his mission and went home??? OHHH NO! :( I love elder Mitchell:(( That makes me so sad :( He was on my team in the turkey bowl, and we had so much fun with that. He took the ball, and I just ran in front on him and cleared his way ;) man, I´m gonna miss him

This last week we decided to buy calendars, because.. We needed calendars. We went to the store and I bought a sweet car calendar! Oh it´s so awesome. I´m very happy with it. Elder Smith bought a calendar with... Horses. yea, horses. he´s a pretty interesting guy, but I love him... 

Deutsch ist nicht sehr schwer. Ich bin in Deutschland für nur ein monat gewesen, und ich kann vieles verstehen, und auch vieles sprechen. Ich mag es wann ich ein brief von bishoff bekommen, und es ist auf Deutsch. Ich liebe diese sprache. Ich willte miene zeugnis in kirche geben, aber unser zweig präsident hat mir geblockt... traurig.. aber alles gut! Ich liebe deutschland, und die loite hier. 

Ich bete für euch jeden tag, und ich hoffe das alles gut nach hause.

Tchüss!

Elder Oliphant

P.S. I could totally be an engineer. My favorite pen broke, so I fixed it with a sewing kit. Dad, you were right. Those are handy!

Ok Explanation of pictures.

That is what my hair always looks like after I take my helmet/ hat off. That´s actually not as bad as normal.

That´s the christmas tree our members set up in the church

That´s two bottle of Ibuprofen the Bateman family brought for me back from their trip to America.

Elder Smith pondering in our train. That´s where

 we do most of our serious thinking

My awesomely fixed pen!

My sweet calendar (That´s a Saab!)

His... horses

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 :)