Good thing for Google Translate

Chase did not have time to write this week so he forwarded the letter he wrote to his mission president.  I did find a picture of him on another blog which I think is adorable

Elder and Sister Hubrich, Chase and Elder Teuscher

From the Hubrich's blog:

Here we are in Dresden with Elders Oliphant and Teucher.  Elder Oliphant was our "trainer", because he was the first one we met and worked with as far a the local full-time missionaries is concerned.  He is a wonderful missionary and love our association with him.  He is a BIG BOY, with a heart of gold and Elder Teucher, from Logan is such a great missionary too. What a dynamic duo.

Hallo Präsident!

Diese Woche war ganz anstrengend. Wie Sie wissen, es gab diese Woche
eine Taufe in Jena, und weil ich der Distriktsleiter bin, habe ich dem
Täufling die Taufinterview gegeben. Das war gut, wir haben einen
Austausch gemacht mit den Zonenleitern um das zu tun, und ich hatte
eine ganz gute Zeit mit Elder Anderson, und mit dem Täufling, Gustav.
Ich habe sehr viel von Elder Anderson gelernt über wie wir Kontakt mit
Untersuchern jeden Tag haben können, durch das Handy. Er benutzt es
ganz gut, und ich hoffe daß wir das auch in unserer Arbeit anwenden
können.

Elder Anderson

Diese Woche war anstrengend weil wir diese Taufe hier in Erfurt
hatten, und, natürlich, das heißt dass jemand die Taufbecken füllen
müssten. Wir haben versucht und versucht jemand zu finden, der einen
Schlüssel für die Taufbecken hat. Endlich haben wir jemand erreicht,
der einen Schlüssel haben sollte, und wir haben ihn am Samstag vor der
Taufe getroffen, und seine Schlüssel ging nicht! Wir hatten keine
Ahnung was wir tun sollten, dir Taufe war in vier Stunden, und wir
konnten niemand erreichen mit einem Schlüssel dafür. So, Elder Griffen
und ich haben es selbst gefüllt mit Wasser vom Waschbecken mit Eimern.
Haha, es war ein bisschen schwer, aber wir haben es geschafft, und
dieser Mann hat sich taufen gelassen!

Ich freue mich aber hier in Erfurt dienen zu dürfen, und auch über die
Leadership Training Meeting diese Woche!

Bis dann!

Elder Oliphant

Sorry, it's in German.. Google translate?? Or bishop?? You'll get a letter soon.

more

Dresden, Dresden

Well, first week in Dresden is over, and honestly it's been the
longest week of my life! It all started Tuesday. Tuesday was transfer
day. We just packed up, and were planning to go over and catch a train
to Dresden. 30 minute train ride, no problem. Well, we still wanted to
do some stuff here, like show the new elders around, say goodbye to
the Hubrichs, check out the temple one last time. No problem right?
Well... Made it to the temple and we did everything we wanted to do,
and we had 25 minutes to catch our train. The temple is 30 minutes
from the train station. Fortunately, the Hubrichs drove us, but it was
really close. We barely made the train! Woo hoo! We made it 2 stops,
and then the train broke down! So we got out, and had to wait 40
minutes for them to send another train to come and pick us up. Not too
bad, it was just really hot. We finally made it to Dresden, but by the
time we got there, two of the wheels on my big gray suitcase were
broken :/ they just weren't made for cobblestone. So, we got there,
unpacked a little bit, and then the other elders showed us around the
city a little bit. Dresden is huge! It's the fourth biggest city in
Germany (actual size, not population), so, it was very fun for too
missionaries who don't know the city at all to try and find
everything. But, we're managing :) There are also 4 sisters here in
the city, and this is my first time working with them. It's weird. We
see each other almost every day. I also live with elder drazin now, so
that's fun :)

For all who want more

Elder Oliphant's take  on For all who want more

So, like the mission blog shows, all of the missionaries coming in
will now be taken to Freiberg. And because Dresden is so close to
Freiberg, all of the trainers came and stayed the night with us. It
was fun, and I got to go with elder Roth and elder Sagmeister (the
former ZL's here who stayed the night with us) to visit a recent
convert That they baptized. A really nice girl with a great family,
and I started to have a pretty good friendship with her brother, who's
also really interested in the church. It was fun having 11 elders in
our apartment,but they ate all of my food  but hey, forgive and
forget.


So yea, this week was long, but great. Even though we don't know the
city we were still able to find 2 new investigators. One of them is a
cool guy from Syria. Haha, he's Muslim, and when we told him about the
Book of Mormon, he just kept asking about evidence that proves the
boom of Mormon is true. He then showed us a video about the Koran
that, in a very intense way, talks about all of the evidence that
proves that the Koran is the word of God. Now, we wanted to stay
respectful, and kind, but man, it was really funny, and elder Teuscher
and I both struggled to keep from laughing.

So, yea. Great day. Great week. I'm hoping to have some great times
here in Dresden :) this is seriously the prettiest city in the whole
mission.

I love you, have a great week :)

Elder Oliphant

The believer, the cigarettes, the Czech, and the white wash‏

Hey mom!

Well, as you can probably guess from the title of this letter, I had
an interesting week.

We've been meeting with one investigator for the past couple weeks,
his name is herr Arndt. He's a really nice, really, REALLY OLD German.
When I say old, I mean like 90. His body isn't the best anymore, but
his brain still works 100%. Whenever we go over he tells us all of his
crazy stories about pre war and communist controlled Germany. They're
really cool stories, but, the best part of our visits is always when
we talk about Jesus Christ. This man is more sensitive to the spirit
than anyone else I've met here on my mission. Every single time we
teach he starts to cry (it's actually pretty cute). This week he
shared with us his desire follow the work of wisdom, so, we took his
cigarettes! It was actually really funny. As we walked out of the
home, we just had to take some selfies  it was great to see him
progress like that!!

I also learned something ridiculously cool this week. We talked to a
man on the street this week from Lebanon. I love people from Lebanon,
I feel like I already have a connection to them :) we talked to him
about Jesus Christ, and he got all excited and said "yea! I love
Jesus! I think he was the most important prophet! Except for
Muhammad." He's Muslim, no surprise. We told him about how the Book of
Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ, and then asked if he had
ever heard of it. His response shocked me. He said, "Mormon? Yes,
that's an Arabic name. It means 'The Believer.' My brother is called
Mormon." The church is so true! There is no way that Joseph smith
could've known that Mormon is a middle-eastern name. I love the
gospel!

This week we went out with the Hubrichs to visit some less active
members. We drove out to a tiny village called Niedersaida. The member
we wanted to visit wasn't home, but she was coming back in about 30
minutes. So, we went to the Czech Republic! Well, to the border. It's
a river, and it's cool :) of Course we didn't go over the border, but
we saw it! Then we drove back to the village and had a great lesson
with this member. She has been less active for a while, but she wants
to come back to the church! And, she has a 9 year old son who wants to
be baptized! We were pretty excited about that, but then, everything
changed.

And this leads to my last point, the white wash. We are having a big
change here in Freiberg. Our awesome new mission president has a new
mission focus.

"Faithfully we baptize with the focus on the blessings of the temple."

That is awesome, I love it! I love the temple, and I love how I've had
the opportunity to serve here in Freiberg, and see the temple almost
every day. But, sadly, my time here is now over. President Fingerle
has decided to move our zone leaders from Dresden to Freiberg, and
he's also bringing in sisters, kind of like what they have at temple
square. So, elder Teuscher and I are switching programs with the Zone
leaders. They're coming here, and we're going there. It's going to be
a big change for us, we'll go from a city of 50,000 to a city of
500,000, we'll be living in a four man apartment (with elder drazin
) and we'll be in a ward with sisters. It's a big change, and
honestly, I'm not to happy for it. I'm excited to be able to serve in
one of the biggest, and most beautiful cities in the mission, but I
would like to stay here. Freiberg is special, and I've made a lot of
really good friends here that I will really miss. But, we go forward
with faith. I believe that president fingerle receives revelation for
us, and if that's what the lord wants, then that's what I'll do. Plus,
I'll be staying with elder Teuscher, so I'll get to finish training
him. But, yea. Big change. But, on the bright side, I'll never have a
boring p day! Because there's so much to do!!

I'm excited, a little scared, and kind of overwhelmed. Pray for me!

Love you!

Elder Oliphant

I´m not lying. Keep your apartment clean!

Hey mom! So, this week was good! We started off with a great P day, where we cleaned! I don´t know if you knew this, but I´m not the neatest person in the world, and, even though I worked housekeeping for 3 years, I don´t enjoy cleaning. But it had to be done, so now our apartment is Spick and Span! So nice :) Having a clean apartment is such a great help. I´m not lying. Keep your apartment clean!

So, right now is probably the hardest time for missionary work here in Germany because of two things. One, normal school is out now, and everyone is trying to squeeze in their vacations (they only have 6 weeks for summer in this poor, deprived country) and the college students all have their exams right now. There´s no "finals week" here. It´s more like "finals 3 months." But, inspite of this, we still get work done! Yea yea! 

We have good number of part member families here in our ward, and now we´re starting to try and do more with these families. It´s really nice to work with these families, because the investigator already knows a lot about the church, has probably been to a few meetings, and already has a good support structure and friends in the church. We were working this week with one family, family Szymczak (don´t even try to pronounce it right) and the i"friend of the church" in the family had a ton of questions and problems about certain things in the gospel that are really simple, they just don´t understand completely, and they get scared. For example, they thought that a patriachal blessing was something big and special that only men could receive in the church, and they didn´t think that was fair to the women, but we helped them understand what they really are, and why we have them. Whole experience has really shown me that if we disagree with some part of the gospel, it´s probably because we don´t understand it.

We also did a service project this week for some awesome members who moved. They now live right across the street from us, and can spy on us through the giant windows in our apartment. The move was good, it´s just... well... They moved to the 5th floor of a really old building. And they had a lot of boxes and furniture. And no elevator. It was hard. We were with this family and other members, constantly going up and down stairs for a good 4 hours... Let´s just say, we got really fit that night... And I´m still sore.

Well, I´m running out of time for this email. I have some other stuff to do, but I wanted to end with a quick spiritual thought.

John 17:3 And this is ^alife ^beternal, that they might ^cknow thee the only true ^dGod, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast ^esent.

Receiving eternal life is getting to know God and Jesus Christ. Deeply, and fully. We do that when we read his words, and pray to him. We can´t get to know him, unless we talk to him, and we hear what he says back to us. In Sunday school yesterday we had a lesson about listening to the spirit. To demonstrate it, the teacher took someone, blind folded them, and then had someone else tell them how to get back to their seat, while only whispering through a tube. After they did that, the teacher had everyone write down something that blocks the spirit on a piece of paper. She took the paper, crumpled it up, and puit in the tube. After doing this, they repeated the activity, but the blindfolded member couldn´t understand what the other one was saying, because it was all muffled and blocked. 

If we want to receive life eternal, then we need to be willing to give up certain things that will block the holy ghost, and block us from getting to know our heavenly father, and Jesus Christ.

I love you, have a great week!

Hi Mom!

Hello Mom! 

Wow, I´m glad you had fun on your vacation, that sounds like the trip of a lifetime. I´m glad you got that opportunity, and I´m really glad that Riley is doing so much better :)

So... This week went by really fast, and it was HOT! WAY HOT! Man, I almost died like every day. Plus we don´t have air conditioning, so there is no escaping the heat. The only thing keeping us alive is the ice tray that the Hubrichs gave us. So nice :) I love them so much!

This week we had an exchange, and I stayed here with our new district leader, elder Hall. Did I tell you what happened with our district? Well, before it was just 4 elders, us and the elders in Meissen. Well, they closed down the branch in Meissen, combined it with the ward in Dresden, and then split the ward. So now there are two wards in Dresden, but because of this change, the Meissen program combined with one of the elders programs in Dresden. So now we´re in the Dresden district with Elder Hall, Elder Drazin, Elder Morales, Elder Randall, Sister Flake, Sister Kooyman, Sister Kady, and Sister Stephens. And also Elder and Sister Hubrich :) It´s a party :) But anyway, we went on exchange, and he is an amazing leader. I really feel like he´s there just to help us achieve our goals.

Speaking of goals, we set a goal to have a baptism this month. We´ve been working a lot with one of our investigators from China, and this week we gave him a baptismal commitment for the 25th of July! We´ve been really excited. He came to church and loved it. He said he was really trying to think about what he needs to do, and we got a text this morning saying that he´s made a conclusion, but he wants to tell us in person. We´re meeting tomorrow, and I am so nervous, it´s crazy! We´ve been praying non stop for him, and I really hope he´s gotten his answer. 

We also started using the bike more this week, and I ripped two pairs of pants! :/ It´s just way to hot, and the sweat does not work well with church pants and bikes. Fortunately sister Hubrich can sew pretty well.

One last thing about the week. GRILL PARTY!

We meet with a few of our new converts every week here, and this week they grilled for us! It was really good at first, but they had SO MUCH FOOD! And in Germany most of the meat that you can grill comes pre-marinated, and it´s the same sauce! SO it got old after a little bit. But it was really nice of them to do that for us :) I love them!

Well, this week we´re going to be meeting President Fingerle, we´re going to find out if our baptism will happen, we´re going on another exchange, and we´re going to still be biking in the heat.

Pray for us!

Love you, 

Elder Oliphant

Transfers!

Hey Mom! 

So, we have had an incredible week! This week we had a German holiday, Christ-Himmel-Fahrt. Officially, they celebrate the day where Christ ascended into heaven after his resurrection. Unofficially, it´s called man day. It´s where all of the men go out and get totally drunk. A real German holiday :) Because of how crazy it gets here we had to be inside at 6:00 unless we were with a member. I hate being in our apartment, so fortunately a member invited us over for dinner! The Bobinger Family (you already have a picture with them). They are so nice. They made a giant feast for us and they grilled! Bratwurst, schnitzel, so much meat! It was amazing. So great. They also invited their nephew who lives in Hamburg, who is not a member of our church. As we got their the family wanted to play a game with us, and Elder Williams, being prepared, brought his Book of Mormon battles card game. It´s a card game where all of the cards are book of Mormon characters. It´s similar to the game War, but with a gospel twist. As we were playing, this awesome kid got so into it! At the end he was saying "Who are these people?? Where are they from??" Of course we told him they were from the Book of Mormon, and he then told us he wanted to read it!! We gave him one, and we took pictures with him and wrote our testimonies in the book. A great time... Except for the fact that they gave us WAY to much food! And as we were there, the Hubrich family called us and invited us over right after! Way to much food, but a great night.

This last week we´ve received several text messages from our zone telling us about miracles and baptismal dates in our zone. It was great to here that so many of our brothers and sisters are going to be entering into a covenant with our Heavenly Father, but these texts really made me think. All of these wonderful things were happening in our zone, in almost every other area, and I thought to myself "Hey, why not Freiberg?" So I said a prayer, and Elder Williams and I went out to work until we found a miracle, and we did! I was looking through the list of contacts that we have in our area book, and I decided to call a name I found. He didn´t answer the phone, but then he called back! I talked to him for a while, and he ended up telling me that he didn´t really have interest to learn from us, but his roommate did, and he set up an appointment for us. We came by for our appointment, and Y*****, the man we called, had made us a big dinner. Really tasty! After we ate, we were going to start teaching Y****´s roommate, D****. As we started, we did what Preach My Gospel says, and invited everyone there to stay for the lesson. At first Ya****was hesitant, but he agreed to stay. As we started teaching, he got more and more interested, and by the end we were all great friends. They´re scheduled to  be baptized on the 20 of June. Please pray for them!

Now today, we had a crazy adventure. We got permission to go to see the place where president Monson dedicated  East Germany for missionary work. What an amazing experience. I loved it so much, once we got there. The Hubrichs found out we were going and they offered to drive us out there. So we started off, and ran into trouble. Their GPS is really old, so we ended up getting lost, and it took 3 hours to find the place! So we got to the place where the walking path starts, and the driving path ends, but Elder Hubrich didn´t care! He drove right up the path! And then parked in the middle of  the forest on the side. SO FUNNY! But we had a great adventure together (This is why we´re writing so late today).

So... Transfers. Now, do you want to here a funny story? Two days before our calls I had a dream that I would be transferred to Leipzig, and serve with Elder Clark, one of the Elders we spent the night with when we went to Berlin. We got our calls on Saturday, and Elder Williams was transferred to Leipzig! And he´ll be serving with Elder Clark! Crazy. Sadly, We won´t be serving together anymore. We´ve become great friends here. My new companion is Elder Benitz, and he´s a GERMAN! He´s from Stuttgard, and just finished his training. Woo hoo! My German is going to get a lot better.

So can you also send me some Velcro stick things, and super glue? Thanks :)

Love you mom!

Elder Oliphant