Staying in Karlsruhe!

Well, what a great week it has been!!! We defnitely had a couple ups and downs but those are the best because the Lord is teaching us something. We were watching in the Preach My Gospel videos for Comp. Study and ended up at one part where you have a couple missionaries and they just don´t know why everything seems to be going wrong and everyone is falling out...then one of them says that they aren´t really that good with finding...the Lord is hinting at something, I know it. ;) hahaha I´ve learned that a lot of times when things start to suck it´s hard to be sitting there saying, "I love a challenge, I love being thrown to the ground!!" Normally people don´t say that...at least I don´t XD But it does interest me to see the results of what happen when we get back up.

I have started to write down a lot more about the times when I have gotten back up then when I have been knocked down. It´s changed my attitude on a lot of things. I find it so interesting how we so often focus on the things that are going wrong. Kind of hard not to right? It is always a lot easier to pity one´s self and not get back up and get to work than it is to actually do it. I love the quote that says, "I know I didn´t say that it would be easy, just that it would be worth it." I am definitely not the best at looking at a massive mountain covered in thorns, quicksand, sinkholes, and lions that want to eat me and saying "Bring it on," But I have come to respect the fact that I´m not going to learn how to work the spirit and use my priesthood to tame the lions until I am thrown into the den.

I would never recommend to someone to go do things that can eventually hurt us, and make us a bit cynical, or downtrodden along with everything else that can be thrown at us, but luckily we don´t have to...the Lord does it for us ;) Hahahaha. How easy it is to blame someone else for helping us become better than we ever could have been? I sure know it´s easy to look up at the sky sometimes and be like "Why in the world is this happening to me?" But at the end of the day, we can only become better. It´s easy to get comfortable. It´s even easier to not live up to the potential that we know we can reach. The lord knows us better than we know ourselves. I believe in that statement wholeheartedly because he can put me and you into the situations that we would never put ourselves in, because he knows that we can come out on top. As a missionary I have had the chance to receive new insights, see new ways of life, and discover (only a little bit) of just how much I can take. The things that seemed insurmountable yesterday are today´s norm, and in the future they will become child´s play.

I may not have seen the sight of a blind man return to him, that he might look on his daughter´s beautiful face. I may not have seen the dead rise, or the deaf return to hearing, but I have seen the power of the Lord in my life in the little things. Day by day, night by night. Stay positive. Stuff happens. Life wasn´t meant to be perfect, we don´t preach perfection we preach of perfection through Christ. Without him it would never happen. The challenge itself and the goal is to understand him more perfectly so that we might understand more of perfection. As with language or just about anything else, as humans our best means of improving are by copying. Be like Christ, and you will become more Christlike.

Be Charitable and you will receive the gift of Charity. Be humble, and you will receive the gift of Humility. Be Prayerful, and you will receive the Gift of Understanding the Spirit. Serve One Another and you will feel the Love of Christ. Accept the challenges that come, because they will come anyways, and instead of focusing on what might suck switch it up with what´s good. We do the same things out here with our companions. Make the choice, change your attitude, Be what you can BE. Like the great I AM, it is a state just as much as it is a decision. Decide now to be in that state to be like him and you´ll see a different kind of happiness that you may have never seen before.

I bear testimony of that because I have experienced it. Without the Lord I never would have. Keep in touch with him, he is our Father and I know for a fact that there isn´t anyone that loves you more. I love you all and hope that you have a wonderful week!! You´re Awesome!!
Elder Lee
Here we are for Transfer Calls haha Pace Family took us for an Awesome P-Day activity. Loved it. The plate of food was as big as my forearm. Gained 4 pounds after that experience...I´m sure that isn´t healthy. I sure felt terrible the next morning.

Wow, What an Awesome Week

This week was just absolutely insane! I loved it!! So to start things off we ended up having the activity part of our P-Day moved to Saturday so that we could go to the temple. What a wonderful experience that was. I absolutely love the temple. There is just such a spirit there and I love being able to experience the things I talk about every single day. So on Monday we had decided to try and go by on George again because it has been really difficult to get a hold of him as he has been working double shifts at work for a very long time. On the way back from Emails we ended up running into him on the street. We were able to schedule an appointment with him and he was really excited about it! Sadly, it fell out later on because he got called in to go to Berlin for some Paperwork...Germans love paperwork...just so you know hahaha.

We then went to our good old Brother Dörschner for our weekly appointment and had a blast playing some games and then sharing a spiritual thought on a talk by President Monson on Attitude. Great talk, I would recommend it. On Tuesday we ended up having all of our appointments fall out and so we were going to go see some less active members and we ended up running into an Investigator by the name of Prince. He was completely high...bahahahaha but at least he was excited to see us XD The girl that was with him wasn´t to happy to see us so we scheduled an appointment to come back an hour later so she could leave...we should´ve just taught them but ah well. Came back and he answered but sounded worse than before and then we couldn´t find him soooooo ya.

We then ended up running into one of the YSA´s and ended up talking for an hour and teaching a lesson so that was great! And then we ended up meeting with another member at the end of the night so all in all, it was a good day. Wednesday was great, we had a couple great appointments with Less Actives. One of them is a part member family so we are working hard with the Father and the daughter. We´ll see how it goes. The sister we are working with keeps telling us that her daughter loves us but that she especially likes it when I am around, must be my charming smile...XD lol! Thursday was the really special part of the week though. We ended up having a really great Zone Training. Our Zone Leader ended up calling everyone to repentance which I really enjoyed and then we went out and did some crazy intense finding.

We ended up chalking the Plan of Salvation by a big Church. There were tours going on all around the place and so I just started contacting everyone with my companion for the day. Elder Muller. He´s awesome. I ended up talking with a lot of people and being laughed at by even more but there were a couple really awesome experiences that I want to share. One of them came in the form of a man who was 80 years old. He seemed really quite sad as he was walking by and he ended up stopping and looking at our drawing. Que to go, we pounced on him like lions that hadn´t even for a month...okay, probably not that intense but as we started talking with him he started to cry and just started to tell us how his wife had died and he was going to just go hang himself so that he could be with her again. The testimony i ended up bearing about Eternal Families and the Plan that God had for all of his children was spoken by through the Power of the Spirit. I´m pretty sure for those 20 minutes I spoke perfect German.

Something that rarely happens with me haha It was quite spectacular watching the change come over that man and the excitement that he felt. By the end he was telling us that he was going into the Church to pray for his wife etc. We tried to get his number or address but he didn´t want to give out his address to strangers but he said that he wanted to give the Elders a call so we gave him our card and so I pray that he actually does call them. I then got to speak with a girl who was very well versed in Theology. It was great!! We ended up talking for around 30 minutes. We had such an awesome conversation and she took the Book of Mormon and said she was going to read through it. She was incredibly smart as well, I was really quite impressed. I told a couple other missionaries that she is going to be a relief society president. Called it. Just watch lol. There were so many more people and so many cool exchanges but I just wanted to talk about those two because they were both just so awesome!! We then finished the activity with some singing. It was great to just sing some church songs in the middle of tons of people milling about. Great way to get people to look at you and your stuff haha Afterwards we got some ice cream and headed back home to Karlsruhe. We then had Soccer the next day and the best Lunch appointment ever! Sister Meyer! She cooks the most wonderful German food and it just makes my mouth water thinking about it.

She is so cool! Wonderful appointment...Soccer was awesome as well. We then had to go back and get our Weekly Planning and then changed for some service at the Inactives house I talked about earlier. I got sent behind the shed to work on some stuff and the daughter kept coming back there so I called Elder Jensen over and he helped me finish everything. We then had a great dinner and shared our spiritual thought and then the Father took us home and so we finished off the night with some planning. Saturday and Sunday went amazingly well because of the Temple trip and then Church. We ended up having a couple guys in the Elders Quorum start arguing over some really unimportant things. It got pretty heated and one of them started saying some pretty insulting things about members and the missionaries. That was awkward. Luckily everyone else in the Elder´s Quorum says they really like us so now we just have to figure out how to work this other guy around. Either way we also had some really great investigator lessons this week and we ended up having some really amazing contacts and investigators in church. We ended up finding another Black, French Speaking man who wants to come to the church. FUFU contacting. Stuff is genuis. I hope everyone has a wonderful week! Love and miss you all!
Tschüss!
Elder Lee

Okay, so the temple trip is in there. Frau Pfeifer, the short Spanish lady is one of the investigators. Schwester Schüster is our awesome Member who helps us teach her. Then there is Sister Meyer and the awesome food she cooked for us. Stuff was absolutely amazing and we got a ton of it. I then ran into an old family I knew in Darmstadt on Thursday. Glyndor is one of the less actives we had worked with. He is so awesome. 

Gotta Love Germans

What a great week it has been! (Just like every other week....hmmmm I get the feeling that there is a correllation between that and being in the service of the Lord...think about it) Well, things are still running faster than I can imagine. This week we have just had a ton of people coming up to us. It has been pretty interesting...not exactly normal for us over here but I have loved it haha we ended up having a way awesome talk with a hippie student yesterday and he was really curious about the gospel. He started in with a couple Jehovah witness questions but we quickly stomped on those beauties with pure truth. Gotta love that stuff. We have been teaching one of our investigators and she´ll always read what we give her and she´s just like..."ya, that´s true...but still that´s so hard for me to do." And you´re just sitting there like, no it isn´t, you just don´t want to do it! haha but you love them anyways...I will second what Steph said last week. The more we pray for our brothers and sisters the more we love them. No matter what we have a certain amount of time in every day and the more we give of our time to others the more we come to understand Christ.

I just find it so cool to read about him and all of the things he done. Read the last couple verses of John in the Bible. I like the way Christ is described there. As I go over my days at night I find it really interesting to think on the things that I have done and could have done better.  Sometimes it can be a little disconcerting when you´re like "shucks, I should have done so much more" Luckily, I know that the power of the Atonement is there. As long as we continuously try to improve we will be able to rise and be with him at that perfect day. What a wonderful time that will be. This week was a lot of fun as well, we ended up having another interesting experience with someone on the street. A guy asked us if we were praying for Germany to win. We were able to lead that into a gospel conversation and ended up talking for 30 min. We had a member stop by and she had "Dank ihm" on her phone.

Ended up making the guy ball...sadly, he was drunk. But there were hugs all around and maybe that seed will grow in him someday...if he remembers :P If not, we got his phone number...;) hahaha we´ve had a bunch of others but I think the two I have described were my favorites. We also had our appointments with President this week. That was a great time!! We ended up having to run to the Main Train Station from the Church. Probably a little more than a mile I´d think...ran in a suit...in the pouring rain...that was fun XD Ended up having a lot of experiences getting caught out in the rain without an umbrella this week...you´d think that I would have been smart enough to start packing one but every time I did, it didn´t rain and when I didn´t, it did...Heavenly Father is probably telling me that I smell or something. Ah well, it makes things way more fun! I hope that everyone has a wonderful week! I sure will! I miss you all and I hope that everything goes well!! Talk to you all later!!
Tschüss!
Elder Lee

So...I don´t think I ever really send pics in this beauty but here are a couple. The First is me and our competition sitting across from our house.
The next is the Legit clouds that were rolling around before a big storm that we had. Loved that one.
Made a soccer ball into the basketball hoop including some curtain...shot it with my foot just so you know bahahahaha XD
Yup, this was my lunch that I made the other day. Reminded me of college so I had to snap a photo.
Oh ya, this moth ended up landing on me...that was a fun experience.
We also did some service this week. Painted half of a house...rocked it.

We´re now being referred to members in the ward for our awesome painting skills...now just give us referrals to teach! XD

What a Great Week!

Well everybody! Another awesome week down, and another one coming up!! This last week started off pretty normally, had a great P-Day, got to relax and not think to much...sometimes that´s just great! We then ended up going to a family in the ward for a birthday celebration...they are crazy. So awesome, I love it..reminds me of home a little bit whenever we had a bunch of family around. The place was...bumpin...yup, still remember proper American slang ;) hahahaha but we had a great time and the cake ended up being really quite tasty so it was defnitely worth it. We then had our second Zone Conference for the month. I got to take an ICE for the first time and so I was in a train that reminded me of Harry Potter. It was sick! Ended up talking with some younger kids who were on the National Baseball team. They were pretty cool so the ICE ride went well. We then had to wait a little while before Zone Conference which meant having a party with all of the other missionaries haha. Our new president is going to be great though, he is a really loving guy and you can see just how much he cares about everyone around him. I ended up meeting him in person for the first time as well! The place may not have been what I had originally thought of but heck, no better place than a bathroom to meet somebody right? I thought so too ;) The ride back was great as well...we ended up missing our bus and so we had to wait 2 and a half hours for another one...ends up that the other elders in our area missed their first one (they left early) so the went to the office to get another ticket and ended up missing their second one because they couldn´t find it...XD! We got to have a double decker bus though and so we were pretty much alone up top so we just talked, ate, and then played some games. Good stuff, either way, we ended up finding two more new investigators this week! It´s really awesome because we have really been working hard to achieve our goals and as we have put away our Pride and worked together to make them the Lord has blessed us and we really have been able to call down the powers of Heaven. One of the new investigators is going to be moving to Italy today so that was brutal. He wants to meet with the missionaries there though so they´ll probably end up with 4 more baptisms. Which is sick!! We then ended up having him bring a friend to church and she was just eating it all up. She has two kids as well so maybe we can end up bringing a family to the church so cross your fingers!! We also are getting the hookups from a lady named Ritta. I have talked about her before. She is the owner of the African shop. Well she wants to learn German...and a bunch of her customers and friends want to as well...so we´re starting a German class in the church. Elder Jensen and I like to joke that we´ll end up starting a African Branch over here maybe that will end up coming true. We also ended up doing some service on the Fourth of July, when Germany played their game, I like to pretend all that cheering we heard was just people celebrating the fourth with us. Couldn´t be any other reason behind all of that cheering ;) Afterwards I got to enjoy some tasty meat and potatoes...that stuff was chalked full of Garlic and Onions though....not the best night I´ve ever had bahahahaha well....I slept just fine...Elder Jensen didn´t because he couldn´t breathe. Ah well, he chose the top bunk, that´s his problem ;) We also had a great round of soccer with some of the young single adults on Friday. It´s fun getting together with everyone and just having a good time. It gets way hot though, I don´t drink enough water and I am beginning to regret it. I hope that I can get over the humidity factor over here because I sweat like crazy! I always have to have a paper towel  on me so that I don´t drip all over the place. Either way, this week has been great! I hope that all of you had a good time!! I also hear that Karen had her baby!! Good job!...I don´t know what else to say cause I haven´t received a pic yet showing me how cute he is ;) haha either way, It´s time for me to take off! I love you all! You´re in my prayers!

Tschüss!

Elder Lee