Hallo Zusammen! This week I have been with new companion Elder Palmer and he is awesome and a really hard worker. We have been doing a lot of really good work the past few days. In the mission there has been a renewed focus on less active members of the church and reaching out to them and helping them, so we have been doing a lot of member contacting the past few days. Which meant we got to break out our bikes and bike through the middle of really cool old german neighborhoods out in the foothills which has been awesome. It has been reaally fun.
We have had a lot of success that past few days and I want to tell a cool story. So Wendesday was transfer day, so I went up to Leipzig and Elder Palmer came down from Kiel to Leipzig and then we said bye to old companions and switched. We got back into Jena around 4ish and instead of unpacking and doing some studies which would have been a good use of time -- we did something better. We went to the church real quick and got synced up and then the Branch presidency was there and they offered to buy us some food and then chat and get to know Elder Palmer. While this might have been a good use of time to get to know the presidency better, we decided that we really should go do something else. We were tired of being cooped up with travels, so we went out to go visit some less active members and talk with people in the street along the way. Along the way we talked to this Chinese student, named Dawn (haha my titles are so clever) that was doing her masters at the university here. We struck up a conversation and asked her what was most important in her life -- without any hesitation she said "Liebe" aka "Love" . We were kinda startled because she said it so quickly and I think she even supprised herself a little. We got talking about love and families and she told us that a year ago she would have not been interested and would have just keep on walking, but she said that in the past year she has changed and that she wants something to beleive in and something to find purpose in. We gave her a German Book of Mormon and said we would get her a chinese one too, she was really excited and said she would come to church on Sunday and then meet with us to talk about it more. On Sunday, she came to church and really enjoyed it. We had our recent convert Liu come as a joint teach and he bore really powerful testimony about his experience in China and then coming here and also wanting to believe in something and it was just exactly what she needed. She is really excited to read the Book of Mormon and learn more!
The lesson I learned from this whole experience was that we have to be guided by the spirit. We could have easily just stayed with the branch presidency and had a nice chat and dinner, but we felt that we could be doing better things. The spirit can help us learn to distinguish between good, better, and best.
People are finally cominng back for the start of the semester, so I'll some more to talk about after this week! Love you all!
Some pics --- Biking!! Food! Train selfies, and best of all just look at that Cutie (I'm talking about the banana, my companion lolol)
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