Chapter 26-Lots of good stuff

HELLO from the Wonderschöne Stadt of Werdau Deutschland!

This week was flippin amazing and this email is probably going to be very long I'm sorry (I shall by a TL;DR at the bottom (too lazy; didn't read))

Sooo idk, where to start.

Ok so last p-day was lit and gross. So as y'all know we are taking over Plauen (also btw we got transfer and I am staying in Werdau with Elder Orton), and this transfer we are still in charge of Plauen. Sooo the Plauen Elders when they left, left their appartment filthy... sooo the Zone leaders and Elder Orton and I went down to Plauen to clean their appartment... Needless to say it was gross. There was moldy bread lying around, dishes undone -- and everything has been sitting there for about a month. The fridge was the flippin monster though. We went and bought some "Ocean Adventure" febreeze and just bombed the kitchen with it, because it was sooooo bad. So much mold and so much skdjghsdljghs. It was bad....

BUT then after cleaning their appartment for 3 hours we decided to go down to Hof for some food! (Hof is the only area in the mission that is in Bayern -- so we went there just to say we had been to Bayern haha).

Then we also went and got some icecream -- it was this super dope Italian place and the workers were italian and it was literally the best food i have ever had in my life. I had Postatio, Salted Carmel, and 'Cookie'. It was amazing.

THennn we took some super dope pics in these yellow fields. It's called RapsOL plant -- it's the stuff they use to make canola oil. Pics attached

Ok, now for some super cool stuff.

So recently a lot of our appointments have been falling out, but this week was NOT SO!! We had lots of appointments. Tuesday we had some good member appointments and had some decent street contacting (we are still trying to set up appointments with them though). Wednesday was a wild ride due to a spur of the moment appointment that we set up and so we had to travel to Gera, then to Crimmetschau, then back to Gera, then back to Werdau.. Each travel is about an hour... but we had 3 amazing appointments with Kerstin, Bhavin and Viraj, and with our newer friend Adam.

-- We talked about our missionary purpose with Kerstin, to help her keep commitments better

-- Bhavin and Viraj are still making great progress and we started on the commandments, and Bhavin likes reading in the Book of Mormon. Viraj also said his first prayer. He started off well, then had a long 30 second pause b/c he didn't know what to say.. then said the german s-word haha -- but then his dad (bhavin) start to chip in, but then Viraj continued and it was a really great prayer. Then Bhavin was like 'I wanna pray as well' and said that he was so thankful for the message that we have and that he really liked it, and that he was thankful for "his 2 best friends" aka us!!! It was so sweet and he really felt the spirit.

-- Adam is dope. He read through Moroni chapter 10, like we told him, and prayed about it and said he felt really really good when he read it. We talked about the holy ghost and how it testifies of truth. We then talked about the Joseph Smith story and asked him to pray about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and of Joseph Smith. He is really prepared and ready for the gospel. He is just so nice and happy too -- like when we got to the park to meet with him he was just casually sitting on a bench chatting with an older gentlemann.

I'm sorry this is so long....

Nooww, on Friday we came back fromm Austausch, had district meeting in the morning and then we had a cool appointment in Meerane with a less active member family. They have a cute dog too. BUt it took a while to travel and walk there (like 40 minute walk after a 40 min train..) so when we got back it waas getting kinda late already, but we decided to go do a little finding. Also on Tuesday when we were doing some street contacting a lady told us to come back some evening and meet her and her husband. She didn't speak very good german but said Czech was her motherlanguage. So when we went on Friday to do some street contacting we thought we should go visit her and so we brought a Czech Book of Mormon. But as I was picking out the Book of Mormon off the shelf, I felt really strongly that I should also bring a Slovkian Book of Mormon -- I didn't really know why, but I felt like I should and so I put it in my bag. Well, turns out that the lady wasn't home and it was getting dark so we started going back to our appartment with no success. As we got to our street, Elder Orton turned to me and said "I think we need to go back to Innenstadt"... It was like 20:00 and I was hungry and tired and didn't really want to go back. But I trusted him, that he was following impressions from the Holy Ghost and so we walked the 20 minutes back to Innenstadt(the "intercity" -- its quite small in werdau). As we were walking I had a lot of small thoughts and impressions to talk to certain people on the street and knock on certain houses. We were having basically no success door after door and person after person, but we kept following the spirit having faith that we were going back out for a reason. Then we are walking right outside one of Doner ladens in town, and generally there are some middle eastern people hanging out outside the doner ladens. To be honest, I generally don't stop them and start a conversation becasue their german is not normally great, and they are generally muslim and not interested. But Elder Orton, following the spirit, stops and talks to one of them. After about 10 seconds he asks us if we can speak English. We say ya. His name is Patrick, and turns out that he lived in England for around 5 years, but moved there from..... Slovakia.

Ya. Now please tell me how this would be possible without divine direction. Patrick has been living here for a few months and told us that he recently became a christian and has been searching for a church. I kinda told him this Story and pulled out the Book of Mormon that I had in Slovakian, and I told him that there are no cooincidences and that God and Jesus Christ have sent us to him. When he saw it and heard this story he said "God lives!"

I know that God lives! I know that he uses his Holy Spirit to guide us where we need to go. I know that when we listen, God speaks to us annd guides us to the people searching for him. I also learned the importance of following even the small thoughts and impressions. If we didn't follow the little promptings, we would have had no idea where to go and would have never ran into Patrick. The timing was divinely planned, and God knew from the beginning that we were going to need that Slovakian book of mormon. (Also btw, never met someone from Slovakia on my mission, so it's not like I just thought it would be useful).

We gave him the Book of Mormon, invited to him on church on Sunday and he said that he wants to meet with us and learn more about Jesus Christ and what we believe.

Saturday, we did some more street contacting, had some good member lessons. Sadly, Alexander (the new friend in Plauen) had to go out of town this weekend and had to cancel our appointment, but he said he has read in the Book of Mormon and has really loved it.

Then on Sunday, we had Patrick and Adam at church! They are both so awesome and fit it really well to the ward. Patrick doesn't speak a lot of german, but the english speakers talked to him a little and I translated sacrament meeting into english for him. It was fast and testimony meeting and the members saw that we had new friends at church, and so the meeting was very powerful and people bore strong testimony about the Savior and the atonement and the restored church of Jesus Christ. I know that Adam and Patrick felt the spirit. Adam bonded super well with our good Spanish member friend Danny (he gives us rides and joint teaches for us a bunch) and they swapped numbers and looks like they will be good friends. Bhavin and Viraj were planning on coming, but Viraj has exams this week so they didn't come, but next week we hope!

Oh yes, one more thing. So about a month ago I talked about a Herr Landthaler. He also is back in Werdau this week and came to church with his Hungarian caretaker named Ialona. We are meeting with them this week before he goes back to Hungary again... Another miracle

Yes. I guess you could say it was a pretty good week. I love you all. I know this is the Church of Jesus Christ, and I know he leads it. I know that we can communicate with him through prayer and I know that he guides us to those that need the gospel. Just have faith.

- Elder Johnson

TL;DR

P-day clean out gross apartment & took cool pics, Bomb lessons, Miracle with street contacting Slovakian Book of Mormon, Adam & Patrick came to church, Herr Landthaler also @ church, CHURCH IS TRUE

(Also tons of pics from this week and last week since I didn't send pics last week -- so I'll probably send 2 emails of pics)

Moldy Bread -- more where that came from

Dank chinese food in Hof

Best icecream in my life

Teaching the Nutrias haha

Pigeons are my spirit animal so i needed a pic with one

Flower Pics (canola oil plants)