Moin Moin! (My new favorite greeting -- its kinda a regional thing).
SOooooOooo Berlin. Wow. Like I'm still trying to get used to the speed of things. I have been super exhausted the past 2 weeks but it has been so much fun and we have seen so many miracles.
K so here is a rundown of all the people that we are working with now and some miracles with them. So when we first got here there was basically 0 work. We are still working with a few part member families, but I'm still not sure exactly how much progress is going on there. But here is what we have been able to work up in the past 2 weeks.
So about 2 weeks ago we were finding on Sunday -- which is a joy in and of itself because inn my previous areas Sunday's involved a lot of dooring because the streets are dead; but Berlin is always poppin -- but ya we were finding and we ran into this super cool girl named Frouke. We started the conversation with the question "What do you think the purpose of life is?" it led to a really good conversation that last like 20 minutes because she just kept asking more and more questions about what happens after we die and about what we have to do in this life to return with God and things like that. She said she didn't grow up religious at all but that she was really interested. We ended up meeting with her on Tuesday and talked about Joseph Smith and how we can receive personal answers from God. The spirit was really strong and I'm super excited to keep meeting with her. She was planning to come to church this week, but she had something come up last minute, but we are meeting her again later this week.
Also later that Sunday, I thought that we should do a little more dooring -- since Elder Rich was new and hadn't done it. Not gonna lie -- I have a pretty bad impression/attitude of dooring (that is slightly justified...) but ya I think it is kinda a waste of time -- but I didn't want to spoil it for Elder Rich and make him have a bad attitude. So we started dooring and literally the 3 klingle (door bell) answered "yes" when we asked if her was interested. He went up and talked for about 10 minutes and gave him a Book of Mormon and a pamphlet -- something that has happened like 2 in my entire mission. So that was a really cool miracle and I really think it has to do with faith and that Elder Rich hasn't been deterred by bad experiences and attitudes. So that was really cool.
P-day last week was a blast (some more pics below) --
So Tuesday was also a really cool experience. So normally as missionaries our morning schedule is pretty lax and we have quite a bit of extra time in the morning. We get up at 6:30 go running/exercise , eat breakfast, get ready and that is usually all done by ~8:00. So then we have from 8-10 to study and chill. But on Tuesday we were done even early and after studying for a bit Elder Rich was like "Let's go out right now" and it was like 9:15 and I kinda didn't want to I just wanted to chill and study a bit more. But I was like ya lets do it. So we went out and started finding -- and I'm so glad we did. Oh also another thing. Everyday before we leave the apartment we have a table full of copies of the Book of Mormon in different languages, and before we leave each day we pray about which language we should take. On this particular day we felt like we should take a Persian in addition to the Arabic, English, German and Turkish that we usually carry. So we left at 9:15 and about 10 minutes later we ran into this very cool Chinese woman and her little daughter. They were sitting on a bench near a park and we just started talking with her and she had actually just moved into the area and was really interested in learning more about Christianity because she knew very very little. We had an English Book of Mormon and so we gave it to her (and her little daughter was really grabby and wouldn't let it go haha). Then about 10 minutes after that we ran into this cool guy from Iran that was also super interested and really excited that we had a book in Persian with us. He said he would love to meet sometime, but that he was pretty busy. He said he would come to church on Sunday (but then canceled Saturday night) but he still wants to come. So we are hopeful for that too.
K so then, later on Tuesday was when we met with Frouke and it was super good. But we realized that on the street we gave our last English Book of Mormon to our Chinese friend and there wasn't a single one in the apartment or in the church.... so we were just hoping someway to get one. We arrived to the appointment and still didn't have one, but then we realized that Mission Leadership Conference was going on at the church at the same time as our appointment and so we asked if anyone had one and Elder Spangler (he's from my MTC group) happened to have one in is bag. So that was a #miracle.
K then after our super good appointment with Frouke we went to this Children Music Workshop -- a less active member owns it and she asked us to come and read some bible stories to the children and sing some children hymns with them. But when we got there, there were no children. She told us that they would be right back, so we waited with this member her colleague and then these 2 teenage guys that were just playing piano and saxophone and jammin out and stuff. So while we waited for the kids to come back we talked a bit with them and then sang some christian rock songs. They just like handed us a violin and a guitar and told us to play along -- but I play neither of those instruments and neither does Elder Rich so we just awkwardly "played" along. This went on for like 45 minutes and we kept asking when the kids are going to be back and she said soon. Literally like another 30 minutes go by and there is still no one.... and so we were just like sorry we gotta go... and they were pretty salty at us, but like ya. It was an interesting experience.
On Friday we met with Qian (the Chinese mom) and it was a really cool lesson. She knows basically nothing about Christianity, which is a really cool place to start because they don't have any sort of corrupted ideas or false impression -- just a clean slate to build off of and its so cool to watch people's faith grow. I think we were a little overwhelming in the first lesson with her, but she really wants to learn more and it's awesome. Our joint teach shared a cool analogy about the atonement of Jesus Christ in a way that was easier for her to understand with no background. He said that when he was a little boy we played a lot of soccer, and so he would go out and play and get his clothes all dirty and stained. As a kid he wasn't capable of cleaning them and doing laundry himself and so he would bring his dirty stained clothes to his mother. His mother would then take them and wash them and clean them and give them back clean and fresh. The atonement works in a similar way, we are incapable of cleaning ourselves. All we have to do is bring our dirty sinful life and bring it to Jesus Christ and through his power and his grace he can clean us and make us new. I thought it was a really cool way to explain it to someone who was not familiar with it at all.
This is getting really long, but I'll just say that there are also a few other people that we are working with that also have lots of potential and they are all really cool. I love being in Berlin and being able to experience the big city life. It's somehow simultaneously draining and invigorating.
Here are some pics.
Oh ya so our first week we also got caught in a massive storm and just got soaked.... it was actually so much fun.
Some more random Berlin pics -- some food and Elder Rich's 2nd Doener (the mission president gave them their first --- im not salty). But ya. Love y'all
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