December 5, 2011

Holy Dyna! I can't believe that it is already Monday again. This week has gone by so fast it is incredible!

Anyways, back to Monday. We had Family Home Evening with the W's and some less-active members. Which is always nice. Sister W always makes us some really good food which is really nice. I really love the W's, they had to go home on Thursday, but will be back in one month and hopefully I will be here to see them. Luckily the car is staying, so staying warm isn't too big of an issue. And I get to drive, which is good.

On Tuesday, we had our District Meeting and then we had an exchange so I got to work with an Elder from Hungary. Which is the first time I have worked with someone not from America. He was really funny. And it was interesting. It was good though, I learned a lot about how we can be talking to more people and really using our time well. It was strange though because we had to speak German to each other because he doesn't speak English and my Hungarian is a little rusty. But it was good. Oh German... I think the longer I am here and the more grammar I learn, the more it confuses me and the more I realize I don't know anything. Although, that feeling has just been true with every aspect of my mission. At the beginning I felt like I knew everything that it took to be a good missionary, and that it would be easy. Haha! Oh young, full of hair Elder Thompson... so young and naive... Haha! Now, I think that every day I know less and less about what I am doing, but it is good because it makes me work harder and really depend on the Lord. I think that is probably true for every missionary. I have really learned how much I have to depend on Him, and how blessed I have been in my life.

On Wednesday we had a good day as well. I can't really remember what we did but I don't think anything too special happened. We have really been trying hard to find new people to teach. On Friday we sort of figured it out and had some really cool experiences, but until then we were working a lot with T and H, who have both been making a lot of progress lately and are really progressing towards their baptisms. I guess it wasn't Wednesday that we set it, but since I am writing the e-mail, I can tell you now, but they both have baptismal dates. T is on January 8th, which is good. I think he will be able to make that for sure. H is on the 28th of January. Which seems like a long time away, but we wanted to be sure that the W's would be there for his baptism, and since he has been an investigator for so long and has had so many previous baptismal dates it needed to be his goal. We taught him a really good lesson where he told us that someone has to be baptized to get to heaven, and he wants to go to heaven, so we basically just connected the dots for him. He set this for his goal and is working to reach it, which is really awesome. It is exciting!

Anyways, on Thursday, was the sad day where we had to drop the W's off at the Airport with President and Sister Miles, and then we had a meeting with some other missionaries in the Zone (Not Zone Conference) in Munich. It was sad, but they will be back in a month so not too sad. They are sad to leave, but a little happy to be home for the Christmas break with their kids and grandkids, and then be able to come again to the mission. Not too much else happened out of the ordinary.

We have key indicators, or our number that we report every day and we decided that we are going to get one of each (One lesson, one joint teach, one less active, one referral) a day. We talked a little bit about how dooring wasn't going really well and it was hard because we weren't really seeing a lot of success and then we made our plan for the evening. We drove (that is the keyword) drove to the top of a hill because we figured we might as well be using the car while we have it, and the first lady that we spoke to started to cry and talked about how she was really having a lot of problems in her life lately, and thought that the Book of Mormon could help her. Then she told us we reminded her of the Mormon's, and how she had met with them and really liked them, and when we told her that we were the Mormon's she was pleasantly surprised. It was fun. She is also like 65, and then when she talked to us out of nowhere grabbed my hand and started holding it (I had gloves on so I couldn't feel her wrinkly hands, but it was still weird) and then said ''You guys are so sweet'' and then rubbed my face with the back of her hand. Like you do to a baby. Or small kid. (Un)fortunately, I may have forgotten to shave that day (It doesn't really make that big of a difference yet. 1 Day or 2. Meh..) but it was not quite as smooth and she made a weird face... Haha! It was funny. But she is really prepared and just what we needed to get through the day.

Saturday and Sunday we had a lot of other really good people who were really open. We are really trying to help people understand that it doesn't hurt to ask God about the Book of Mormon, and the worst he can say is that it isn't true, but the best is that you have found the Word of God. That probably isn't explained very well, but it seems to make sense to these people which is all the matters.

I love you guys a lot! Thanks for all that you do for me!
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Sincerely,

Elder Connor J. Thompson