Sunday, November 25, 2012

Heilbronn: Thanksgiving

Dearest Family,

This week was pretty great, the weather wasn't too cold (for most of the week), and we found a lot of people who gave us their information, and wanted to hear more about what we have to say.

But first, something really cool that we just found out last night. Well before that I should give a little backround. So we all know how missionary applications have been jumping up a ton since the announcement of the age change in General Conference. Well Presiden Miles Had been at a Mission President Seminar, and there they told him that they estimated that we would be getting approximately 40 new missionaries in the mission. Well, so I mean that right now we have about 160 missionaries, that number would essentially go up to 200. Last night the Zone Leaders called me, and they told me that we just found out that we would actually be getting 90 new missionariey. 90. If I could capitialize numbers I would be doing that right now. I guess I'll just have to write it out. NINETY!!! So they were calling to ask about the apartment in Heilbronn, if it is big enough to fit other missionaries (which it totally is. I only get big apartments for some reason). So sometime in the next six months or so, our mission is going to get a ton of new missionaries, and they will probably be doubling up companionships in apartments, which right now almost never happens. I think there may be two apartments right now in the whole mission where there is more than one companionship.

Anyway, that was just something that really pumped me up. I guess I'll just answer some questions now:

1. Yeah, so if all of our appointments had gone through, we should have had about 7 or 8 lessons. As it was, most of the appointments with our new people, so the ones that are right now not investigators, fell out, but so we ended up with still a good amount. We had a couple of days where we should have just been able to go go from appointment to appointment, but some of those appointments fell out, and so those days turned out to be a little harder than I had expected. But we still found a ton of potential this week, although we haven't made out a ton of appointments for next week, though I still think we'll be able to see some success.

2. We don't have a ton of member's at our lessons, but that is mostly because our investigators are all like under 30 or something. I don't know why we are only finding young people right now... But we only have a few young people in the ward and so we have been trying to use them, but yeah, I actually don't have a lot of time right now, so I have to rush this. I have to leave in like 15 minutes for my Zone p day.

3. Our appointment with Barney and Nikol fell out, and we haven't really seen them recently, but we will be calling them this week to try and make something out with them. Ayoub is going pretty well. We had another appointment with him yesterday, and the only difficult thing is that he is Muslim, and so he doesn't want to pray with us, because we, of course, pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who he believes was only a prophet. Besides that he is very receptive, and our lesson with him yesterday was really good. Bashir is pretty good too, but his English isn't perfect and his German is non-existent, so it is sometimes difficult to always get him to understand. We have this other investigator, Kirstin, and she is doing great too. She really wants to know if the church is true, she is just worried because she hasn't gotten an answer to her prayer.

4. The members here are great (btw, we will both be staying in this area for next transfer, and that means for Christmas). They are pretty supportive, we usually have at least one eating appointment a week. We have been finding more oppurtunities to serve the members here, we will be helping with the cleaning of the building, and we have spent a few hours with an old couple helping them do yard work, so they really like us.

5. Yeah, I think there are a lot of non Germans everywhere in Germany. In Offenburg there were a ton of Russians, Macedonians, and Turks, here there are a ton of Turks, not as many Russians, but yeah still a ton of different people who are not from Germany. I think there are a ton of Turks all over in Germany actually. 

Hey, did I ever tell the story about how we went to a Jehovah Witness meeting? I can't remember if I wrote about that or not... Anyway, yeah, the week was good, I also got a letter this week from my friend Alicia Myers, and I got that letter from the fam bam. Although only half the family was actually represented in this envelope, haha.

Ok, I love you all!!

Love,
Elder Merkley



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