Dearest Fam-bam,
Well. This week was pretty good, we have been having a ton of eating appointments because everyone wants to say goodbye to Elder Buck, who will be flying home on Friday. Maybe I explained badly what will be happening, because it kind of sounded like you believed that I was getting a new companion this week?
I got the call this week, which I guess brings me to what happened. Well, I still don't know who my new companion will be. I guess I'll be training next transfer...(You called it, Mom) That could very well mean 6 transfers in this area, as the normal segment of training is 2 whole transfers. So I don't know exactly what will happen, but somehow I will be picking up my new Golden on Thursday, and then will be spending forever on Friday in meetings. Oh yeah, I guess I'll still be District Leader too, which will be the fifth transfer in a row. My district got destroyed though. We were all super great friends, and the only person who will be staying is Elder Thompson. Which is cool though, because we are super great friends, we really wanted to be companions at some point, but he is dying in just a few months, so we don't really think it will happen.
Umm, but I don't think I actually got any letters this week. Well, I did get that thing from the Birthday Bash, but I can't remember if that was this week or last week, whatevs.
The weather wasn't great this week. It snowed Monday until like Wednesday, and I think a little bit on Thursday too, but didn't really stay on the ground. It has warmed up a little bit now, and has been just raining for the last couple of days. I have heard that this winter wasn't ridiculously cold, but it was definitely not an enjoyable winter. I hope that next winter will be better, but I could still deal with it if it only got as cold as it did this year. But it also depends on where you are, I guess Heilbronn has warmer winters usually. Well, I think I will answer some questions now so that I can wrap this email thing up, cause I am already a little tired, and Elder Buck and I are going to go hang out with some members in a few minutes.
1. Philipp (I guess he spells it like this...) did receive the Holy Ghost yesterday, which was great. Right before Sacrament meeting started he asked Elder Buck and me to participate, which was a great opportunity. He is doing great, every week now he comes up to us and talks to us about setting up an appointment, we don't even have to talk to him. It was great seeing the change with the Dreadlocks and everything, to nice short hair, and really clean cut looking.
2. Sven and his gang are doing great. He told me this week that he and his older daughter will be getting baptized on the same day. The when is still the question, but he should be finding out this week when he can go in to the program, and he got a letter last week telling him that everything was good, and that he is definitely in.
3. Unfortunately we didn't see that much success in the way of finding this week. We met with this one new guy, Dominic, who is actually pretty promising, we should be calling him in the next few weeks to try and make out an appointment with him. The lesson with him was way good, we really felt the Spirit leading it. We did however, have a good lesson with Kirstin this week, and we think we finally found her concern, it is about authority. She says that if she was to be baptized then she would acknowledge that her baptism, and by extension, the baptism of her family wouldn't be valid anymore. Definitely a valid concern. We will be studying that this week and trying to alleviate that concern the next time we meet with her.
4. Every time we have a lesson with Kirstin there are members there, but it is really hard to use members a lot. They work a lot, and a lot of them live like 20 or 30 minutes away, and so it is difficult to ask them to come to appointments when you're not sure if the appointment will really happen or not.
This week we had a good meeting with our Ward Mission Leader, and as a result, I have been thinking a lot about what we can do differently here. It has become obvious to me that all the streeting and dooring we have been doing isn't really leading to much success. I have been thinking about how we can work better with the members to see success through them. It would be all about training the members to be missionaries themselves. Our GML was talking all about how he did this in Brazil, and in his ward, the membership doubled, and then they tried it in the whole mission, and the active membership also doubled. I am really excited to be giving that a try this next transfer or two.
Anywho, I guess that's that. Love you guys! Thanks for being the best fam-bam ever!
Love,
Elder Merkley
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