Dearest Fam-bam,
Wow, thanks for not telling me what actually went down in this 'Missionary Work changing broadcast.' If you had thought about it, you would have realized that this broadcast happened at about midnight my time (props to Dad, he did mention that), so there was no way that I was able to see that. After a lot of looking around in lds.org, and trying to put the pieces together from your various emails, I was able to piece together that at some point we, as missionaries will be starting to use internet to do our missionary work. The APs in our mission did tell us to not start using these things until they get more information about it, so as for instant changes to my life, I would say that this will have none. I am frustrated though, because I feel like all these awesome changes to missionary work are coming, but that they will probably really hit my mission after I'm gone... I guess we're all playing for the same team though, and it will be cool to tell my kids that all these big changes happened while I was on a mission. Anywho, it does sound great that it's the GML's responsibility to fill in our time with productive things to do. Right now that is one of the biggest struggles that Elder Barker and I have, is just having good productive things to do.
Passau is a really pretty city and it totally has that old European feel that I had been missing in Heilbronn. The old city is super pretty with a ton of small alleyways, a lot of cobblestone (heads up, Mom), and a lot of cool restaurants where you could sit outside and do some people watching, which is always a ton of fun, especially in Europe. The countryside is also really nice, we drove around yesterday with a member, in order to take the sacrament to a few members and what I saw of the countryside was very green and beautiful. As for the weather though...this week was H-O-T, oh, and humid. Really, I heard that it was around 100 F at one point, and it was pretty miserable. The instant you stepped outside you were just hot. And to be honest, being inside wasn't much better either (Someday the Germans will get over the high energy costs and just install some AC in their houses). I hear their are nice things to see in the area, but we only have bus tickets for the city of Passau, and if we want to leave the city we have to pay, so we have been staying mostly in Passau. Especially since we don't even know the city that well either.
There were like 24 people in church yesterday! We had a lot more for various reasons. 1. The Sisters brought an investigator and a less active to church. 2. A random lady showed up, who I guess has just come a couple of times (the sisters have set up an appointment with her, so hopefully we'll see some success through that) and 3. The Sagmeister parents were there, which altogether put us over the normal amount.
This week we have done a good amount of service, and a ton of finding. That is about all that we have done this week. We still don't have any investigators, and still haven't taught a lesson together, but we found 10 potential investigators and have around 4 or 5 appointments set up for this next week, so we are hoping that after this week we may actually have a teaching pool, haha.
So I thought a little bit about what you can have those future missionaries do in order to prepare for their missions, and I had an idea. Maybe you could have them organize some sort of activity to which members can invite their friends, and to which they can invite their friends. I wish that I had some sort of experience with organizing those kind of things, so that on your mission you can bring some experiences with you, and maybe try to apply it in your own mission. I don't know, it was just a thought. I just thought it would be great if they could also experience the other kind of missionary work, working with members, planning events, those kind of things. For me I don't think it would have helped me a ton to go do finding before my mission because I learned how to do that pretty fast here in the field, but if I had had some expereince doing member work somehow, that would have been awesome.
Also, I did get a couple of letters this week. I got one from Sister Whitworth, one from Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Darrel, one from Brod and Kelsey, and one from the whole fam-bam, well, that is relative, because there were letters from three people, and one of them was just a template letter...
Yeah, it has been a good week, and I have learned a lot of things.
I don't know what else to write... I'm kind of bored with writing things right now, but I love you!
Love,
Elder Merkley
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