Stadthagen: Transfer 3

Nein Mutti, leide habe ich einen Anzug noch nicht "geboughten." But a few weeks ago we went on a scouting mission to find out which kind of suit I should get and where to buy it. We're making progress :). Not bad Mom, I hadn't thought to draw a Gospel parallel out of our adventure with our bird friend. I'll certainly be expecting a picture of this "awesome play set." Well Andy, I'm glad to hear that your old frisbee-dominating self is returning. The talk to text thing went great up to the second to last sentence Lisa, haha. Yeah, that would be awkward if ol Aaron was already back, seeing as he just got made zone leader in the zone next to mine, which hopefully means I'll get to see him sometime. Wouard, you mean Savannah is already done with kindergarten? Isn't she still like 2 years old? And don't worry, you get a couple months of a break before you have to have another baby, as long as there's a new one by the time I get back :). Sounds like a good commitment Joey. Elder Herbertson of the Seventy, who talked to us during Stake Conference last week, told us how we need to focus more on giving our families bread, rather than stones. But Joey, do you think it's possible to do a sit-up without being able to see or hear? Seems like a pretty legit playground Dad. I'll definitely take the advice in Mosiah 4:27; one step at a time.

So the first half of this week was pretty normal: finding, some service, a couple appointments, the usual. But as soon as Thursday rolled around things got pretty cray cray. From 8:00 to about 6:00 we were in Hannover for Zone Conference, which was pretty great. The last couple weeks I had thought a lot about testimonies: giving testimony more often, giving it powerfully and with the Holy Ghost, etc. And what happens to be one of the big themes of the Zone Conference? Giving testimony. My takeaway from it was pretty much that I need to be ready in EVERY situation to give testimony, and that testimony should be given from the heart, not from the head. Also, a week before the conference we were asked to prepare a 5 minute lesson for the law of chastity; a few hours into the meeting one of the Zone Leaders pulled out a container with the names of each companionship in the 2 participating zones and informed us that the companionship whose name was pulled out would have the opportunity to do a roleplay in front of everyone. Before he even pulled one of the slips of paper out, I knew exactly which Elders would be doing it. "Elder Barboza and Elder Larsen!" Fortunately we were prepared and did a pretty solid job teaching a "family" (consisting of 5 other missionaries). It just so happened that we also had it planned to teach one of our investigators the law of chastity the very next day, and the tips/feedback we got from our roleplay helped us out with that as well. The conference was just full of awesome little "coincidences."

Another exciting event of the week was a street display we did on Saturday, to invite people to the movie Meet the Mormons, which we'll be showing on Friday evening. After 15 minutes of consistent rejection I was afraid that we'd be in for a very long 3 hours, and that the awesome members who had volunteered to help out would end up having a somewhat disappointing experience. But after about half an hour things started to pick up, and our original goal of handing out 120 fliers jumped up to over 300 (our ward mission leader had to leave twice to print out more of them). The members there had a great time and in the end we could all say with confidence that a lot of people would be coming. It was definitely a testimony-boost for all of us, lots of miracles there.

Finally on Saturday evening we got our transfer calls; the reign of Elder Barboza and Larsen continues for a third! Which means that I'll be escorting the Captain to his grave, as he comes to the end of his mission. We've got some exciting weeks ahead of us: we're hoping to see lots of success with Meet the Mormons on Friday, and we've got a couple investigators that are making good progress (Frau Heumann has overcome her difficulties with the Word of Wisdom) :).

Anywho, that's everything for this week, keep being awesome!