Lauenburg

The first week in Lauenburg has come and gone… And thank goodness!
I’m not a big fan of adjusting, so it’s been good to get a little
settled in. Having a car is weird, our city is too small for us to
work in so “dorf hopping” we go! We drive around to all the little
villages and knock knock knock.

Also the goodbyes on transfer day to my boys Burns, Perkins, and
Pilling, were not very fun… We’ve been pretty close for the last 3
transfers (our area has only been 15 minutes from each other). On the
good side I heard our Russian investigator was at church yesterday! Oh
I was so happy.

This ward has a lot going for it at the moment, the members are really
willing to help us out. We were actually surprisingly busy this week,
going from appointment to appointment. That has probably been the
biggest adjustment along with the fact I’m in West Germany again.

We made some good contact with some less actives, one of which
wants us over for lunch next week, and has an idea of a friend she
wants to invite over. That appointment started out interesting! She’s
about 90 and can’t hear very well, so at the door when we tried to
tell her who we were but she couldn’t understand us from the second story
window, then she says something like “well I can’t hear a single word
you’re saying…” and then threw the keys to her house down to us. As
we finally got upstairs we got the “OHHH the Elders.” A very sweet old
women. She took care of her husband for years who had dementia, for
quite a while he had no idea who she was, which was definitely a trial
for her. Turns out she’s not completely less active, she just has to get
her nonmember son to drive her the 30 minutes, which isn’t easy. But
she has a wonderful testimony, and is excited to have us over next
week!

We were doing some doors, and a guy told us “you could try my
neighbor, he’s a Jehovah’s Witness” well super, so we took some
guesses of which house was his, and found him pretty quickly… I’ll
be completely honest, I have no idea what this old man’s motives
were… to scare us, agree with us, thank us, or kill us. Who knows? But
for 20 minutes he ranted about everything from WWII to Health care. In the
end he shook our hands and wished us the best of luck. Yep.

On Wednesday we went to Hamburg to watch the broadcast of the
Missionary conference which was great! The last time I was in Hamburg
was about a year ago, so it’s interesting to see it again.
Anyway, I loved what Elder Bednar said, he talked about “conversion is
always a miracle” and it really is, not just because it’s not a common
thing, but because someone is directing their lives in the direction
of Christ, and making those “changes in the natural man” that are
necessary for salvation and exaltation. Which is where pure happiness
is found.

With love,
Elder Winkel

Took the new district out bowling!