Very good week, it went by very fast and surprisingly enough I have been everywhere in our area… pretty much, the 3 major cities, and a handful of villages in the area. Its small but it’s good that I could get to know the area quick.

How we managed to accomplish this feat of traveling all over, was we went by every less active on the ward list. We simply went by and left a little note with our info, letting them know if they need our help we are here! And then this week we are going to drive around with a member and try and actually meet with them. Hopefully we can make some good contact.

We went to a little city to do some contacting and we came across a black dog, an actual nice one too! He followed us all around, as happy as could be! It reminded me of my friend Mark down in Chile that has a dog follow them, the missionaries there had called it “dog black” due to lack of speaking English, so… we called him “dog black”! The whole time walking around “Kommt folget mir dog black!”. I’m sure we’ll see him next time we go back.

On Saturday we traveled to Magdeburg to have a very special tour arranged by the senior couple in our district of the giant church there. One of the only building not destroyed because of bombing raids (Magdeburg had military factories). It was a really cool experience because it was given by the Dome chairman, who is actually from New York. It was an amazing building made by people with great faith, many working on it knew they wouldn’t live to see it finished.

I couldn’t help but think of our temples, especially some of the first ones in the latter-days. So much went into them, the early members literally gave all they had to complete them, so that they could receive those blessings. I don’t understand everything about temples, but I do know that they really are a place of refuge, and place of peace. And I really miss it. But as a mission we have a new focus on the temple, unfortunately both temples will be closed in Germany from September till spring of next year, but I’m really excited for the new plan we have to get recent converts to the temple to do baptisms for the dead.

Our mission now has “temple square missionaries” in Freiberg, where tours will be given by the missionaries there to those that are interested in it. Also as missionaries we are now allowed to travel to the temple once a month (paying our own way) if we bring a less active, investigator or recent convert to take these tours, and help them to understand more about it. Because our Goal is not baptism, but it is for our brothers and sister to have the blessing of the temple. This week look, remember, and find the blessing of the temple.

Elder Winkel

Wednesday night off to Kothen for the night, for Berlin in the morning! Mission tour! Ja wohl!

Elder Vellinga was a friend of mine in the MTC! He’s now my district leader! Elder and Sister Hilton got us hooked up to have a special tour of the Magdeburg Dome Tower, not very many people get to see it amazing!

My time here in Zwickau could be coming to a close. Saturday is transfer calls, so we’ll see what happens. But I’ve thought a lot about what I have learned during my time here in Zwickau. First I thought about what I learned when my journey began… Minden. I learned a lot there, but one thing that stuck out to me was that I found myself, I saw myself in a new perspective, I saw what I wanted to become, and that’s when I started to go for it!

Zwickau, I learned to love the German people, because boy I had to learn to love them because there was no chance they were going to love me! My first transfer we taught 6 lessons in 6 weeks, and a couple of those lessons we taught, the investigator may or may not have been intoxicated 😉  We were confused… we both had experience, a great companionship, but we kept asking ourselves why can’t WE do this? The WE was the problem, of course we couldn’t do it! But the Lord could do it! And we needed two things to receive that help.

1. Humility, this was a time where I think the Lord really wanted us to learn something, not so much as a punishment, but as a learning period. Because we really were trying to do the Lord’s work.

2. Love, I can in honestly say, we didn’t really love the people. “Love your enemies” yeah… We didn’t really do that. It was more at the point of “the feeling is mutual” haha, so we changed that.

The second transfer we taught 26 lessons, because Elder Brimhall and I worked on these things.

Elder James E. Talmage talks about the great commandment to love our Father, and to love our fellow man. He commented that these two commandents “are so closely related as to be virtually one: … ‘Thou shalt love.’ He who abideth one of the two will abide both; for without love for our fellows, it is impossible to please God.”

We are all learning! I’m grateful for the time to be learning here in Germany in the service of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who can you love this week?  Have a good one.

Elder Winkel

This week was a bit of a ride… it was an interesting one. Tuesday we decided to go somewhere new, so we took a bus an hour out to a place called Hartenstein! It had the closest thing to a mountain that I’ve seen since Provo. We had a less active that lived there but when we went by, the lady’s mom told us to get lost, so then we had some more time to do some finding. We hiked up the “hills” a little bit and ran into an old castle, bombed out, but it was really cool, the gates were locked but we peeked over the wall and took some pics.

Then we went to do some doors… never my favorite but the Lord knows that and after the 3rd one, a lady in her garden asked if we wanted something to drink! We ended up sharing the 2 minute restoration video with her, and it turns out she’s already read the Book of Mormon. However she said all she needs is the Bible but we could always come and talk more another time (so we will). Then I realized what time it was… we had 10 minutes to make it back to the city center before our bus left (the only one for the day) so we full on sprinted, even ran through some newly paved black top, with the unhappy looks from construction workers we made it just before it left!

Thursday we went by some less actives and one of the members that we always go by is never home, but her neighbor was walking into the building so we asked her if she knew her, and BOY she gave it to us! (Understanding German has its downsides.) She started to get in my face about it and about started poking my chest. I decided I could be a little sassy about it or just be nice. Well I chose to be nice, but then I had to hold back from laughing because of how rude she was being so I ended up smiling at her. Then my understanding of German went away for a moment I guess – because the next thing I knew we had talked for 10 minutes about her grandkids, faith, GDR, WWII, and how terrible guns are (everyday topic.)  In the end she wished us to hold strong to our beliefs and good health! A little bit of a Christlike attitude can go a long way!

For the 4th we met with our eternal investigator in the morning, the date he chose to quit smoking, also turns out to be the date that he married his ex-wife… so now he wants to change it. He also asked us for a Book of Mormon that he can give to his daughter. He has a testimony of it. It’s kind of weird, we asked him how long he’s really been meeting with the missionaries and he first had contact in 1996. It can be quite hard to know what to teach because he knows it all. He’s a great guy and came to church the next day.

Afterwards we went to the city, we couldn’t find anyone to talk to, and we thought it was because it was 100 degrees, but it turns out there was just a giant Red Bull event for old mopeds in the city square! It was super rad. That night we roasted S’mores and made Hamburgers, with English muffin buns… haha but it was great.

Sunday we only had 2 hours of church because it was too hot, with no a/c.

I am grateful that I come from the Promise Land. America will always be the best, as a district we sent quotes from famous presidents the entire day, one elder even texted us the ENTIRE declaration of independence. The night ended with a district call singing the national anthem.

God Bless the USA!

Elder Winkel