Elder Jaren Smith
Deutschland Frankfurt Mission
Corneliusstrasse 18
D-60325 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
Elder Jaren Smith
Rhonstr. 8
63450 Hanau
Germany
I wouldn't have even noticed, had the lady doing the ward newsletter not called to ask if she needs to put Germany on there anywhere. That's just how I received it, so I just put down what I had, not even thinking of it. Who knows where they may have ended up without putting Germany on there!
Here is what Jaren has to say about his week: "The work is still going, and Elder Norton and I have met a lot of people this last week. We don't have anyone that is progressing rapidly, that we are meeting with about 6 or 7 people each week regularly now. We have a lot of women that we are meeting with. We are still trying to get a hold of Tatjana and another middle aged woman, Savanna, and a young Russian mother. The only problem we are having is trying to have an investigator come with us and trying to meet at other locations. Many of the active ward members are very busy and have a lot going on, so it is hard to set up appointments with two people! oh, well. We also have three men that we are teaching right now as well. The first is Aladdin, he is from Turkey and is probably in his late forties, early fifties or so. He loves books on Christ and has started reading the Book of Mormon and loves it. We are trying to get him to let us meet with his whole family, which is probably about 6 or 7 people. He is still a little adament about that. We are also meeting with another Turkish man, he is only 22 years old, but also loves Christ. He was given a Book of Mormon by other Elders earlier this year and has great potential. Then finally we have Herr Czop from Poland. He is in his seventies and very, very Catholic. He is fun to teach, but always tells us that he is not going to change his religion. We told him we wouldn't either and that he has freedom of choice. We are trying to teach him a lot about prayer though through the Book of Mormon and the Bible. As you probably know, Catholics have many memorized prayers and they pray to the Virgin Mary. We've tried to explain to him that we love and respect Mary for her faith and determination, but we do not pray to her. We are working with him and he agrees with some things in the Book of Mormon."
He goes on to say, "We just had Zone Conference last Wednesday. It was great and i just love President Ninow. Dad, he reminds me a lot of you! We were talking about culture and setting a culture for the mission and he said that a culture is the net sum of attitudes and behaviors. That is very business-like to me! Net sum, wow. Anyway, it was a lot of fun! We have one Zone Conference every cycle and each cycle (transfer, I guess) is six weeks, so our next Zone Conference is some time in November, closer to the end of the next cycle."
"I really haven't seen President Ninow since I first met him and also at ZC. He is very busy and is trying to turn the entire mission around. The mission goal is to become Master Teachers and that was the focus of the ZC last Wednesday. Preach My Gospel has five lessons in it with small bullet points at the end of each chapter summarizing the lesson. President Ninow challenged all of us to memorize those 42 points in the first lesson and have them down in five minutes."
I asked Jaren about one of the AP's (Assistants to the President), who happened to be in our last stake. Here is what he said, "I don't see our AP's very often, either, but you probably remember the Quist boy. He is an Assistant and he is from the 10th ward. He is serving together with Elder Carrol and they are great! They work very well together. Elder Quist also remembered me or at least my face when I first arrived and asked which ward I was in in Hollady, and I told him we just moved, but who we lived across the street from there."
Jaren also says, "by the way, it is about 50 to 60 baptisms for the whole mission, not per companionship. It is about one per companionship per cycle. I've also seen two baptisms already, both were last Saturday in Offenbach. They were the first in that building! They had the open house on Tuesday of that week! Cool huh?!"
My sister sent me an email last week that said she met someone in Provo that grew up in the same town that Jaren is serving in and her family is in his ward!
What a small world!!
That's about all I have for now. I don't have time to write any family news. Not that there is much family news to write. No dumb and dumber news, so pretty boring around here!
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