Great Week in Germany

I have a few minutes before things get crazy (ier) around here and wanted to post this. Otherwise, it may not get posted until. . . who knows when. The reading for school is gonna kill me! How do I keep up with it all?!?

The letters just keep getting better and better. I can sense the joy in Jaren's letters again and it does my heart good!

Dear Familie,

Well Mom, it sounds like school is going well for you, but that it is pretty hectic. Welcome to the life of a college student!! Isn´t it exciting?! In all honesty, I love college, and you feel like you are there for a purpose, and that is what drives you through. I can´t wait till later this year.

Anyway, life is going extremely well. The work here has increased dramatically, and by dramatically, I mean by several times the work we had before. It is a great feeling, a sense of accomplishment, brought simply by obedience and hard work. That is the key. I have realized this for a long time, it is just difficult sometimes to help other missionaries realize that! I love the ward and the people we are teaching.

We have found two new investigators this last week, and we have more potential ones this week that want us to call back and set up appointments. We are now fairly busy. We are working with about 6 different people. First we have Schakina, who invited a friend two lessons ago and now the friend wants to learn more. This all happened because Schakina wanted to have a lesson, but we called to tell her that we couldn´t come because we couldn´t find someone to teach with us. She suggested her neighbor Schenay, and then invited her to the appointment! I haven´t seen so much desire to meet with missionaries before! But as I have said before, it souldn´t take too much effort on our part, we just need to find those who are ready now, and she seems to be ready, and willing to do what ever it takes to get there. We also got in contact with Sa Wan again, and we are teaching him every week or so. He is one that I taught when Elder Melum and I were together. We found out that he is planning on returning to China again in two months, so baptism is out of the question for him. He loves what we teach, and hopefully, someday the work in China will begin. We are also teaching another guy from our area book, who goes by the name of Obi. He comes from Nigeria and is about 30. He is a great guy, and after we taught the first again after about three years, he told us that he felt something. We did ask him straight up if he still had interest in meeting with us and what we taught, to which he said yes! So we are meeting with him about once to twice a week. The appointment fell out with the Family Nmecka, but we have a new appointment set, and they still want to meet with us. It took us forever to try to get in contact with them, but we finally did, and they were still very excited to meet. We also have several others that we have met on the street or in other ways that have shown interest, and they would love to meet with us. So, we just need to simply call them back and get a hold of them.

The last two weeks have just been amazing to me. I can´t even begin to explain how it happened, or what in fact, changed. I could look at numbers, and I still don´t know, other than the missionaries, the ward, and the Lord have all seemed to have collaborated their efforts, and through this, the work has moved forward in leaps and bounds! It is simple, so simple when we simply work. In fact, I told Elder Heller today as we were walking to the internet shop how so many people, namely from the Quorum of the Twelve and the Seventy and from the First Presidency have said that there will be hundreds of stakes and many thousands of baptisms in Europe, but not only in Europe, but specifically in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. How would that happen? On a very small scale, you can see that the Lord will bless us IN OUR EFFORTS, not by simply waiting and standing by. It is “work, work, work” as President Benson said. That is it. It doesn´t come as a surprise to me that we have success. I am deeply grateful for the help we have recieved from the Lord. I can´t soften the hearts of the people, the Lord does that, but it is my responsibility to find those whom he has softened and bring them into the fold. I am still confident that we can do much more, we have much more capacity in this work and there are many, many more who are ready that need to be found, and I pray everyday that we can find them! We have been blessed, but we also need to be humble. If we aren´t humble, then it goes out the window just as fast as it came in. There is no room for pride in this work! There isn´t time for it either. Anyway, that is what has been going on, we have had a great few weeks, and we are excited to keep the effort going!

As far as the questions go, I´d have to look up the name for Sister Neuhäuser. I know that she has been a member for about 30 years now, and that she is in her 60-70´s. And as far as the military goes, the youth have the choice to serve in the military for a year or community service. It is pretty interesting to say the least!
Well, you all have a great week, Work Hard and Play Hard and Pray Hard!

Ihre Sohn und Bruder,
Elder Smith

P.S. Tell Mac and Maria hi for me! They sent an email, but I won´t be able to write them back until next week. Just tell them thanks for thinking of me!