Chronicles of Nuremberg Episode I

Hey fam!

THIS IS A NOVEL-TIER E-MAIL.

This week has been good, and it has been unique. I am exhausted because of it. You will understand what I mean in a moment.

Section I: The Phantom Mohammed/s

We went on a split with the other Nuremberg Elders twice in the last week. One could think it is pointless because we live in the same apartment, and basically know how things are going, but because it is a district leader companionship we try to split with them at least once a transfer, and we have split twice a transfer for the last three or so months. And it is good to work with them still because we enjoy seeing the root for their success. They’re doing great work and accomplishing much. 

Anyways, so there I was: I’m on the second split with Elder Bradshaw, and we have an appointment scheduled Monday evening with a certain Mohammed. I’m pretty excited because he seemed somewhat eager to learn more when we made the appointment out on the street two days prior. Thirty or so minutes preceding the appointment, I get a text asking him if he can bring a friend. I think „heck yeah, of course. This man is already a referral machine. Any person who serves out on a mission might have a feeling as to where exactly this is heading. We show up, and there stands Mohammed, with a sixty year old man next to him, right outside the church.

"Hello! I’m Elder Wallentine and here’s my companion, Elder Bradshaw. What’s your name?"

"Mohammed".

Okay, so we bring the two Mohammeds inside, we sit ourselves down, and begin the initial tidily-planned 5-minute friendly exchange before every appointment. The older Mohammed asks, "So how long are you staying here in Germany?"

I explain I will be here for five more months and Elder Bradshaw eighteen.

"Ah, that will be plenty of time for you to convert. You come Christians, you leave Muslims."

We both chuckle lightly, probably more-so taken aback at the boldness.

"You laugh, but it’s true. We will convince you in less than thirty minutes."

Panic mode sets in as we realize they’re not here to listen to the message of the Restoration.

We explain why we are here, and our goal, that it is not to convince anyone but invite them to know for themselves. We also say that he would not be able to convince us of anything, and that God would be the source of any person‘s knowledge about divine things. He disagreed and insisted that they would convince us.

We seek to teach as planned, but basically, at one point he forces our hand and begins to present his evidence. Luckily, for time‘s sake, it didn’t actually take thirty minutes of pure talking, but rather only about ten, and it was all pretty obscure. 

In the end, we skipped to the point, and told them there was a prophet of God on the earth today. We told them that we would love to continue talking if they had any iota of interest or desire to find out if what we said was true, and they said no. We also had a long discussion prior to this about the Book of Mormon and its role, answering questions concerning who Mormon was, and why he had a book, if he was a prophet greater than Moses (???), if Mormon knew Mohammed, and so forth. But, as I said, they had no interest, and so we thanked each other for the time taken, and the beliefs shared, and went our ways. We were able to squeeze it all within an hour‘s time, but it was a shame it took that long anyways given the lack of interest. No, I‘m not converting.

Section II: Zone Boogaloo 

(I’m insisting on continuing to describe the past while writing in present-tense)

The week is bound to improve after that, right? We have zone conference scheduled for Wednesday. My companion and I are preparing to lead a discussion with the zone as to what we can do better to increase the work pace. I soon will realize I need to read a little bit more about how one conducts a group discussion. At the discussion, we ask how people were doing following a promise given to us by Elder Ballard in October, committing us to “contact 10 people per day in addition to regular finding activities,” being in cafeterias or stores or trains and so forth. Basically, meant to push us to go the extra mile. I don’t think we worded it entirely clearly, because there begins to be a ruckus in the zone. There was a lot of confusion on this statement before, because the number “10” was heard and people were confused as to if 10 was a quota, if we only had to contact 10 people total per day, and then have a vacation for the rest of the time, and so forth.

 

Man, that’d be great, right? Wake up at six, hit the doors, talk to ten angry, half-awake people, and BAM. You’ve got the day to yourself!  Why didn’t they tell us earlier? (This is sarcasm).

Basically, the question we asked led to a few confusing questions being asked to the audience, and then the ideas just went rampant. We got roasted by the audience for trying to impose quotas (there are no quotas—we weren’t trying to) and initiated damage control for the rest of the time. By the end of the conference, we seemed to get everyone on the same page, but there were numerous things we would have done differently. 

I exaggerated a bit for theatrical purposes. Actually, everyone got the main point and understood actually very well, but the commentary following spiced things up a bit.

Later, I got to give a training about German, which was fun for me to prepare. I made a flipping Powerpoint about it.

All in all, it has been a great week. We love our zone. Everyone is friendly to each other and I feel like we have a strong community here in Nuremberg. There is a great feeling of camaraderie here as well as diligence and obedience. We’re in a lower wave right now in terms of overall performance, but I feel we are doing well to find new people and catch them when another wave of activity hits. I hope to see that soon. I don’t know if I will stay any longer after the end of next week, because I have almost been here for six months, which has been longer than any other area for me, but we will see! Either way, I will be happy and ready to move forward. Other than the aggressive lesson we had, we have continued to meet some awesome people, including a man named Harvey, who has a lot of questions about the plan of salvation that we’re excited to answer and is really stoked to pray about and read the Book of Mormon. We hope that all these awesome people we find will keep in contact! Many of them simply stop answering calls or messages after a while, which is frustrating, but there is little we can do about it if we have already tried to establish multiple lines of communication. 

In addition to that, one thing we tried this week was trying to find in the more humble parts of the city. We often contact where people are well off, and happy, which is great, but well-off, satisfied people typically aren’t the ones most open for religion. The problem here in Germany with the humbler parts of town is that the humbler it becomes, the less people there will be who know German or English. As a result, you get a bunch of warm-hearted, humble, wonderful people with whom you can’t communicate any more than through hand signals. It’s almost always a positive experience, especially once you find people who do speak your language, but you just need to know where to look. If not, then it’s probably better to just communicate with people who can understand who are less open. But here is a picture of us with a man who, after a minute long exchange of almost 0 understanding, we decided to take a picture with. When we took the camera out, he started laughing the laugh of pure joy.

Well, I hope this email makes up for the last few short ones! The work goes forward! Our baptismal investigators are progressing, but they are projects and we will have to proceed gently. In the meantime, we are finding more people, and counting on it that they will stick.

I’m grateful for the blessings we receive. I underestimate often how great of a privilege it is to be able to preach the gospel, or have it. It certainly is hard to be on a mission, but every pain has been and will continue to be repaid ten fold and counting. I know that Christ lives and I know that He is our Savior.

Love you all!

Elder Wallentine