A Very Merry Christmas

Hey!

This week was awesome!  The work went great, and we got to finish it all off with Christmas Eve and Christmas!  I got to Skype my family, and that was awesome (even though it was moving at a solid one-frame-per-minute).  Honestly, it felt completely normal, and I kind of just felt like I was at home on a normal day during it.  Surprisingly, albeit painful to have to turn off yesterday, I woke up today and haven't felt homesick really at all, so that's a miracle.  

But yeah, this week has been really successful!  We have been seeing all sorts of miracles and the work in the area has really started to pick up.  In the last week we got let into two peoples' houses while dooring, something that never happened to me in my first area.  One man, named Uwe, seemed to be having a really hard time for the Christmas season.  He was sobbing at the start of our lesson but as we proceeded on with it, we felt the spirit and he was laughing and smiling by the time we left.  We also found out he is a gifted woodcarver, and he eagerly showed us all sorts of cool things he has made.  

We were able to pick up even more potentials this week than the last, receiving 11 new ones!  We just fell one under our weekly goal though.  Bummer, but still, we are very happy about that.  I think that this area really does have a ton of potential!  I cannot wait to see what the coming weeks bring!

I found out bus and train contacts are some of the best ways to contact.  It's likely because people are less likely to viciously deny you when they still have a fifteen minute ride sitting across from you afterwards!  Whatever it may be, I have really grown to love it.  It's been one of the most uncomfortable environments to contact for me but hey, it's the most effective and the situation of the area has motivated me to lose fear of rejection.  

I'd like to share something that I read this week from the Book of Mormon.  It's from Alma 34, specifically the lesson that Amulek gives on the need for an Atonement, for justice and mercy to be satisfied and exercised for the salvation of men.  If you're a member of the church, you have probably heard this analogy many times, but regardless of if you have or not, I think talking about it increases our knowledge and faith of the Atonement, and so it is important.  So prepare to read through lots of things you may possibly already know.

As I read, I simply was looking for the answer of why Christ had to pay--and why He had to actually suffer to pay--for our sins.  It is essential first to not only know but have a testimony of the need for a Christ to come.  We all sin and make mistakes and in turn fall short of the Glory of God. The analogy this ties back to is a conflict that occurs between a debtor, us, and the person he must repay, or God.  We go into debt when we sin and if we want to inherit the Kingdom of God we must first be "debt-free".  Unfortunately, we alone do not possess the means to pay back a debt.  We must turn to a mediator--The Mediator, that is--to take our debts upon Him.  Christ is the only perfect person to have ever lived.  In other words, the only one who was debt free.  Not only that, but He had the ability to take on our debts, being the Son of God rather than an ordinary man and the one sent down to earth by our loving Heavenly Father to atone for us.  

Christ could then effectively take our debts upon him, as a man in debt cannot pay off and no one else was debt free.  A merciful man who would pay another's debt is himself not financially foolish or incompetent, but rather takes the debtor's debt up upon himself, and pays it, as though he were the debtor.  Similarly, but on a God-like level and infinite scale, Christ was spiritually immaculate, yet suffered the incomprehensible guilt and anguish for all sinners as though He had done such actions himself (see Book of Mormon Institute Manual Commentary for Alma 34:15-16).   

Knowing this has helped me to further realize just how actually crucial it is that Christ came, lived a sinless life, and through his combined absolute purity and Godhood, was able to Atone for us.  He had the ability to sin.  It is said that he came to earth to "suffer temptations" (Mosiah 3:7).  Knowing this is important, and helps us to further understand and appreciate the reality and feat of Christ's life and Atonement.  President Howard W. Hunter said: 

"It is important to remember that Jesus was capable of sinning, that he could have succumbed, that the plan of life and salvation could have been foiled, but that he remained true. Had there been no possibility of his yielding to the enticement of Satan, there would have been no real test, no genuine victory in the result. If he had been stripped of the faculty to sin, he would have been stripped of his very agency. It was he who had come to safeguard and ensure the agency of man. He had to retain the capacity and ability to sin had he willed so to do."

Wow, that's a lot of text.  I'm on a train to Nürnberg while writing this though, so don't worry, I don't spend my whole P-Days writing these letters.  Sorry about that, but I'd like to say that I love Christ and His sacrifice that He made for us.  I know that He was the ONLY being that could have done what He did, and He did it.  I know that Christ lives.  He, and our Loving Heavenly Father, loves us, and sacrificed His life, and suffered immensely to say the least, for us.  I'm so grateful to have had this chance to celebrate Him.  Without Him, there would be nothing to celebrate.  

I really hope you all had a wundervoll Christmas. Ich habe So viele Liebe für euch!

Love,

Elder Wallentine

PS: THE LEDERHOSEN ARE HAD:

  I made this look like it was taken in WWII.

 This, too.

 Spooky picture of Nürnberg church.

Bayreuth Bayreuth Bayreuth

Hey folks!

Christmas time is almost here!  That's exciting! 

Let me just say that Bayreuth is a pretty drastic change in almost all aspects.  Luckily, however, the language is much better than I expected.  Actually, I may have only met one person so far with the weird dialect, and he was also drunk, so I'm doing pretty alright in terms of understanding.  

I'm in a tiny branch right now.  We have less than 10 active adults come to church on Sundays...perhaps 20 people normally come in total.  We only meet for two hours instead of three, and it's a little bit of a bummer!  It definitely is a small community,  but the members we do have seem really great.  We only have two appointments for the days surrounding Christmas, though.

Corresponding with that, it seems that the missionary morale has been relatively low in comparison to the other areas I have visited and worked in. They haven't had a baptism in almost a year and that person has been very inactive since.

With all this, I can without a doubt say that this has been my busiest week of my mission so far.  I spent four hours on the train ride here setting goals and planning for the transfer, and the Lord has been generous in granting me the energy and means to carry this out.  I am determined to at least do all I possibly can to get one person into the waters at the end of this transfer.  To do this, I have had to do some introspection to see what I can stop doing, replace in my habits, or start doing to make myself a better and more consecrated missionary.  I've been doing my best to eliminate any hinderances, and this has truly been a wonderful process.  By cutting off things that may have not even been bad, but things that perhaps could have been drawing from my consecration in any way, I have immediately seen the blessings come.  We didn't have a whole lot of lessons this week.  We didn't set any dates.  But I have seen the hand of the Lord in a bounty of other ways and this week has been a great growing period.

This week has likewise been one of the most stressful ones of my mission so far.  I have a feeling that my time in Bayreuth could be the refiner's fire for me, but I am confident that the Lord sent us missionaries here for a reason.  I think, if anything, this will certainly help me to put my trust more fully in the Lord.  We did find nine potential investigators since Tuesday, and I really am hoping that these people are prepared.  If not, I sure hope we will be guided to those who are.

Anyways.  I'm currently reading through Alma, chapters 10-20, and I read about some really awesome things.  In Alma 17:1-5, we read of Alma's joyful reunion with the Sons of Mosiah after years of being apart to teach the Gospel (which in and of itself is one of my favorite scriptures).  In verses two and three, it says:

"They were men of a sound understanding and they had searched the scriptures diligently, that they might know the word of God."  We learn that "they had given themselves to much prayer and fasting."  Isn't it interesting that these men saw an angel, and yet worked diligently for so long still to gain their testimonies?  It says that they did this to "know the word of God" and I think that to "know" the word of a God not only means to have each doctrinal point memorized, but to have it actually "engraven upon your countenances" (Alma 5:19), and to believe it with all your heart.  With mere knowledge of the gospel must come a practice of it as well, if we want to truly understand it and teach it.  We learn in Alma 5 earlier that Alma went through a similarly long process to gain his testimony following his conversion.  And we know that Laman and Lemuel did see an angel, yet dwindled in unbelief because they remained unchanged in desire to change or gain a testimony.

Another thing I really like from Alma 17 lies in verses 9-11.  The Sons of Mosiah split paths once more to teach the Lamanites, and the Lord commands them to "be comforted".  It doesn't specify their moods until it is related back to us by Alma in Alma 26:27, where we are told that their "hearts were depressed, and [they] were about to turn back" before the Lord "comforted them".

As I wrote about earlier, this week has been extremely busy and honestly, exhausting at times, for me.  We have contacted more than we ever had on my mission so far.  It's been hard.  But I have felt personally the comfort of the Lord as I sometimes do, against the will of at least some [lazy] part of me, return to the streets to contact in spite of any perceived lack of success prior.  I have found that it is often beyond our initially-thought-of limits that we may often find miracles.  I felt His presence on Thursday of this week, when we had a day of finding several potentials.  I was a little stressed but we worked hard, and at the end of the evening it hit me how actually much he was involved throughout the day.  As we were walking home, I did get choked up and simply began to thank our Loving Heavenly Father for all he has done for us, and his Son.  The Lord loves us as we pursuit our endeavors of all sorts and I am so glad to experience the blessings of full consecration to him for the time being.  It doesn't matter how many times we get told "I HAVE NO TIME, BOY" (literal translation), I know that the Lord is with us every step of the way, and I know that he will lead us to a person who is ready to enter the waters of baptism and join His fold--or, at least, to prepare the hearts of the people to do so.  We need not fear if we do what's right.  

To close this email, I'll share with you the verse of a hymn that has been recurring multiple times in my mind throughout this week.  It is the third verse of How Firm a Foundation:

Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,

For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.

I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,

Upheld by my righteous, upheld by my righteous,

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

I love you all.  It brightens my weeks each time I can read your emails.  I hope you have a wonderfully merry Christmas time and that you can remember the greatest gift of all: Our Savior Jesus Christ.  Thank you for all your prayers and support.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Oberhausen Christmas Market

Me with  a formerly inactive man named Brother Adabra.

TRANSFERRED

Hey folks!

Well, this last two weeks have been pretty difficult.   All of our investigators have essentially dropped off the face of the earth, and have completely stopped answering our calls and/or answering their doors.  Unfortunately, we have lost all but one baptismal dates due to inability to meet with our investigators, and their lack of progression.  It's been sad to see, but I am also confident we have been doing all we can with them specifically, and it's simply been their choice not to move forward...for now.  Still, we will continue to meet with them in the future as often as we can because there still is a lot of potential in these people.

Well, at least my companion and his trainee with be doing that.

I am getting transferred.  After about four months of being in Oberhausen, I have been reassigned to the NUREMBERG ZONE, to the Bayreuth area!  I am both nervous and very, very excited.  The dialect there seems to be considered as essentially another language from that which I have learned here.  I'm jumping from one of the most west-ward areas in the mission to one of the most east-ward, and I expect that there is going to be a decently significant change in scenery.  

I am excited for the change, as well as the prospect of seeing people possibly wearing Lederhosen on a daily basis (I don't know for sure if this is true or not, but the rumor is that it's a pretty casual thing to wear in this part of Germany).  There's also lots of cool history in the zone that will make some good p-days.

I have heard that it is pretty spread out population-wise there, but I'll have to see.  One thing I have really enjoyed about Oberhausen was how compact it was.  I've really grown to love dooring and contacting, even if it doesn't seem to prove very profitable on a lot of days.  I hope that there will still be plenty of places in my new area to do that.

 

But yes, I really have enjoyed my time here in Oberhausen.  We have a really awesome ward here.  I've loved getting to know the people and visiting some very strong new converts.  I really think that I worked hard here, but in spite of that, I unfortunately never got to see any of the people I had set dates with get baptized.  I hope that things work out with them following my leave.  I've learned a lot here, and I hope that these next transfers will prove to be fruitful ones.  I'm trying to evaluate myself to determine how I can become a better missionary and if there's anything on my part that I've been doing to prevent success.  I hope I can eliminate any roadblocks out of my way in the next little while, but we will see.

One of the most special things about my time here has been the last few weeks as well.  We have encountered a lot of difficulties, as I stated (perhaps venting a little) at the start of my letter, but I know that this has also been a time of growth.  I was asked to give a lesson in district meeting two weeks ago about happiness, and how we can achieve it, and I spent about a week studying it.  I've found that there are many building blocks to happiness.  I would say that obedience to God's commandments is integral to that, as well as traits of gratitude, generosity, and overall selflessness.  I found plenty of other building blocks to that as well, but these are just some of the main ones I've found.  I have been trying to implement all of these things more in this last little while, and while I am not perfect in any of these categories, trying my best and praying to the Lord for peace has provided for some special feelings that I have since experienced.  I've been trying to do better to ponder lately as well, and I have realized through pondering how blessed I have been, both on my mission and life as a whole.  This realization has increased my testimony in Jesus Christ and His gospel and Atonement.  It has helped me so much to have peace and actual joy when things may even seem to be falling apart at times.  All the while, my appreciation for my mission has grown greater, and I am really excited to get into this new area and work even harder in order to achieve success.

I guess that this is really it.  It's weird to leave my first area.  It's been a wild ride.  Now it's time for the next part to begin.

Thanks for your support, love, and prayers, folks.  I love you all!

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Pictures from the Christmas Markets!

Here are some photos from the Essen Market! 

Here's one of the shops that catch a lot of missionaries' eyes.  Alongside Nutcrackers, they have these figures called "Räuchermans", or "smoker men", which are these wooden figures that usually have animal-fur beards.  You can put incense in them and light it inside, then it looks like they're puffing smoke out of their mouths.  It's pretty funny.  I probably won't get them this year but I am considering getting one next year.  They're probably some of the most German things I've seen.