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
