February 1, 2010

LETTER #12 - SCHWARZENBERG/ANNABERG-BUCHHOLZ

Hello Family!
The first week of the transfer is already gone, time is flying by. It feels like we don't have enough time to get everything done. This last week was sweet though. We started off way good, we cut pday short and taught 3 lessons on Monday, you're usually lucky if you get one lesson on pday. We go to Freiberg once a week for a District meeting then yesterday we had to drive to Dresden for another meeting. Dresden is such a beautiful city; we were there during the night and drove over the bridge. You get an awesome view of the Alt Stadt and the reflection in the river. Dresden was one of my favorite places to go during my exchange. We have to go there on Friday for a Zone conference as well so that should be good.
Last Monday our third lesson was to a member that lives in a small place called Oberwiesenthal and he lives up on the top of a mountain there called Fichtelberg in a ski resort and manages that. He's our ward mission leader in Annaberg and he's like 24, served in Athens, Greece mission. He's way cool. It was good lesson, pretty sure he taught us more then we taught him though. The drive home was so crazy though. I have never seen so much snow in my whole life. The trees up on the top of that mountain were totally caked in snow. You couldn't see any green. It really was like a winter wonder land ha it was cool. I'll try to send some pictures either today or next week.
We've been teaching this lady in Annaberg since I got here and she hasn't really been making any progress and wasn't keeping the commitments we were giving her. So this last week when we went we were going to teach the 3 pmg lesson and push baptism hard and if she didn't take it, we were planning on just telling her we couldn't keep coming back. Towards the end of the lesson when we started talking about baptism she kept saying she was baptized already as a baby. I thought of Moroni 8, but didn't really think that would be best thing to read to her since it’s pretty intense to say the least. I had it opened though and Elder Killpack saw and shook his head 'yes'. So I slowly eased into it and had her turn there with me and I picked out the scriptures that weren't way too harsh. It was so cool, she read it and then all the sudden had a bunch of questions. She asked if baptizing babies is so bad, why do we do it, who came up with it? Killpack explained a little bit about that and she started to think maybe she does need to be baptized again. We're going back tonight and I'm excited to teach her more!
Yesterday headed to church we were a little disappointed because we couldn't get any investigators to church. On the way there one called and asked if he could get a ride to church, so we talked to a member and they went and got him. Then a guy we talked to earlier this week, who told us he doesn't have any more interest in the church and doesn't want to have anything to do with religion anymore, just randomly showed up! He wants us to come teach him this week. Then this couple we stopped teaching a while ago just showed up too. The husband is a member but the wife and daughter are not. We stopped teaching because they pretty much just liked having us over for dinner or to talk but didn't like when we would try to teach them. Then yesterday at church the wife came up to us and said she wants to be baptized! She says she knows it’s the right thing, and she wants us to come back and start really teaching her and her daughter this week. Headed to church disappointed and left church in awe. God works in mysterious ways. All those investigators just came on their own it was so cool. We couldn't even believe what just happened. Then last night in Dresden it was district leader training, so Killpack and all the other DLs in the Dresden Zone did that and their companions, we all went finding.
I went with an Elder from Finland who has been in Germany now since last Wednesday. I met him in the MTC and was actually supposed to come with him. We are the only 2 Elders in our group so after the 2 years we'll head home together. Most groups are quite a bit bigger than 2 but ours was small this time. Finding with him was really cool though. It was a quiet night, snowing, we were in Dresden, and talking to people about the gospel. Doesn't really get a lot better. It was only for about an hour but it was sweet. This next week is going to be good! There’s a lot to do and definitely not enough time. I'm excited though. Thanks everyone for everything! I love you all. Have a good week, be happy!
Elder Puriri

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