Thats so cool Trey was baptized by Dylan! Man that was so cool to read that. The pictures are pretty sweet. Ammon though ha. You're at a baptism, can't you like at least tuck your shirt in or something? Throwing a tie on isn't too hard either ha. Your hair looks pretty sweet though. Annnyyyway. It was a pretty cool week. We had some cool experiences, but I'll tell you about them in a little.
First. We had Zoco this week down in Nürnberg! I started my mission in Berlin then 8 months later I end up in Nürnberg for a zone conference ha. Pretty ridiculous. Nürnberg used to be part of the Munich mission, so not even frankfurt. So now I've bee town to Munich as well! It was pretty cool. We rode down with the Muhlesteins on wednesday morning and worked with the Elder in Nürnberg for the day then went to zoco with them in the morning. Pretty funny thing happened though. I called the Nürnberg Elders to organize everything and the Elder goes 'So whats your name again' and I said Elder Puriri. And the said 'Elder Pu...what?? WAIT! I know you! Do you know Mike and Colin and Hata??' and then I was kind of confused and said yea those are my uncles. Turns out he's from alpine and played rugby for them. I can't remember his first name but his name is Elder Stilson...first name might be Chase but I'm not sure. It was fun working with them though. He talked a lot about Uncle Mike and Colin and Hata. I showed him the pictures I had of them it was cool. Zoco was also pretty good. I'm definitely learning lots. We had a combined zoco with the Nürnberg zone and all those missionaries are from the Munich mission. There has been transfers since so there were also Frankfurt missionaries mixed in. So
we had missionaries from 3 different missions together which was cool. Talked a lot about taking the best from all 3 missions and making like an 'Ultimate' mission ha. Its pretty cool though! Then we had a long drive home after that, it was about 3 1/2-4 hours or so. Zoco was good though.
So on Monday after emails Elder Gassman and I went and got a döner for lunch and then went over to this futsal court to see if anyone was playing soccer. As we got there it started to dump rain. It was really raining so hard it almost hurt. There were kids playing though! So we put our bags in a windowsill (<---not sure if that's right, my first guess was window seal but I figured that was wrong) then we hopped on and played for 2 hours! We were soaked but it was so much fun. Our clothes got so heavy they got stretched out. It was fun though. Then we saw one of the kids we played with later in the week and figured he wouldn't recognize us since we were in missionaries but he came up and said hi and stuff it was cool. Then Monday night we were doing doors because an appointment had fallen out. We usually stop doors around 8:00 because people get made its so late. So by this time it was about 7:50. Elder Gassman and I really wanted to find a new person this night though and had already prayed about it. So we went and did this one section of an apartment building really quick for the last 10 minutes. And the 3 guy we knocked Elder Gassman talked to him about the Book of Mormon and asked if the guy had 10 or 15 minutes so we could talk to him. He just turned around and walked away but left the door open so we were kinda of both confused. Then all the sudden then guy yelled back 'are you coming in or what??' So we walked in! It was pretty cool. Talked to him about the Book of Mormon and gave him one then asked him to read a chapter we had picked out before we come back. He said 'well I read the book through and we said yea if you could just read that chapter before next Monday that'd be good, but he said yea yea I'll just read the book. Ha so we'll see how much he read tonight when we go by. It was cool though, our prayers were answered.
Then! On Thursday night we got back pretty late and were way tired so we didn't plan for the next day and just went straight to bed. In the morning I was looking at our schedule for the day and we had a big gap of nothing to do. I was kind of bugged and couldn't figure out how we should use that time. As my comp was in the shower I prayed really quick and asked for help so that we could find something to do during that time. 20 minutes later I was getting some food out of the kitchen and Elder Chidsey (we were on tausch) said ''Uh you just got a text from an '801' number''. As you can imagine we were both confused. So I picked up the phone and read the text and it was a text from Temple Square with 3 referrals!! It was a direct answer to my prayer. I was pretty overwhelmed and in amazement from this. 20 minutes earlier I had prayed and then we get 3 referrals texted to us from temple square in salt lake. It was really cool. So that’s how we used that time in the middle of the day, to go out to this small city and try to find these people. We found one but the other 2 weren't home so we are going to go back. It is so amazing how our prayers are answered!!
I don't know if I told you this story yet, if I have I'm going to again because I just thought of it. A few months ago another time when I was on tausch with Elder Chidsey, we went out to this little village to go by on a lady we met earlier in the week. The village was small that a bus only came and left every 1 1/2 hours. We got there and went to the lady's house and she didn't have any time right then. So we still had an hour in this tiny village far away from Nordhausen! We didn't know what to do, there was nobody on the streets and doors didn't feel like the right thing to do way out there. Eariler in that week an Elder had told me about an experience he had had with prayer and finding people, so I thought about that and wanted to try it too. We found a bench, sat down and prayed for help and guidance for the next hour in this village. 50 minutes had gone by and we hadn't found anyone. We were walking back to the bus stop and feeling a bit disappointed. Then way off to our right there was a woman with her kid. So I thought why not and we walked way over to her and started talking to her. She was so happy and had a bunch of questions about what we were doing and stuff. We made out an appointment for the next week and told her we would bring her a Book of Mormon. She was so cool. We then walked back to the bus and got beaming ha. I was so grateful for that experience and that Heavenly father had helped us to find this woman.
The power of prayer and faith is so amazing. I've been reading our heritage and there are so many cool stories about people’s faith and miracles that occurred because they had prayed with faith. It is also quite humbling to realize what a blessing prayer is. It makes so much sense though as well. God is perfect, and he is our Father. So he is a perfect father. A perfect Father wouldn't send his children away without a way for them to communicate with him, and a way for him to communicate with them. He loves us so much we can't even comprehend it, and he has given us a way to be able to speak with him whenever. no matter what. Prayer has become so much more meaningful to me. We need to use it!! God gives us so many things but we need to use them! I really am grateful for the love he has for all of us. He wants to guide and us and help us along the way, but we need to humble ourselves and allow him to do so. I've seen his love for his children here. With this man we met last Monday. We were sitting on his couch talking to him and as I looked as him asked him about his beliefs about God, he told me about how his wife had passed away and that since then he hasn't believed in God. As Elder Gassman and I began to talk to him about how God is our heavenly father and how he loves us I was filled with a love for this man that sat in front of me. It was kind of weird as I was looking at him I had this real desire to help him come to the knowledge that God loves him. Well not weird but I had only known the man for 5 minutes and my love and desire for him to have the gospel was so real. I am grateful God let me feel that and experience that.
There are so many cool stories and things we experience. I could sit and tell you about so many miracles we've been blessed to see but...everyone’s hungry and we want to go eat and play soccer ha. Plus there will be time for that later! Miracles are real though. I know that without a doubt. Prayer is powerful!! And God honestly does love us so much. I hope you all know that. Thank you for everything! I love you all! Have a good week and be happy!
Elder Puriri
No comments:
Post a Comment