This has been a good, long, fulfilling week. At the end of a long week of finding and working you feel happy and great in the eyes of God, even if you didn't find any investigators. I mean we do want them...maybe my faith just isn't strong enough. This week we met with Jürgen and then Stavros as well. Jürgen is still doing well but isn't making a lot of progress right now. He still has a testimony but just doesn't have the motivation to change right now. Stavros is doing well also. We moved the Baptismal date to the 6th of July as well. Not everyone in the ward thinks that he is ready and the were a little against us doing it next Sunday. We pushed it a week just to try not to step on anyones toes but we are a little dissapointed (as is Stavros). I think the problem is that we sometimes judge investigators a little too much. We have to realize that we don't baptise perfect people. We don't even baptise people with perfect understandings of the Restoration or any other doctrine. Stavros isn't perfect by any means but then again few are... Especially when you look at the testimony of your avarage 8 year old convert. They aren't exactly walking around with the testimony of Paul or Joseph Smith. O well. Everything should go well for the 6th.
We did Finding in a bunch of different parts of the city this week. A funny story about Saturday is that we wanted to ride our bikes to a part of the city called Itzum. We rode all the way down and then we wanted to cross some fields to get to some neighborhoods that we saw. We proceeded to ride out into these fields and then the road we were on just kind of ended. We turned around and then rode back into the city a bit and then took another path through the fields. Thinking back it sounds kind of dumb that we tried another path because we had already rode a really long way and our legs felt like jello. We also knew another way to get there but we didn't want to have to try to ride all the way back and make a loop. It all worked out and this path took us to where we wanted to go it just took us an hour of getting lost in fields:)
I don't know what to say about Grandpa. I have to say that it takes the coolness of my day down a bit to hear about it. I'm sure you did already but tell him I love him and even if he forgets me it will take longer for me to forget him;) But really we did have a cool day today. President Jensen, the branch president here drove us up to a Concentration Camp called Bergen-Belsen. It feels wrong to say that it was awesome because it was a really humbling experience. This was the also camp where Anne Frank was killed. I will include a bunch of the pictures on a separate email. It isn't the first time that I have seen pictures and stuff from the Holocaust but it is an incredibly overpowering feeling to walk over ground where literally thousands of people lost their lives. Especially when most of them were not quick easy deaths. The pictures and videos are absolutely horrifying and are hard to believe. The videos of soldiers dragging and tossing death ''bodies'' into mass graves are so unreal that you cant help but just stare as the pictures are burned into your mind. It really is that way, it feels as if the images are burned into my mind and I can't even imagine what it would have been like to witness all of that in person. The actual camp doesn't exist so the buildings and barracks aren't there anymore but there is a museum and mass graves with a memorial that you can see. All in all I guess all I can say is that words fail me. You just cant describe the feeling of sacredness and peace that you feel walking on that hollowed ground.
Well I think that is everything. I hope I managed to get in some more detail this week:) I hope that everything is good back in the land of milk and honey and that your enjoying the promised land. Germany is awesome and I love this country but...it's not America:) Haha don't worry about my trunkiness though. I still have time and energy and it aint over till the fat lady sings. Keep it real homies.
Smooches,
Elder Trevor "Longbow" Bone
Little Child of the West Winds
The Duke of Awesome
Sent from the tablet that I wish I had...
Pictures:
1. Cool Forrest in Hildesheim
2. WW1 and 2 memorial we found.
3. Church with the memorial
More pics:)
1. "At first we were discouraged and thought to ourselves,' What the deuce? The fields are yet green, and not ready to harvest!'
2. "And behold, we were comforted, and the words came to our hearts with great power saying,' You fools, the fields are white and ready to harvest. You just have to take a different path."
3. Part of the fields we rode through
Here are some of the pics from Bergen-Belsen. There are about 10 or so mass graves, each with 800-5000 people in them. They vary in size and one of the pictures has two of them. I also included the picture of Anne Franks gravestone. None of the gravestones are actually where the people are buried but rather to show that they know that the people died in the camp. Love you guys!
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