Munich - Week 4

Hey everybody!

I'm sorry it's been so long. This is the first week in 3 or 4 weeks where I've had time to sit down and write something out. We've been busy to say the least. It's been a good busy, but a very difficult busy. I'm really enjoying Munich, it's the coolest city ever, I love my companion, we work really simply well together. Our combination is one where he covers my weaknesses really well and I cover his, and we can both work on our weaknesses together.  It's been great.

Right before I got here, the 2 main investigators dropped the missionaries, and one with a baptism date was told by his wife that if he was baptized, she was kicking him onto the street. So the past 4 weeks have been rough teaching wise. We keep finding new people and having great conversations, but nothing moves past a first lesson. We have taught almost 30 first lessons this transfer, and most times, though we feel like our teaching is really refined and really powerful, they don't accept a return appointment, or we find out that they are just crazy overall. So we don't have much progression going on right now. We are searching out the elect, weeding the tares from the wheat, but thus far, it's just tares.

We have taught some really cool people though. A CEO of a big company in Germany, a professional basketball player, a football coach from Austria, and a ton of kids our age. I love being able to teach people my age. It's been a great way for me to refine my teaching skills and my general ability to be personable with everyone I meet. We did have a couple cool things happen this week. We went on Tausch in Neuötting, part of my very first district, where I had my very first Austausch. That was really cool. I got super sick there on Tuesday night and spent most of my night throwing up and in a lot of pain. I got food poisoning pretty bad.

So on Wednesday, even though I was really not doing good, we were still determined to go out. What we often do is go to Marienplatz, which is as downtown as it gets, and split up to opposite sides of the street, and work one on one with people for an hour or two, then move on to whatever we are doing next. So we were doing that and I talked with a guy who didn't have a lot of time, but I just invited him to church, and he showed up yesterday! That was super cool. He really enjoyed it and said he was planning on coming next week. We have a return appt on Wednesday. I guess we will see how it goes. The other cool thing was an appointment we had yesterday afternoon. It was awesome. It was with 2 guys our age. They showed up and we were like, "hey, let's go over to the church." The one dude was like, "man, you didn't tell me we were going to a church." We showed up there and they started telling us about the party they were at until 4 am, and the girls they had taken home, and how hammered they had gotten. It was an interesting conversation to have. You could definitely notice a strong contrast between the lives we are living. Then we started talking to them about how we sometimes screw up in our lives and need Gods help. They were pretty open with that. One of them was like, 'yeah one time I was dating this girl and I made out with her sister. Then I really needed Gods help.' Yes you did pal. Maybe more than that... Just kidding. But it turned into an awesome conversation and it was SO COOL to see the attitudes of these two guys change. The Spirit was really strong, and the feeling was just indescribable. We didn't mention the word Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, or anything from some type of first lesson. It was strictly about how we can be healed from the Atonement and it was super cool. 2 guys who walked in talking about vulgar and crude stuff were suddenly hanging on every word we were saying. Astonishing to say the least. They're new investigators now, and we will see where it goes from here. That's it for this week. Things are good over in Munich.

Love you all. Have a great week

Elder Hadfield