Oh man. Oh man. Let me tell you about this week.
First off let me just say that the pioneers are the best. I just had my own little pioneer celebration study sesh for Pioneer Day reading all these stories from my ancestors and combining that with my moment a couple weeks ago where my testimony was just burning bright as ever of Joseph Smith and yes. They are just great. They really did just set the whole tone for the way we live and again just hit me how much of a wimp I am because I have the easiest life and I think I am getting too
comfortable. They left quite the legacy. But yes. On to the week.
Our ask 100 Germans in four days what they think comes after death was a smashing hit! It started out rough. Like really rough. Monday night I think we talked to like 50 people and it felt like we couldn't get a single person to even answer our question much less have a good conversation with us or want to learn more about what we believe in. I even had made a goal not to take no for an answer and really make these people think and it still didn't work. I just kept thinking... Whoops. Maybe this is why we never make hefty goals like this. But I realized how that is the same with every deal I make with God. With the 100 Book of Mormons. Or the talk to every family. Or double the area book. Or whatever we decide to do. We just have to show him that we are not going to quit and that we have faith to work hard and rely on him then he gives us amazing experiences. So the rest of the week all the jerks went away (well most of them) and we were able to have some way cool conversations. And I was shocked at the results. Here were a couple of my observations.
-only about half of the people we talked to even believed in life after death.
- people who did were significantly happier. Like beaming out of their faces.
- every time you ask someone what they think the purpose of life is
they act like it is the deepest question ever and that they are going
to have to study it out for the next 10 years..Or you just ask a
primary kid and he could tell you in 2 seconds flat :)
-a lot more people believe in the science-y part or in reincarnation
and openly admit that they are just going in circles in life and have
no purpose.
- there are a lot of hopeless people in the world.
- so many people of the Christian faith don't understand the concept
of resurrection and that Christ literally rose again and because of
that we will too. That we will have a perfected body.
- people really are searching for something.
It was a way big eye opener for us. I wish Sister Parker was here more to see it cause we were on splits all week, but it was still cool to share my thoughts and goals with all the other sisters. And I still talked her ear off about all the things I learned when we were together again. Okay so then after lots of good eye opening conversations is when the real miracles came.
Up until this point we had been pretty chalked full with appointments and then we just talked to all the people in between on buses or went to the uni real quick to ask a few people or hit a couple doors, but it got to the end and we had a whole lot of time and a whole lot more people to talk to and the best way to find Germans that we have found is: dooring. And we wanted a family. So we go into one of the richer parts with the bigger houses and met a lot more rude people haha and got a lot more funny stories and then we found Angelika and her son, Simon. I don't even remember what we said.. Something along the lines of how we could be with our families for eternity in a perfect happiness. And she lets us in. She told us later that the only reason she did was because of the light in our eyes and that we really looked truly happy. That we had something she didn't. After teaching her about Joseph Smith she told us how she felt and we explained that THAT is the Holy Ghost confirming what we said was true. We explained how after baptism you can have that same feeling with you all the time and she looks me right in the eye and asks what she has to do to get that. To have the oh so famous Mormon glow. Her prayer that day was priceless.
That day we found two more families. I couldn't believe it.
And you know what? Now I am just so used to talking to Germans all the time that we have like 5 more people who want to hear about the gospel set up for this next week. Not all German but sometimes that is even cooler cause now we are teaching Germans and living in a worldwide mission. Eep. One of those people has to have commitment right? We are talking to the new pioneers. These people get to be pioneers for their families and start a new legacy.
Keep glowing.
xoxoxo
s. heywood
