Pictures!

After searching and searching, a computer was finally found in East Germany that is compatible with Elder Schmalz's camera! Oh, happy day! Here are some sights of Meissen and Dresden.


Albrechtsburg and Cathedral in Meissen



Frauenkirche



The Opera House in Dresden



The Freiberg Temple

Week Four

On Wednesday we got on a train to Elsterwerda (a 2 hour trip) so that we could go and teach the Chege family (the Africans that I talked about last week) to find out if they wanted to be baptized.

When we got to Elsterwerda we had an hour to do some street finding. (walking around talking to people or doing doors) We found absolutely no one. All doors were slammed in our faces and we received some disgusted looks from everyone, a pretty normal day hahah. We did see a guy walking his dog and we had ten more minutes until we had to be to our appointment so we went up and talked to him.  At first he was very nice and talked to us, but then he went crazy and tried to prove to us that God isn't real and that even if there was a God then he hated us.... and he went off for like 5 minutes and finally I, being impatient and honestly done listening to him interrupted him and said "well I know there is a God and you can know too.... I like your dog have a nice day" and then I turned around and started walking to the Chege home because we were now late.... Elder Bretzing was so angry at the guy and wanted to go back and argue some more, but he realized we had a lesson and he needed to quickly refocus. 

After all that we went through the Cheges then told us that they hadn't prayed and that they don't understand why we need to be baptized again....... as they said this I looked at Elder Bretzing with a face of just utter terror (we didn't plan for this)! I gathered myself and said a quick prayer and hardcore preached the restoration to this African minister. I actually felt bad after (for like one second then I realized the Spirit told me to do it) all he could say after was "my soul is so confused" and "but it makes so much sense and it feels right" We then told him to actually pray about it and we invited him to our branch Christmas party. As we left he grabbed me by the shoulder and said "you are my brother" (my life is complete) and then offered a prayer asking God to "protect us the servants of the Lord from the powers of the Devil and the acts of evil men".  That was my cool spiritual but not so spiritual experience.

I cannot believe that I have been in Germany for a month! That is insane!

Everything is going great. My German is actually coming along little by little. It's so sad that I'm not going to be having a Thanksgiving this year, but hey, I'm doing the work of the Lord and that is awesome!

Thank you so much for the love and support. Be watching out for the new video coming out on lds.org this Friday. It is SUPER good!

The church is true and I miss all of you!

 

Love Elder Schmalz

 

Other tidbits we've learned from our individual letters this week...

 

His branch president owns a crematorium and Gav and his companion went into his work the other day to meet with him. He saw real dead bodies being prepared for cremation. The smell was pretty hard for him to deal with.

 

All this new physical activity is starting to effect his physic. He has had to take a pair of pants in to be altered and is in need of a new belt because he is out of belt holes. He is wanting to buy a new European suite now that he is lean and mean. Hopefully that's what Santa will bring him :)

 

He teaches an English class every week and loves it.

 

He eats A LOT of chocolate. Most the pastries are apple flavored. And he loves the food.  

 

 

Dresden Zone Training Meeting

 

When a mom has a son in East Germany, she has to beg, borrow, and steal pictures of her boy :)

So thankful that I caught a glimpse of Elder Schmalz on the Berlin Germany Mission Blog today. Even though I can only see his cute face, this made me so happy!

Week Three

So this week we met with the Chege family, they are from Kenya and requested we bring 12 Swahili Book of Mormons to our lesson! Apparently, Clovis the father had received a Book of Mormon from some missionaries last year, then never talked to them again, but he has read the Book of Mormon and has a testimony that it is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet, and he decided to preach the Book of Mormon to everyone he knew, so pretty much Clovis is awesome! He and his wife Rachel are so cool and they have two little girls named Princess and Success.......I though he was kidding but he was serious... The bonus of all of this is that we get to teach them in English!  Hallelujah!

The lesson was pretty much just us answering questions about the church including what the priesthood was and why only men could have it? Is our church sexist? What age can a child be baptized? Those are all good questions, right? And we tried our best to answer them with the Spirit. It was so nice to understand everything and to actually help them, and the spirit was so strong in our lesson. Near the end our the lesson I really felt like I should bear my testimony about all of the things we had talked about and invite them to baptism. I did exactly that, and it was so cool!

Clovis answered me with "I never make a decision this big without asking God first" and we said that that is great and asked him if he would pray to know if baptism was right for him. He said he would, but if he didn't get an answer he wouldn't meet with us again....... So this week is going to be a week of prayer and fasting for us!:)

Its things like this experience that make being here so cool! I know that it is why I am here. I am so excited to be here and to be able to testify of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that it is true!

Okay, so on to Germany and my new life here...

It's so weird when I walk outside and it is opposite of what it is at home. Instead of seeing  a beautiful white temple on the hills framed with mountains, I see huge black cathedrals rising out of the fog. It's going to take a while to get used to this! I have grown to love seeing the temple so much. This week I got to go on exchange with one of the Freiberg elders. Freiberg is where the temple is and it was so nice to be able to see it! I found out that next month I will get to go to the temple so I'm looking forward and so excited for that!

Funny story. While we where on exchange we were approached by a very drunk man. As he got closer he pointed directly at me and said "I know who you are.....you are the secret service! You have ruined my life!". All of this was in English so I could understand him perfectly. He continued to tell us a story about how the communist secret service (us) made him an alcoholic and that we were going to go to Hell for what we had done to the world?!! I was so very confused and was trying not  to laugh. He was very drunk and couldn't stand up straight or talk very clearly. He then grabbed my shoulder and said "I want to show you guys something" but he was no longer angry and had apparently switched personalities mid sentence. He showed us a building that he believed was built by the Free Masons and now was occupied by the Illuminati? He then shook our hands and walked away. Yeah, that was a good day for journal writing! haha

It hasn't gotten cold here yet which is really surprising. I still go out just in a white shirt and tie for most of the day, Elder Bretzing wears like two coats and a scarf, he is from California after all. I'm excited for it to snow, and so excited for Christmas. I hear Christmas in Germany will be incredible. They have started setting up the Christmas market in Dresden and the Christmas tree is the biggest Christmas tree I have ever seen! I wish that I could send pictures...  I will figure that out this week
one way or another. I might just have to get some pictures developed and send them snail mail. All the computers are ancient here in East Germany and it's hard to upload anything on these things.

So yeah, those where the highlights of my week. I'm doing great! Thank you so much for all your love and support!

Week Zwei!

Hello!

I want to start off with a really cool spiritual experience that I had this past week.

We have an investigator named Frau Meiwald and she is what we like to call an ewige untersucher (eternal investigator). She has been receiving the lessons for the last 4 years and has made huge progress but she wont commit to be baptized. We decided to teach her about prayer and how prayer is such a huge gift. After we talked to her about prayer, I had the random thought to talk to her about her praying to know if things are true and I asked her if she had prayed about the Book of Mormon. After the question left my mouth I was just praying she would understand what I had said. She responded with "no, I haven't? no one has ever told me to do that" and then she said a bunch of stuff that I didn't understand, but we asked her to pray over the Book of Mormon and I hope that goes good. I'm super grateful for the Spirit, and for this opportunity to be here, the church is true!

Here is what happened the rest of the week...

This week was supposed to be very successful... We were going to get three people on baptismal date and we had like eight appointments and Elder Bretzing and I were both really excited with our prospects. Of all the times for the German train workers to decided to strike and all the trains shut down here in Saxony! The only way we have to get to all of our appointments was by train. Here in Meißen you can't really get anywhere without either the train or an hour long bus ride. So our planned successful week quickly turned into a high stress week of running to catch buses and walking miles and miles to get to places when we missed those buses...

I am loving it here! Even though I can't understand a word through their super thick Saxon accents and they can't understand my broken German (that is still correct, thank you Brother Garlick and Sis Allman!) I'm still enjoying it! 

Or even when the homeless guy yells at me or the punks that don't really do anything but sit on the corner all day throwing insults at us, I still come home and lay in my bed and I am happy! The only thing I will never be happy about is that there is no ice to be had in Germany! All of our drinks are lukewarm and disgusting, because ice is the only way to go... other than that, I'm enjoying it!
Also, the other thing that has been worrying me is that I think I might get hit by a car while I'm here! I am serious! All Germans drive really too fast down cobble stone streets that don't have any safe side walks, and as a missionary, you kind of have to walk on those cobble stone streets to get to places... Luckily that's just in the city center, out in the country they drive even faster, but we have sidewalks and paths to take... Pray for me!

Hopefully this week I can find a way to send pictures and you can see how beautiful Dresden and meißsen are.

Thank you so much for your prayers and for writing and emailing me. I appreciate all the love and support I can get!

Love, Elder Schmalz

The scripture that has buoyed me up this week...
D&C 121: 7-9
My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes. Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.

My First Week In Germany

So I'm here and it took forever! After three flights that added up to a total of 15 hours of flight time and going into a different time zone, I made it!

 

Right when we stepped off the plan we where picked up by President Kosak and he is really cool! He can speak English which is a huge relief. He also can kill a man in a variety of ways with his bare hands (he lived in East Germany and Russia before the Berlin wall came down).

We spent our first night in a cool little hotel above a bakery. That next morning we where given our areas and our new companions. My companions name is Elder Bretzing, a very big goofy guy from Anaheim California! He has only been out for 3 months but an interesting fact, he used to work at Disneyland! That's all I know at the moment, but more to come next week.
 

I'm now in an area called MeiBen, in the heart of East Germany. If you google it you will learn about the MeiBen Dom, a giant cathedral and the MeiBen porcelain. What you wont see is our apartment, mainly because it is so small and smells really weird! Also Meissen has the strongest dialect in all of Germany so pretty much every thing I learned in the MTC is somewhat worthless here. I actually taught a whole lesson in nearly perfect German but they didn't understand a word....... yeah! (sarcasm) but that is okay!

Albrechtsburg and Cathedral

 

Meissen is south of Berlin on this map really close to Dresden right on the Elbe River

 

We went finding yesterday which is pretty much talking to everyone and anyone you see on the street and we got yelled at a lot and we talked to some drunk guys. I did talk to this guy named Herr Hönege and I just asked him what brought him joy in life and he answered his family. He went on to tell a story about how he lost his whole family and he doesn't know if he will ever see them again. I bore a short testimony about eternal families and set up an appointment with him tomorrow, so I will let you know how that works out.

We also taught a Christian preacher from Kenya who in the past was on the investigator list. Apparently missionaries had talked to him a few months ago but then he moved and had lost contact with them. He has read the Book of Mormon and had been preaching about it on the streets, so hopefully that will all work out too!

I want you all to know that I know with out a doubt in my heart that this church is true, and that it can help anyone in any situation!
 

Oh hey, my new address is
 

Kalkberg 6

01662 Meissen

Deutschland

But...if you want to send me a package ;) my address is

Germany Berlin Mission
Zerbster SraBe 42
12209 Berlin
Germany
 

I took a ton of pictures but this sketchy internet café wont let me send pictures I will figure out how to do it though.

I love you and thank you for your prayers and for your letters and emails!

Elder Schmalz