First bunkbeds and now spiders! oh, and Sister Brim!

Okay take a look at the first picture and tell me what is wrong.... that is a spider that is bigger than a GUMMY BEAR! last time I checked I'm in Germany..... not in some rain forest or in Africa?! I found that sucker underneath my chair as I was studying and elder Garner freaked out, so of course I caught it and now I'm keeping it in a jar...... but we have a mission rule that we can't keep pets so we will see what happens to it after emails....

Okay, so this week was AWESOME! We got to go into Kiel for zone training meeting and guess who was there? Sister Brim! First time being in the same zone as one of my best mission friends, so that was really exciting! In zone training meeting we had an awesome lesson on finding joy in all parts of the work.  

This week we really did some awesome work. We actually set a baptismal date and we found 4 new investigators! 

Elder Garner and I get along great and being a missionary is absolutely THE best thing ever!

Here is a scripture that has been on my mind lately!
"and he that is faithful shall be made strong in every place; and I, the Lord, will go with you." D&C 66:8
I love this scripture because it tells us that all we need to do is be faithful. It doesn't matter what our abilities are or weaknesses are as long as we are trying out best to do what is right, and then our Lord and Savior will help us. He will make up the difference, but we first must do our part.

So yeah, what a great week! I hope everything is going well with everyone!

Liebe Grube, Elder Schmalz
 

Neumünster Zone Training Meeting

Bunk beds.... why did it have to be bunk beds? it's a hoe, and rain lots of rain!

First off, whoever emails me the movie I just quoted first wins a special prize! ........ probably just an email.     HINT: Replace the word bunk beds with snakes........

So I made it to Glückstadt safely after a 5 hour train ride in a compartment with a very large and very grumpy gentleman who was sleeping. I luckily managed to avoid waking him from his slumber but some people were not so fortunate!

I met Up with Elder Garner (my new companion) in Hamburg and I also ran into Elder Bretzing, my trainer, who is now apparently the new Hamburg Zone leader! What a stud!

Elder Garner is the son of a military man and has lived practically everywhere in the United States. He is an awesome missionary and I'm definitely going to be learning and running a lot this transfer. Our area is called Glückstadt because that is where the church is, but we technically live in the city of Itzehoe pronounced like  "it's a Hoe!"  and it is super pretty and I will definitely be taking a lot of pictures once it stops raining...... so that might be never.

The ward is awesome! My new district is awesome! Pretty much everything is perfect here other than the fact that we have a bunk bed! I despise bunk beds! The newer missionary in the area gets the top...... and the mission has turned me into a really old lazy man who thinks having to climb to sleep is a stupid idea! 

But other than that, its perfect!

Yeah, its really just been a great week and I'm really excited to get to work!

My new address is: 

Holzkamp 23

25524 Itzehoe

Deutschland

Thank you for the love and support! I will tell you all about the work and our investigators next week!:)

Oh and I just found out that Raju was confirmed this last Sunday so keep him and his family in your prayers as he is adjusting to life as a member!

Also, please pray for my German!

Love, Elder Schmalz

New Mission Structure - 9 Zones

Elder Schmalz is now serving up in the Neumunster Zone!

Baptism! Goodbyes! and The City Of Luck!

So after 16 weeks of teaching through language barriers and stressing, it has happened. 

Raju Patel was baptized! It came together perfectly, even though we had no baptismal clothes or water in the font until a couple hours before the service. Now the Meissen Branch has a brand new member and I'm so grateful that I got to meet and teach this man and his family! I then had to say goodbye to him right after because tomorrow I'm on a train to my new area...Glückstadt. It's all the way in the most northern part of Germany, to serve with Elder Garner!

Glück means luck or fortune, so I'm on my way to the City of Luck! So that's some exciting news!

This week has just been so awesome, and I'm super excited for this next week!

 

From the words of my good Friend Raju Patel "I Know this church is true" (but he says it in half Hindi half German!:) I also know this Church is true and I'm so grateful I have this opportunity to share it, and to see this gospel in action! :)

 

 

New Carpets, Zone Training Meeting , and an Upcoming Baptism!

So this week has been a week of moving furniture and living out of one room! The mission office decided that our apartment was due for new carpets, so this last week we moved all of our furniture into our bigger study room and have been living there. That was stressful! Then we received the news last night that we have to move all of our stuff into our tiny bedroom and live there for a week! YAAAAAA!   <----------- super sarcastic.

 

 

Okay, I'm done whining!

 

Now I'm going to tell you about the good stuff that happened this last week.

We had an awesome zone training meeting and we had interviews with president, so that was super exciting and really fun! Right now our zone is working non stop and they are really seeing success.

 

Dresden Zone

The biggest good news of all!!!!!  

 

Raju Patel not only made us delicious vegetarian Indian food but he also accepted the invitation to be baptized this coming Sunday! please keep him in your prayers, he really needs it.

This week has been fantastic and this coming week will be even better.

 

 

Disease, deportation , and a dang cool experience on exchange

First off... I got a Haircut!

 

This week our investigator on baptismal date got super sick and we had to move the date of his baptism to the first week in March. So sad. We are going to give him a blessing this week in hopes that he will feel better soon. It sure seems that all of our investigators are getting sick and keep canceling appointments due to sickness. What is going around? We have been trying our hardest to meet with people this week but things just kept going bad.

 

We were able to teach the Salioski Family the 1st lesson two weeks ago and they loved it! They are super prepared and we were planning on inviting them to baptism this week and we were sure that they would say yes........ but... we called them on Tuesday to meet again and we received some really sad news. It turns out that our Macedonian family are not just super prepared to receive the restored gospel but also....illegal immigrants and are getting deported this week... So that is not exactly great news.

 

On a brighter side, I got to go on exchange this week with Elder Nielson, a missionary from Delta Utah who is going home in two weeks. We had an awesome experience as we were opening our mouths "talking to everyone we pass" and had been out in the snow for 3 hours talking to people and just kept getting rejected and yelled at by people when we saw a old man walking down the road and we decided to go and talk to him. We went up and just said hello and he was so happy to see us he said  "what you are doing is so good!" and " I knew you were servants of God before you even talked to me", so we talked to him for a while and we asked him how he had such a strong testimony. He told us about his experience as a younger man where he found out for himself that he was a child of God and that we are all children of God. This man had such a strong testimony and he was not ashamed to share it. In fact, as we sat and talked he said he wanted to sing us a song from his church and he sang to us softly and started crying in the middle of a busy road. He then read our name tags and saw  Kirche Jesu Christi Der Heiligen Der Letzen Tage

He said he had never heard of our church before and he would definitely be interested in learning more about it in his home town in Austria. He then grabbed us and bore his testimony about our work that we are doing and he hugged us and gave us his blessing and then he tottered on down the street. 

Elder Nielson and I just sat there in shock for probably 5 minutes. I know that that sounds like such a weird and random experience but the spirit was so strong and that man strengthened my testimony! 

This week has been a great week! It has been a really hard and sad week, but I have learned so much in the last 7 days and I can't wait for this next week!:)

I really just love being a missionary!