Finding Week

To Mom, Dad, Josh, Cassie, and Mark, who all got to talk to me a bit yesterday, this e-mail may be a bit repetitive.

Parental editorial comment:  Ryan called for Mother's Day and talked to us on the phone for about 45 minutes.  It was so amazing to hear his voice, and hear him laugh.  Almost as good as having him home with us.  As he talked about his areas, and companions, and how hard the work is, there was no sense of frustration from him.  He was very matter of fact (Ryan...matter of fact??) in telling us that he was happy and just wants to help people know and understand what he already knows about the gospel. As we read his letters, we always try to put a it in his voice as much as possible, but it was so good just to hear his voice. We very much enjoyed the call up until we had to say goodbye, which brought tears to everyone.  Tears of joy because of the chance to talk with him, and a small bit of sadness knowing we won't get that chance again until December.  Man we love this kid.

Sorry... And sorry I haven't yet posted pictures of the apartment yet, we had hoped to have gotten a new couch, and 2 new tables, because the existing ones were terrible ( My desk actually collapsed on me the day we took it to the dump). Anyway Elder Sampson rented a "truck" (Which is more like a Minivan on Steroids) and the plan was, to pick up the two new desks, from Kika, then take the old ones and the couch to the dump. Kika had told us that they had two desks in stock for us, and that we could come and pick them up. Well it turns out that they only had one desk in stock, and that the other one should come sometime this week. Alright, well at least we got the one desk. Halfway through assembly, Elder Esplin realized that they had only given us half of the required instructions to make the desk. So now we are both lacking desks, well technically I am only lacking a half of a desk, but the half that I am missing happens to be the most important part of it... Anyway long story short, Elder Esplin is using the kitchen table, and I am using the couch. Without any shelves or places to organize our study materials, the apartment is a bit of a mess... So I will send pictures, when we get the new desks, and everything gets restored to its original order :-) 

Its been a fairly decent week. On Tuesday I went to Ravensburg, Germany, on an exchange. Which was fairly cool, because they speak Schwäbisch there, and before I left Esslingen, I could actually speak a little bit of it :-). So it was fun to go back and to hear it again. The exchange felt fairly short, Elder Sampson gave us a ride back in the "truck", and it took us roughly 2 hours to get to Ravensburg. That took up a large amount of time, then we ate Lunch, or dinner, not exactly sure it was like 4.00 in the afternoon, but after that we went out and proselyted. The exchanging was comparatively uneventful, We street contacted for a few hours, and went vorbei (went by) on a few potentials. We had an appointment with a family that evening at 7, and having arrived a bit early we went and did some door-ing. Something really cool happened, we door-ed into a family who was eating dinner right then, and they had invited their friends over to have dinner with them. Their friends were members of the Church :-) It was pretty cool to door into someone who had members over, we didn't stay long, but I can only imagine what the topic of conversation was after we left. :-) The appointment was pretty short, just a get-to-know-you kind of thing. 

Thursday was interesting, this day, as well as one other day this month, have been dedicated to nothing but finding. So that is what we did. Our original plan was to go to Bregenz, because there are a lot of people there. But it turns out that they are all tourists... Bregenz is right on the edge of Lake Constance, which is where everyone comes on vacation. So after 4 hours of talking to people, having only found 1 person, we decided that Bregenz wasn't where we were supposed to be. So we caught the train back to Dornbirn. Innenstadt, Dornbirn is usually full of people, especially with the "Dornbirn in Bloom" festival going on right now. But the thing is, right in the middle of Innenstadt, where everyone is, is a huge Catholic Cathedral. Which means that we can't proselyte there 1) because its a missionary rule and 2) I think its just plain disrespectful to proselyte in front of another religion's church. So we had to scratch that off the list of places we could go. We ended up deciding to go door to door for the remaining 4 hours of the day. Going door to door isn't something that I really like, because it's slow. You walk to a door, ring the bell, wait for someone to answer, if they will answer, then if they tell you they aren't interested, you walk to the next door ( or in apartment complexes, just ring the next klingel (bell)). Its a very slow process, where as with Street contacting, if some tells you no, you can quickly talk someone else; you meet more people and are more likely to find someone with interest. But Dornbirn just isn't made for street contacting, its too quite of an area, so we went door to door. I was actually fairly surprised though, we found 8 additional people who were interested in learning about the Book of Mormon. That was such a long day... 8 hours of nothing but talking to people, finding only 9 people during that time, 5 of which were found in the last 30 minutes! 

We gave out 7 book of Mormons that day! 6 German and a Turkish, as well as found people who wanted copies in Arabic, Persian, and Serbian. Exactly what that will mean for the coming weeks, I am not sure. But I can only pray that those who took a Book of Mormon, give us a call so that we can meet with them! ( There were a number of people who took a Book of Mormon, but didn't want us to meet with them, and they aren't counted in the 9). My heart goes out to Ravensburg though,  they talked to people for that same time as well, but they didn't find a single person who had any interest whatsoever. So, as hard as it was here, at least we were able to find a few people. 

Things are starting to be on a bit of an upswing here, we have been working really hard, and are starting to see some fruits of our labors. For example, last night, after our Phone call, Elder Esplin and I, went right back to work going door to door. At about 8:30 we found Nicole and Andi. They are a married couple with 2 young children, that don't live to far from us. She (Nicole) is against organized religion but believes that she has a personal relationship with God. I don't really know much about Andi, he is heading for a 3 week business trip in Vienna today, so for part of the time he was busy making sure he was ready. But we talked about the Book of Mormon, where it comes from, our personal testimonies, and that we aren't here to convince, or persuade them. That are purpose as missionaries is to invite others to find out for themselves. I think that was the reason they let us in, after we said twice that we just invite; we don't persuade, is really when things seemed to open up. They invited us back in after Andi gets back from his trip to talk more about the Book of Mormon! Just like that we found 2 new investigators. In a matter of a couple of weeks we went from 0 to 3, granted the 2 can't meet till June, but still! :-) And we have a long list of promising potentials, so we will see how that goes. 

Haha, so I have kind of a funny story that happened this week... After our District Leader meeting in Winterthur, we came back and visited a member of the ward. He is probably in his mid to late 50's and is the only member in his family. A common thing here in Europe when someone invites you in is to ask you if you want tea, usually a fruit tea of some sort, which is fine. With non members we always ask to make sure we know what kind of tea it is before we drink it. Well he offers us tea and we accept, and Elder Esplin asks him what flavor, and he says "Irish Cream". He shows us the box and sets in on the counter. He pours us each a cup and we start talking. Well, I am not much of a tea person, I only drink it because its rude not to. So I didn't take a sip right away, I was going to wait. In the meantime Elder Esplin takes two big scoops of sugar in his and stirs it around. I glance over at the box, and I notice something. The box was just far enough away that I couldn't quite read it, but I thought I saw the word "schwarztee", "Black tea". I turn to Elder Esplin, to warn him that I think this could be black tea, but I turned just in time to see him take a large sip from the tea. So at this point I have a bit of a compromise. I think this is black tea, I am not sure. But we are at a MEMBER'S home. He wouldn't give us black tea would he? He should know that we don't drink it. So do I ask? What if I am wrong? Will he be offended?  But what if I am right? I decided that I one thing was for sure, I couldn't drink the tea. He asks how it tastes, Elder Esplin says "Amazing!"  I say that I haven't tried it yet. Then he kind of looks at me and says, well try it! I slowly slide the cup toward me, praying for help on what I should do, I can't drink it, but how do I get out of this situation?. At which point I ask the question, "so what kind of tea is this?"  he says, I think its a few types of Fruit tea, and there may be a bit of black tea in it. The expression on Elder Esplin's was PRICELESS. Relieved, I push the cup away and say, we don't drink black tea. He was a bit flustered and apologized, and the situation resolved itself after that. After we left, Elder Esplin walks out and turns to me and says "Elder, I just drank black tea, with whiskey in it!" (a bit in shock, not in excitement ;-) ) ( it turns out that the tea had whiskey flavoring in it as well :-) ). We both laughed and thought it was kind of funny, especially how I when I went to warn him, it was too late. Kind of a mix between spiritual, and funny, it makes for good memory :-) 

Anyway I am out of time, I hope all is well with you at home. Things are going well here! 

Love, 

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

To Uncle Tracy, who was sitting in the train station in Munich ready to catch a flight home and sent us the following picture asking if Ryan knew where it was, his repsonse is:

 Ryan's Response:

Munich Bahnhof (station)!! I haven't seen that in awhile...

Well, Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) to be exact.

Needless to say, he was excited that Tracy was in Munich at a familar place.  Thanks Tracy, for the picture!