Yet Another Week

Wow, another week has now gone by. This week was SO much better than last week, mainly yesterday. We got 5 new investigators yesterday, and 4 of them were in Church! We have were so incredibly blessed!

Wednesday was a bit stressful though. In order to get tickets to Zürich, we call the Finanz Sekretär  (Finance Secretary) and he orders us the tickets, and gives us the confirmation code. To get to Zürich there are two different options, one through Feldkirch, and the other through Bregenz. It turns out the the only one that would get us to Schwamendingen (in Switzerland) was through Feldkirch. But the tickets that we were given were through Bregenz. The earliest connection got us into Zürich at 7:51, and then we still had to buy tickets to Schwamendingen. It is possible to preorder tickets INTO Switzerland, but not IN Switzerland, which is why we needed to purchase tickets to Schwamendingen from Zürich. Then take a 25 minute Tram ride to Schwamendingen. And we were told that we HAD to be there by 8. So I panicked, it wasn't possible to arrive any earlier than that.

Then I talked to the Zone leaders, and they said that it wasn't a big deal, they just said that so that no one could possibly be later than 8:30. Ok, so I felt a bit of relief, until I looked into detail at out connections and realized that the had 2 to 3 minute overlays. 4 of them. If there was so much as a tiny delay on any train, we could miss the next connection and then the earliest we could get to Zürich would have been 8:21. So, I was again feeling a bit stressed about it, but we couldn't do anything about it, it was in Gods hands at that point. And sure enough everything turned out ok, getting into St. Gallen ( our last connection) our train that we were on was 5 minutes late, but our connection train was also delayed, so we made it just fine. :-)

The Meeting in Schwamendingen was great! It was really neat to have a private meeting with an Apostle Elder Russell M. Nelson). And because his daughter is our Mission presidents wife, we got to see a different side of him than others would otherwise get to. Sister Miles talked for a bit about some of her memories of growing up. Elder Nelson plays the organ really well, and growing up, he would play play songs on the organ and Sister Miles and her 8 Sisters ( Elder Nelson has 9 daughters!) would make up dances to them and sing. :-) Not a story you would really hear under any other circumstance.

Elder Nelson talked for a bit about the Organization of the church, and priesthood keys, then opened up for questions. He mentioned that one of the Quorum of the Apostles' favorite scriptures is D&C 107:38 as the church is continuing to grow and the ability of the 12 to do everything is becoming increasingly difficult. :-)

38 It is the duty of the traveling high council to call upon the ^aSeventy, when they need assistance, to fill the several calls for preaching and administering the gospel, instead of any others.

He explained a bit about the quorums of the 70, the first two quorums are General Authorities, the rest of the quorums are Area Authorities, or area 70s. 

I don't have much time today, so I will only pull a couple of point out from what he said (based off questions that were asked). One of the things he talked about was true repentance, he said that the word repentance in Greek is Metanoeo. He proceeded to break down the word: Meta means change, Metamorphosis is the process of a caterpillar changing into a Butterfly. Meta: change; Morph: form. ( He gave a few more examples, but I will just go on) Meta means Change. The part "noeo" is related to 4 roots: 1) "noos" meaning Mind; 2) "gnos" meaning Knowledge; 3) "pneuma" meaning air, or Spirit; 4) "pneo" meaning Breath. So repentance is a change of mind, knowledge, spirit and breath ( meaning, coming to the realization that every breath we take is given to us of Him). I have never heard Repentance explained like that before

Another point that was brought up that I thought was cool, was about Gideon in the Bible. Gideon was told three times that the army he had was two large, and the end result was 300. 300 against 150,000. Which is  1:500 ratio. Then he brought up how there are about 7 Billion people on the earth right now, and about 14 million members of the church. A 1:500 ratio. That was a cool analogy. He talked about how that number was perfect for the Lord in that time despite the odds, and how its the same today that no matter how out numbered we are, just like the 300 that overcame the 150,000 we can overcome all as well. 

Haha he told us that after he gives his conference address that we are going to be swamped. He said the theme will be on, if you need help, go to the missionaries. It should be an interesting talk. :-) 

He said  more things, and I could go on for a while, but I don't have time. We woke up that morning at 3:50, and we made it back to our apartment that night (straight from Zürich) at 7:50 that night. (The meeting with Elder Nelson lasted 3 hours, yes there were other speakers as well, not just a straight three hours of Elder Nelson. Then we had a 3 hour meeting after that with the Zone Leaders). So we weren't able to go by on Stefan like we had planned to. Luckily there was no appointment made, we would have had to cancel it. 

The Main part of the week was just normal, we had fallen out appointments, a lot of service and finding time. Saturday was Brutal. I started showing signs of a cold on Friday, and Saturday is when it really got bad. We had a full day packed with 3 appointments and hopefully a be able to teach a 4th lesson to someone who said to come back on Saturday. That morning we got a number of phone calls, EVERYTHING fell out. Even the person with whom we were supposed to be able to meet wasn't there. A straight 8 hours of finding. With me being sick that was BRUTAL.

I tell that the Lord helped me through the day, because walking through the door that night (being done with the day) was like walking into a brick wall. I had no strength at that point and went to bed. ( I was able to have a couple pieces of Toast, and take some Nyquil). Which really helped, I woke up the next morning feeling better, but my voice was nearly gone. Super low, and nearly gone. Which when you consider that I had to translate Sacrament meeting, teach and investigator class second hour, and teach Elders Quorum 3rd hour, was quite the adventure. Elder Robins and I had to do splits yesterday for the investigator class (which is why I needed to teach, and couldn't just pass it off to Elder Robins). Smart's 2 daughters needed to be taught in English, and we had a German couple show up that needed to be taught in German. 

That is a cool story ( the German couple). So they were on vacation in the united States, and happened to stop through Salt Lake City. They visited Temple Square, and gave there information to the missionaries who passed it along to us. We got it and called to try and set up appointment. They live in Grünenbach, which is clear the most North-East corner of our area, in Germany. So I gave them a call to see what we could do to meet up with them. They told me that the missionaries out of Salt Lake had called the day before and told them that there were no missionaries that were really close but if they wanted they could come to Dornbirn and visit our Church meeting.

So they ( the Kirchmanns) told me that because we were so far away, that they would just come visit us in the church. THEY DROVE AN HOUR just to come to Church and meet with us! From a single visit at Temple square they had enough interest to drive one hour to make it to our 9 am Church meeting. Despite being Jet-lagged. They stayed for all 3 hours, and stayed after for awhile and talked to a lot of the members. The ward reacted really amazingly. Very warm and friendly. And they are going to come back next week!

Later that same day, despite having a fallen out appointment, we met someone else who let us right in, and we taught him a lesson 0. He said that he could believe that what we said was true, that he would read in the Book of Mormon, and that he would pray about it. He also accepted a commitment to be baptized, and if things go next time like they did yesterday, we could set a baptismal date! We got 5 new investigators yesterday, who all have really awesome potential!

Anyway, that will have to do for now. I am doing better, much better actually. The reason we are low on time, is that we want to go and hike the 2nd Rappenloch Schlucht hike. I attached a few pictures of first one. There was a rockfall last year during the winter, so we could only go part way. But it was still incredibly pretty.

Which is why we have determined to do the 2nd Hike to Staufen See ( a lake up past the gorge) today, and then the third hike through Alpenloch schlucht, next week! I am sad that I am only just recently discovering these amazing hikes. There are hundreds of different hikes to different areas. I am most certainly need to come back someday and do as many as I can.

Anyway, I hope all is well at home!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen