Well like it says completely clearly in the title, another
week has gone by ;-). This week was pretty good actually, it also has its
adventures as well. :-)
First P-day, we went to Meersburg Castle, that was
really cool! People still live there (which for me is crazy, I can't imagine
having a castle as my home...) but there is a large part which has been
dedicated as a Middle ages Museum. I will attach some pictures in a
moment. (We did not get pictures of Meersburg, maybe next week)
That was a blast, it was Elder Buchanan, the three of us and
Derrick. I member of the ward who I love a lot, he is really good guy. I think
he is 19 or 20, He is here from Nigeria, and who has an absolutely terrible
past (I may have mentioned him last year when I was serving in Vorarlberg).
The Buchanans are WAY TOO NICE. They offered to take us to Meersburg, and were
wondering if we wanted to go, The only problem was the entrance fee (and that
sister Buchanan wouldn't be able to go) The entrance fee was somewhat
expensive, and we had originally declined the offer, because of price and because
Sister Buchanan couldn't go. Then they called me back and said that they would
pay for everything, and that Sister Buchanan would stay home because it would
be a lot of fun for Derrick. So we went, and then they brought us back to their
apartment at 5 with a nice dinner prepared and then we had a good conversation/
lesson with Derrick, before heading to our "Appointment" at 7 that
night.
I say that with the quotation marks, because the "appointment"
was with a homeless drunk man that I talked to while we were walking around and
he said that he wanted to meet us. On Monday night at 7 at the park. So we
went, and waited for 15 minutes (we walked and talked to some people as well
in the mean time). He didn't show up so we decided to go by on Scott, someone who
I knew from back when I was in Vorarlberg.
That was an adventure. So I locate the street on the map (we do everything by a map here in this mission...) and I found it, and found,
what I thought be a shorter way, with some additional streets, instead of
riding to the Bascilica in Weingarten, to turn well before that, and it should
have been a straight shot. That is, if the map we had was actually a decent
map. So we got lost, none of the roads existed for which we searched for, and
we got out somewhere, and when we finally decided to go the long way, it was
going to take too long, and we would have been late home. So we road back. And
to our astonishment, we made it back to the apartment in 15 minutes. (We have
gotten good at efficient Bike travel) so we used the time to go talk to some
people for a few minutes, and I found a really cool man out of India who knows
Derrick. But that was Monday.
Tuesday was neat, we went to Zone Training meeting in
Singen, and the Buchanans drove us there, through Meersburg (the city) and
then with the Faerie across Bodensee, to Konstanz from there we drove to
Singen. THAT WAS SO COOL. I was only able to take a couple picture though,
because it wasn't a very long ride, and it was also the only time that we could
really eat lunch. That was cool. Then that night we finally met with Marriet,
the Nigerian girl who has before expressed a lot of interest to get baptized,
but wants her family to be there. The lesson was interesting. According to the
Buchanans she wasn't herself at all and something was wrong. She said that she
was having "personal problems" what ever that is supposed to mean. I
hope that things will go better for her. She couldn't come to church yesterday
because she had some friends visiting. And she actually hasn't been to church
in a long while.
That was pretty much it for Tuesday. On Wednesday, we had an
appointment with Ley, who we can't really do much for. He has taken a lot of
drugs in the past, which have permanently effected his ability to think and reason.
He isn't really capable of hearing and understanding our message, which is
hard, because he heard of baptism and wants to be baptized, but he has some
really weird beliefs, and because of the drugs in the past, he can't understand
us. Sometimes its as if we aren't even saying anything at all and he just says
the same things over and over again.
After that we decided to go and try to Find Scott again. I
HATE OUR MAP. We eventually found the street, and there is only one building
there, which is a warehouse. And it turns out that he lives there. We talked to
some people outside who said he lives there. So we went and walked around this
wearhouse until we found out where his room was. Of course it had to be on the
level where they store all the miscellaneous items and all the lights don't
work. Dark room with weird objects, it was rather sketchy. But we found his
room and had a good Visit with him.
He is quite the interesting character to
say the least. He has had a lot of rough things happen to him in the past, one
of which involves a close family member intentionally setting him up to fail in
a business which caused him a huge amount of debt. A lot of things haven't gone
his way and he described himself as a servant of God who is worn out. We will
see if we can help do some service for him.
Thursday we spent in Friedrichshafen, That is such a beautiful
area, right on the Bodensee. Anyway, again we had map problems with streets not
connecting in ways that the map said... :-P So we were only able to attempt to
go by on a potential in Friedrichshafen, whose house number actually didn't
exist (there's nothing greater than spending an hour using a faulty map trying
to find a street so that we can visit someone, only to finally find it and
realize that the house number doesn't exist! :-P). But on the bright side I had
a really neat conversation with a lady on the way, who didn't necessarily
express interest right then, but maybe someday.
Then we met with the Zeller
Family, a family who I knew when I was in Dornbirn, but for some unknown reason
the missionaries stopped meeting with. We had a good discussion with Mr.
Zeller, although his wife very obviously has more interest. She wasn't able to
get there until only a few minutes before we had to leave.
Then we went to
Markdorf to meet with another family that I found in the area book. When I
first talked to him, he asked me if I needed directions how to get there (having not had the experience with the map yet, I didn't know this would be
necessary) and I said no. We looked up the address on the record, and the
street name seemed to us incomplete, and there were two options that it could
be. So we tried both, and then later (after finally getting someone to talk to
us on the street) figured out that the address wasn't incomplete, that it
existed on a hill, and that there was only one house there and that our map
didn't even know that it existed. By that time, we had to cancel the
appointment, and head home because we were in danger of being late. :-P
So, to sum up, we learned our lesson, that we need a new
map, and are desperately waiting for the arrival of iPads, with the ability to
look up address on google... :-) I probably won't get to see that day, as it
most likely won't take place here until nearly January, but that is ok.
:-)
Luckily on Saturday and Sunday we spent the whole day with
the Buchanans visiting Members, and potentials in Friedrichshafen/Wangen and
other surrounding areas. Luckily they have a GPS in the car. One of the people
we visited was in Markdorf so we decided to plug in the address of the family
and we drove out to find it. TALK ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. That will be fun
trying to get back to. We went and knocked on the door, and now one was home,
we just woke up a small dog which came out and attacked Elder Kingery... :-) No
I am not kidding, it went for his pant leg was pulling on it growling and
barking. That was funny.
We had to hike up the last little bit to the house
because the hill was too much for poor GW (GW, is the 4 cylinder eco friendly
Opal that we have here in Ravensburg. The name "GW" is Sister Buchanan's
name for it. It stands for Gutless Wonder. ;-)). Haha, I still laugh at that,
especially remembering Elder Sampson's Sarcastic Commentary on it last year
"That's the thing that I love about the car, is that I can push the pedal
to the floor, and it doesn't go any faster" ;-) )
Anyway. That pretty much sums up our adventure, we visited
an older lady of our ward yesterday who can't come to church because of age and
distance, so we took her the sacrament, and sang (in what actually was pretty
good 4 part harmony) the hymn "O bleibe Herr" (literally "O Lord Stay", maybe Abide with me??) I don't know the
English name for it anymore, but it is beautiful, especially in German, and is
one of my favorites :-) She spoke really fluent Schwäbisch. That was so fun to
hear it again, especially now that I can actually make sense of it. I found out
after thought that I am the only one who really understands everything that she
is saying. :-) President Buchanan said he only understands about half of what
she says.
Yeah, the bike problems have continued, the rubber on the
handle bars has turned into a puddy like substance, which has been sticking to
my hands and turning them black. So I managed to get some Electrical tape, and
now the problem is fixed. :-) I will need knew brake pads, and the back brakes,
no matter how hard I pull them, don't do a darn thing I happened to figure that
out going down one of the largest hills in Ravensburg... (luckily the front
brakes work really well, as long as you don't pull them too hard... ;-)) So I
will be getting those today. After that I should be fine, until next week when
you will probably here of me getting a flat tire, or having the frame collapse
or something...
Another funny thing, David Barluschke just moved into this
ward. He was my first Zone leader. He is going to get married in a month or so.
Anyway, just having in the ward is really funny. He is one of the missionaries
who was in the epic bike wreck, and what is even more Hilarious, the bike that
he destroyed in that wreck is that of his future father in law. :-) When I found
that out I made fun of him even more, which led into the story of how he and Steffani got together (to show that they didn't get together when he was
serving in her ward) which is even funnier. Long story short she thought that
he was a complete idiot when he was serving in her ward (there is a long story
behind that) and every time the missionaries were invited over, she would go
take a nap in her room. After his mission (since he is German) he came
back and visited a few times. And now they will be getting married in October.
:-)
Anyway, that was pretty much our week. Its been a bit
different getting used to having bikes, you can't do things the same way as you
would when you have public transit. What we have come up with, is that we use
the bikes to travel to a city in which we want to work, chain up our bikes
somewhere, and then spend our whole time there walking around talking to
people, as we go and visit people. Its still slow going, but we have a lot of
promise for this week, which I am so happy about. We still suffered some
dropped appointments last week, but we also managed to teach more lessons than
any missionary companionship has in a long time(well over a year or so). And
we are only starting. There is so much potential here! I don't understand why,
but we are being so incredibly blessed right now, and I haven't worked nearly
as hard as I have needed to in the past to get things going.
I am so grateful
for this work, and for the wonderful chance that I have to be a part of it. I
love it so much, and am so excited to keep working throughout my whole life. I
am so grateful for Jesus Christ, my Savior. I have a much greater appreciation
for him now than I ever had. In Isaiah 48:21 It talks about the Israelite s
didn't suffer any thirst as God led them through the Deseret because he
let water flow from a rock, the rock was first broken then water came from it.
I came to realize in that moment, how symbolic that really was. In 1
Corinthians 10:1-4 we read that Christ was that rock, or rather that rock is
symbolic of ´Christ. That Rock needed to first be broken, before the
life-sustaining water could come forth.
Reading in John 7 we can find that the
Water is symbolic of the Spirit. Christ atoned for our sins, suffered and died,
so that we would have we could, among other things have that water which we
need to make it through this desert of trials and hardship we call life. And I
am here trying to do what it tells me to do in Verse 20 of Isaiah 48, to
proclaim the message with "Fröhlichem Schall" ("Joyful Sound") to the ends of the
earth, that the Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob.
That even when times are
rough, there is a way prepared that we may find peace, not a peace from the
world, but from the Comforter, which is to speak, that water to help us make it
through this life. I know that is true, and am grateful to be apart of
it!
I wish you all a great week!
love,
Elder Ryan K. Christensen
Here are some pictures of when I was in Munich and we went
and saw Neuschwannstein. Sorry I actually don't have any more time, so these
pictures will have to do for this week! That and my battery just died, so the
last picture that I wanted to send, will also have to wait. But I hope you
enjoy these 2!
No comments:
Post a Comment