Wunder

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This week was the last week of our 40 day fast with the ward (different members fast on different days). We saw a couple days of miracles and it was really cool. On Thursday we went to the city of Swarzenbeck where we are teaching a man from Iraq how to speak German. His son has a rare heart problem and so he has to stay at home with his son and he can’t go to his German class so we agreed to come by once in a while and help them learn some simple German. A really great guy, he worked in a hospital back in Iraq and now has almost nothing, he has two sons: one is 11 and reminds you of my little brother and the other one with the heart problem is only seven. The 11 year old is such a funny kid. He loves American and he speaks a little bit of English and wants to practice only English with us.

Spent a lot of the day finding and we were able to give out four Book of Mormons in about an hour and a half’s time. Really cool, I’ve never experienced that before. This 40 day fasting has really strengthened my testimony of fasting because we really have seen miracles that simply don’t happen without the help of the Lord. On Friday we had some time in the city of Lüneburg to do some finding. With about an hour of time we were able to give out to Two more Book of Mormons and then later at the end of our time there we went to our friend at his antique store and we were able to give him one as well. Things are going fine, happy to be here.

Elder Winkel

jumpinginfieldchoppingwood

Stake Conference

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Last Monday we spent some time in Hamburg and we went and visited this park that’s got these giant swings, it was pretty cool. Right when we got there a guy came from the city to hook up the zip line (that you sit on). Well after tightening it all up he let us have a go at it, Elder Adams and I decided that if he pushed me it would make for more of a fun filled experience… So with the city worker watching from his van, I go speeding down this zip line that’s only a few feet off the ground, I went fast all right, as I hit the stop spring at the end I swooped up to the top of the cable and came down so hard that it snapped the rubber cord connected to the seat… which made for a pretty solid landing not on my feet. So the dude in his van got out and kind of scratched his head and put a new one on. I was holding a camera the whole time – I’ll try to send it with.

We did a lot of finding this week to continue on with our goals. Wednesday our goal was to give a Book of Mormon out, and so we went to the old GDR city of Boizenburg. We went by a member to see if they had any ideas, the family are converts of about 8 years and they are great, the husband is currently the Stake Clerk. We prayed together and then looked at a map, he had a good feeling about a street so we went and doored it to death and what do you know, we gave out a Book of Mormon.

The end of the week we went up and stayed with my boys up in Hamburg for Stake Conference, always great. Elder Adams made some killer German pancakes for breakfast as well.

Stake Conference was good, we had a couple seventy there and there is something special about when a man gives his testimony in broken German he learned years ago on his mission. Simple and from the heart.

Elder Winkel

Hunter@parkelders

Barmherzigkeit

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We had an interesting day in the woods this week. Awhile back my companion and I did some doors on a street that we picked out with a member family and we came across a dude and the only way to describe him is a mix of the Underminer from “The Incredibles” and a bit of a spitting image of Radagast the Brown from “The Hobbit”.

And the man can’t hear/understand our German to save a life… But awhile back we gave him a Book of Mormon and told him to call us if he needed help picking up wood from the forest and such. So this week he randomly called us and needed our help. So we met over by his place and his “hardcore German old man” friend pulls up on a scooter and a random Russian guy pops out of nowhere and they all pile into his “Home Alone” van and we followed them 30 minutes deep into the woods. Well here comes the joke, a couple Germans, a couple Americans, and a Russian all go into the woods, how long does it take them with all their strong accents to agree on how to stack the wood in the trailer?

Well longer than it should have.

The two Germans started to really go at it, and we and the Russian guy had a nice laugh about it. And in the end we gave our info to the Russian dude and he said he’d be happy to meet with us.

Read a bit about Mormon this week – the man was observed as being “quick to observe”. I thought about what that meant to me, for me it is being “quick to observe the prompting of the spirit”. And that is not easy. This week we were about done with finding and parked the car and were about to go in and make some phone calls, when we felt like we should go walk around the last 15 minutes. In 15 minutes we saw only 1 person and gave out 1 Book of Mormon. How interesting how the spirit works, blessings will always follow.

Elder Winkel

2eldersdorf4elders

GC

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It wasn’t too busy of a week, but it was nice to finish off with General Conference. On Friday we had an exchange and I went with our German Elder Behrndt where we did some finding. We were able to give out a Book of Mormon to some atheist dude. The next day we drove up to Hamburg and exchanged back, and watched General Conference in the Stake Center. Afterwards we got some subway and spent the night with my beloved zone leaders Elder Adams and Bailey. And then Sunday morning we watched the priesthood session and then two hours later watched the Saturday afternoon session and then two hours later watched the Sunday morning Session. We ended up then spending another night with the zone leaders and today we took our P-day in Hamburg. Elder Anderson had a member that he baptized come visit us so we met him and went to the harbor in Hamburg, took the ferry and saw some cool stuff.

Conference was great! Always great to hear from the prophets and apostles. I love the central message of the gospel and how simple it is. All of our questions can be answered through the spirit and the Holy Ghost who is our teacher. It must not be over complicated. As you can imagine I thoroughly enjoyed President Utchdorf’s talk. The Germans didn’t really hear it, I guess the translators got thrown off or something, but for us watching it in English it was pretty gut.

Elder Winkel

  • GC
  • Elder Adams found a lost sheep

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