All is gut in Minden!

All is gut in Minden! It’s just really cold and no one is outside anymore! A problem I’ve found is that we teach a lot of old ladies, and to meet with them we have to have a joint teacher because they’re alone in their house. Unfortunately we only have 5 ward members that will go with us, but they all have work during the day. We found this lady but we’ve had to cancel our last 2 appointments because she lives at home alone and we can’t find joint teachers! Oh well, the Lord will find a way!

Last week we took a train to Bad Oeynhausen, then took a bus to the middle of nowhere to go look for this old contact. We couldn’t find the address because we were pretty much in rolling hills. We found this little house and asked a lady if she could help us find it. All she said was “you must be looking for Benni” and then pointed to this forest with a little dirt road (pretty sketch). We went up the road and found this old barn this guy has made the corner of into a shack, so we knocked on it. This crazy looking dude answered, said he wasn’t interested, but said to come in … Turns out that 3 weeks before we showed up God told him in his head to get rid of his meth and weed … so he did! He threw his meth in the fireplace and pulled out all his weed plants. Then then next day God told him to quit smoking … so he did! Then he read in the Bible that we need to follow ALL of Gods commandments, and he believes that God is gathering his children in one church for the second coming. He’s been looking for a church that follows all of those things. So yeah then the missionaries just randomly show up a month later. BUT our church worships on Sunday, which is the first day on the German calendar. So he found a church that worships on Saturday the 7th day of the week in Germany. He also said he has found lots of problems with his church so he’s not sure. But he wouldn’t listen to anything that we had to say, and he wouldn’t read in the BofM or pray about it. So we bore testimony and left. It was way weird but I think we’ll go back in the future. It just takes forever to get to his house.

Christmas here is huge! Because there is no thanksgiving, the decorations go up after Halloween! It’s awesome!

For thanksgiving we had another exchange. I got to go to Bielefeld again, and go with Elder Barrios to Detmold! It’s pretty much the Christmas town! It was such a clean place and the people were pretty nice! And I got to have McDonalds at the top of the train station, so very American. I’m buying a Christmas tree today! And a coat.

The work here is hard, but every mission is that way (just some a little more than others…haha).

HE IS THE GIFT!

Elder Winkel