BEGEISTERT!

Mom! IM TRAINING!!! I'm ecstatic! BEGEISTERT! It's such an honor to train!!! So yeah, I'll go down to Frankfurt on Tuesday and meet up with all the other trainers, a few of whom are part of my MTC group and Sister Baker again :)  Then we'll get paired, have a few more meetings and then stay at that Hotel again just like the very first day! I'm so excited to relive that experience from my first day in Germany, only as a trainer!! 

I'm nervous about my Deutsch. I'm now in charge of translating for sacrament :p  Scary assignment... But whom the Lord calls, he qualifies (wisdom from his cousin Elder Cook's Email this week).

Glad to hear things at home are improving, I'm reminded that obedience brings blessings and disobedience causes those blessings to cease. It's this knowledge that has influenced my mission. I do strive to be as obedient as I can. Often times my natural man gets the best of me, and in small ways I break the rules (stay up late, skip studies) but I also notice the difference in the days where I follow to the very best of my abilities. Missionaries are made imbued, endowed, powerful teachers through the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is a blessing from that obedience. This is not only a Mission Truth. It is a time tested, proven fact of life. 

When we are obedient to the Lord, he sends The Holy Spirit to guide us in nearly everything. We still have agency but we feel his will for us, and when we can recognize his will, well we are blessed like Alma. When we command a mountain to move, it shall move, and when we tell the sky's to let down water, they pour. Because we know gods will and are obedient to it, and he know that we won't ask for things contrary to his will. Ultimately that is our goal here, to do Gods will. When we do that we will do everything that will make us happy, and everything that will allow us to return to his presence. 

I've been reading a lot through the History of the Church. I often read of members receiving the gift of Prophecy. The bible dictionary says this about Prophets

The work of a Hebrew prophet was to act as God’s messenger and make known God’s will. He was to be, above all, a preacher of righteousness. In a general sense a prophet is anyone who has a testimony of Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost

I would contend that this still happens very often. Members receive the Spirit of prophecy as they make known Gods will and preach of Righteousness. Sometimes I feel as though the spiritual thoughts in my emails flow very easily and would love to say that I'm able to receive this spirit, although I never really prophesy of anything to happen. Haha but maybe I'm reaching, I just felt very guided as I wrote that about the Holy Ghost and Obedience <3 

Nothing super new, so only a photo of me today haha, 

We're having a grill day with the district before we split up and go all over so I'll send more later today <3 I miss and Love you All!!

Wherefore am I thy servant?

Hallo Familie! Wie geht's euch??

No, I already know how it goes for ya'll. I'm super happy that y'all are so happy! It does me good to hear of the blessings at home. Things are difficult here. Germany is cold and windy, the people are closed and the investigators we have can't be baptized because they are refugees. 

I LOVE my mission. This is the greatest work I have ever done, and it's also the hardest. We strive to do good work, to help people come to the Lord, and all the while we, or me this last week, I am struggling with feeling enough. I'm nervous that I'm not doing everything I can. These feelings of inadequacy are akin to Humility, but are something completely different.

There is a difference between knowing you need help and feeling helpless. And this week has been feelings of the second. Not to the extent of helplessness but feelings of inadequacy and thoughts that I'm not what the lord needs. I'm afraid that my disorganized manner allows potentials to slip through the cracks, and my studying habits leave much to be desired. I'm worried I'm too prideful, to argumentative and too critical. While writing these things a scripture comes to mind. Enoch is called to be a prophet...

Moses 6:31 

And when Enoch had heard these words, he bowed himself to the earth, before the Lord, and spake before the Lord, saying: Why is it that I have found favor in thy sight, and am but a lad, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech; wherefore am I thy servant?

And when Jacob(Elder Fisher) had heard these words, he bowed himself to the earth, before the Lord, and spake before the Lord, saying: why is it that I have found favor in thy sight, and I am but a lad, and I'm not very focused, and I'm not organized, and I'm not a good student, and I have weaknesses, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech; wherefore am I thy servant?

And the Lord answered him and told him to "Say unto this people: Choose ye this day, to serve the Lord God who made you.

Behold my Spirit is upon you... and thou shalt abide in me, and I in you; therefore walk with me."

So I do, I choose this day to walk with him. And I focus on Feeding his sheep. And I let the atonement change me, to make my weaknesses strong. 

Wherefore am I thy servant? Because he knows who I will become. And all I have to do is Choose me this day, to serve the Lord God who made me.

Even though you are 6,000 miles away, you still help me. I love you all so much and I hope that things continue to go well <3 I miss you and love you so much!

Today for P-Day I spearheaded a plan to play Capture the Flag in the Forest. It was a lot of fun until Sister McCrary rolled and sprained her ankle. It swelled almost immediately to the size of a baseball :/ we wrapped it and helped her through the forest where we found a Dorf (village) and got her home... I feel bad as the mastermind behind running through the woods. Hopefully she recovers quickly, they receive a mini missionary in a week and have lots to do this week. 

This week was cool, we met again with Abosh and he brought one of his 9 brothers Aziz. Aziz is a little more Muslim than Abosh is so there were questions about Joseph Smith being a prophet and such but we explained with authority and power that if he would read the Book of Mormon and pray to its correctness and truth than he could know from "Al'lah" that Joseph was indeed a prophet. Al'lah is merely the Arabic word for God so we often use it when teaching refugees from Syria. Felix, that awesome Bavarian Metalhead that was interested in the Gospel got hit with a car... Satan just isn't playing fair anymore. Thankfully he escaped the ordeal with minor injuries and we are going to meet with him this week. We have a man named Kojo from Ghana that stopped us on the street and asked us how he could come to church, the Africans here are amazing!! I'll have to get Cole, I mean Elder Warners email and ask why we are getting so many of their investigators haha. We teach ALOT of Africans. Mainly those from Nigeria (my favorite) and Ghana but sometimes Cameroon.

 So in full I've taught people from 

Syria

Iran

Nigeria

Ghana

Italy

Peru

Turkey

Hungary (member)

Poland (member)

Albania (member)

My mission is super international haha and I've spoken with people from

Mexico

England

Turkey (lots of Turks... They're basically the Mexicans of Germany)

Russia

Sudan

Switzerland

Brazil

Colombia

America haha

Yeah, it's tons of fun because German only works if we are in a German Neighborhood. If we leave Leverkusen/Uni area people speak Polish, Hungarian, Albanian, Turkish (again, A LOT of Turks)

Haha but I digress, Germany is amazing. I really hope to go south this Transfer though. Köln is fantastic and I REALLY LOVE MÜLHEIM  which is Turk central+beautiful Germans and I wish I can find stuff to bring home from there :) but I want to see Feucht, Nürnburg, Karlsruhe, hopefully the Lord needs me south. Until then, LANG LEBT KÖLN LANG LEBT DIE NRW!!! 

Lieb Elder Fischer

(We don't know if the C in Fisher is intentional or the result of auto correct to the German spelling.)

Monkeys, Castles and a Kiss...oh My!

This week has some cool stories to offer! Some hi-lights are... time with some Monkeys! My first Kiss (on the mission), "wine" from a member, I met the most prepared German I've ever heard of AND I spent $100 D': 

Well quick Explanation. My Comp lost his wallet so I had to pay every time he rode the Bahn. €1.90 ugh... We ride the Train Several times every day. And I bought Groceries :p subtract €100 from my personal account.... so hopefully I can get reimbursed. But, forward with the week! :D

  

Let's begin with Monday:

Oh Monday's, the day of sweet semi-self thought. A day given to prepare for the week, physically (through groceries and such) and mentally through emails and activities. This particular week our favorite Member, Sister Nowak, took us to the AFFENPARK! Or being translated, Monkey Park. It was great haha Open enclosures with some wicked monkeys haha We got there and one of the monkeys had escaped and was running up and down the fence shaking it at the joints hahaha. We entered and had a good time trying to get the monkeys to do something, really anything at all... They were quite content to sit and watch us, a sort of reversed Zoo haha. It was a great release before a busy work in the Lords Vineyard.

Tuesday:

The day of Tues, we met with Abosh, a boss from Syria! This guy really does love the gospel, he has a very innocent understanding of Jesus and his teachings but wants to learn more. When he didn't know an answer to a question he simply answered "teach me". Just a wonderful example of humble learning. He is a delight and took the commitment to read and pray quickly and also accepted a baptismal date.

Wednesday: 

This day we had Zone Conference! I love these things haha My first Zone Conference will forever stay with me because I met another great Example of my life. Elder Jones. But this one was something else haha We always have fun but this was focused on study and how important it is. I realized that I need to study German better and more. And the Lord reinforced that revelation by humbling me through my German. 

Thursday:

This was a day filled with finding. We went door to door in a part of Cologne called Kalk. We came to this door and an old German Grandma answered. Really solid stereotypic old lady haha She invited us in and proceeded to tell us about the Rats that live on her balcony and eat her Flowers, then she said to my Companion,

"Vor ein paar Tage, hab ich ein taub gefunden. Er ist Krank und ich hab ihm mit Medicien geholfen. Willst du ihm sehen?" 

My companion thinking she was talking about something else and asking if he understood said "yeah aber nicht genau"

... She had said she found a sick Dove a few days ago and had anointed him with medicine and asked if my comp wanted to see him and Elder Van Dam answered "yeah but not exactly" hahaha I chuckled as she went to get this bird hahaha I explained to him what had happened and he was so surprised. Anyways on our way out she thanked us and kissed me on the Cheek! Haha man, I was so surprised. Sadly, this lady didn't want the gospel. But, can't have em all I guess haha, next time for sure.

Friday:

This was a Member day. We had two great lessons and really grew to love two more families :) Germans are a little hard because friends mean more to them, so they make friends slowly. But we are seeing great rewards for taking extra time with these beautiful children of God.

Saturday:

Saturday was our Grind day!! We had 4 lessons planned, which by Germany standards is a golden day haha It would have been a record day for me had Modo not cancelled. But it was okay, we met with Emanuel, a Nigerian who's testimony of the Spirit and the Book of Mormon out does those of the German members. He taught us the recent convert lesson for the day so we had a great spirit going into our second lesson with Abosh!!! He had read through Jacob in 4 days!!! He was ready to learn about the Plan of salvation and had already ready 2 Nephi so he knew that "Adam fell that Men might be and Men are that they might have joy!" It was amazing. The saddest thing happened though. We realized that he is a refugee... This hurts because we are not allowed to baptized Refugees. The conversion is too dangerous if they return to their home countries. So we need to work with him to get out of refugee status and become self sufficient and live here in Germany. After that we had a lesson with Felix Starke. He is a Bavarian Man I contacted because he was wearing a band t-Shirt I knew. We met him and spoke for a little. He said he had researched the Church on the Internet and I got nervous. But he knew what temples were and knew the Joseph Smith story. He gasped and smiled big and said "I know this" when I started the first vision. He accepted the invitation to read and pray and said hopefully he gets his answer by the end of the week!!! Can you believe that! Haha Faith! Wow! So yeah, we can't wait to meet with him again this coming week :)

So that was the week of Miracles :) The longer I'm here the MORE I LOVE GERMANY. The more I see the more I want to reach out to every German, I'm just LOVING the work here :)

Tell me of the Wonderful work amongst those of the Promised land! Do they see the truth of Lehi's promise "if thou wilt keep the commandments thou shalt prosper in the land"? I hope so, I Love and Miss the Promised land. Free public bathrooms and gallons of milk... Freedom and patriotism, large refillable drinks for a Dollar (no free refills in Germany). 

Love,

Elder Fisher