The Lord Provides Service Opportunities

The days on a mission are definitely long, but the weeks seem to fly by faster and faster (welcome to the Andy Andersen cliche festival). Overall, I'd say that this was a pretty light-hearted and fun week. It began with a great companion exchange. I worked with Elder Hardy and was able to buy an awesome to bike helmet and old German army sweater (see pics attached). I was sick of looking like a total doofus with my goofy helmet every time I rode my bike, and When I saw the helmets that Elder Hardy and Elder Achtmann had bought the day before, I had to have one. Its hilarious when all four of us ride somewhere together now, the three of us with Army helmets and aviators and Elder Gneiting cringing because he's so embarrassed to be associated with us, Naw he's a good sport.

A couple days ago Elder Gneiting and I had a pretty spiritual finding experience. We've been trying out different techniques for finding lately, and on Friday we decided that we would try spending an hour just looking for service opportunities. At first we kind of just walked around our neighborhood, knocked on a few doors, with no success. We decided to get on our bikes and ride around for a bit and low and behold, we happened to ride past some people moving into an apartment in a building pretty close to ours. They were pretty confused as to why we would want to help them move at first, but of course gladly allowed us to help. It was pretty clear that we had touched the hearts of everyone involved in the move, which is all we could have asked for, and were even able to talk to the brother of the lady who was moving in and gave him a Book of Mormon. He seemed very interested and said that he was trying to come closer to God. Anyway the moral of the story is that The Lord had provided us with the service opportunity we had prayed for, and a person that he had prepared to accept the gospel. It was just the reminder I needed that this is the Lord's work, and that All we need is faith and vision to find those that the Lord has prepared.

Aouni came to church yesterday, which was really exciting for Elder Gneiting and I. it was our first investigator at church since we started working together. He also agreed to let us teach him twice a week. I have a really great feeling about Aouni. He has an amazing guileless quality to him and his heart seems pure and ready to accept the truth.

Yesterday evening we were finally able to visit a referral that we had been trying to get in touch with forever. They were an older couple called the Bergbauer's. They didn't have much interest in the gospel but were very interesting to talk to and fed us an unbelievable meal with all these different courses and everything. and Herr Bergbauer was basically a german Patrick Stewart, which of course was awesome. He and I talked about Utah quite a bit (they had been there on vacation the year before) and it was the first time on my mission where I felt really proud to be from Utah (ha ha). At the end of our appointment Elder Gneiting and I sang a hymn for them, and Frau Bergbauer's heart was very touched. It was just one of those times where you meet great people who, although they don't have interest in our message, had a great spirit about them and felt something when they talked with us.

Elder Gneiting are going to be working on "Catching the vision" this next week and for the rest of the transfer, which basically means improving our attitude, Christlike love for the people, and hope for people to be baptized. I have a really great feeling about the future of this area and hope that the work I do here will be a big help in the progress of Erlangen.

Take care fam. You're always in my prayers!

Love,

-Andy