First of all, sorry for the delay of this weeks email. We had a two day zone conference this week Monday and Tuesday which I'll talk about later in this email.
A couple weeks ago, I felt myself shutting down, giving up hope, and falling into a melancholy complacency, ready to coast through to the end of my mission. But somehow, somewhere along the way, the Lord saw fit to give me a boost and a reminder that my work here is far from finished.
It all started at the beginning of last week when we were doing some street contacting in Soest. We contacted an older gentleman who had recently lost his son in a car accident. As I bore testimony to him that he had the opportunity to see his son again, I felt God's love for this man very strongly, and simultaneously remembered how much I love these people and this great country, and how crucial it is that I do everything in my power to bring them the message of Christ. These people have so much potential to do so much good, and if I let this last month of my mission go by without doing everything I can to help them fulfill that, then I will have truly missed out on the most special experiences I could possible have.
A couple days later we were able to have a great Thanksgiving at the Dortmund Institute center. The Youngs, our senior couple in Dortmund, organized the whole thing for our Zone. They cooked three delicious turkeys and the rest of the Zone took care of all the other items (Elder Gunnell made some great pumkin pie!). I was very grateful that day to be able to be with my friends and comrades on the mission and to take a step back and remember how grateful I am for the opportunity to have been on my mission.
The Zone Conference we had over the past two days was great. We went through a lot of teaching skills and practiced them. I was surprised at how much I learned at the very end of my mission and am now wondering where Zone Conferences like that were at the beginning of my mission. We had an appointment with the Verhagens yesterday evening and were able to use many of the teaching skills that we learned over the past two days and had a really good lesson with them. They accepted a soft baptismal commitment but weren't ready for a date nor the teaching program we invited them to. They are wonderful people, however, and have a good a chance as anyone to make it to baptism. It may just take a little longer for them than most. Our plan with them now is to keep teaching them and see what happens from there. They'll also be traveling back to America in February for the next year so I'm definitely planning on staying in contact with them so we can meet again when they're in our neck of the woods.
Elder Vogel and I had a big planning session for this month and are really looking forward to working with our ward and our investigators during this great Christmas season. Hope this next month is as fun for you all back home as it's gonna be for me. As winter comes and snow covers the ground, the phrase "The field is White, and already to harvest" takes on a new meaning. December is a month of miracles, and will undoubtedly prove to be so here in Unna
Take care!
-Andy
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