Good bye, Farewell and Amen

Well, here we are folks. I'm now smack dab in the middle of my last P-Day on the mission. On Thursday I'll be leaving my mission. I`ll be leaving this wonderful country and these people that I have grown to love. I've been contemplating over the past few weeks why exactly it is that I've grown to love these people, and I think I've figured it out.
Last week we visited a less active member who is going through some hard times. He lives all alone and is having a very hard time finding hope. His testimony of the gospel is strong however, and as he prayed for us before we left, I was overwhelmed with the spirit. I opened my eyes and looked over at this man, and realized that what I was feeling was God's love for him. It is one of the warmest and most comforting feelings I've ever had in my life, and it was only a small portion of God's perfect love for his children.
That is a gift that one is given as a missionary. It comes with the calling. One has the opportunity to vicariously feel God's love for his children, and a good missionary will take that feeling and harness it to get some good work done and bring these people closer to Christ.
The people in Germany have so much potential, as all of God's children do. It's tragic to see that potential so often lay dormant, but the day will soon come when the Church will blossom at incredible speeds here in Germany. The true Church of Christ will be the last beacon of hope that the German's can look to, and they will come flocking to it. I look forward to that day, and on that day I will get on my knees in gratitude to my Heavenly Father for blessing these people that I love so much. I know that this Gospel is true, and that we are all Children of God. If we remember that, nothing can stop us from fulfilling our potential. The truth is always what we can turn to for hope and peace, and the truth lies with God, and he has revealed it to his prophets. We have Prophets on the earth today that lead us and God's church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I know that Christ lives, that he has my savior, and that his hand is always there. All we must do is reach up and take his hand, and through life's up and downs, that's where the constant peace can be.
I love you all and I look forward to being with you again soon. Hoorah for Israel!

-Elder Andy Andersen

My Heart is filled with gratitude

Now that the Christmas season is here in full force, my heart is being filled more and more every day with gratitude to my Heavenly Father. He has given me a truly glorious gift by giving me the opportunity to be on my mission here in this great land with these wonderful people for the past two years. I never would have made it here alone either. It is through the grace of my savior Jesus Christ that I was able to become worthy to serve a mission, and during this Christmas time my heart is drawn to him, to celebrating his coming to this world to save us from our sins.
Yesterday I finished reading the Book of Mormon in German. I started it at the beginning of the year and it has been a very spiritual experience for me to read this Book of Books in my mission Language. I know now more than ever that it is the Word of God, and the evidence that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the Lord's church. I've learned on my mission very clearly the importance of regularly reading in the Book of Mormon, most importantly for the purpose of constantly strengthening my testimony of it and all that that entails.
Half of last week has already been reported in the last email, but the past few days have also brought forth some good fruits. On Saturday evening we went by Br. Pallmüller, an ex-member with a really nice American wife. They had us in and were really glad to have us over. We'll be meeting with them again this week with some members in our ward whom they know, and feel like they have a ton of potential and would fit in great with the families in our ward.
Elder Vogel and I have put a lot of time into trying to figure out how we can really take advantage of the Christmas season and feel like we've got a lot of good ideas going. I'm really looking forward to these next three weeks and to see what will come of everything we've got going for us here in Unna. Hope that the spirit of Christmas is already there with you all back home. Take care!

-Andy

The field is White...

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

A sincere desire to hear our message...

November 4, 2010

Dear Fam,

This week had its fair share of slow but sure successes, signs that the work here in Unna is on the up and up. I'm really looking forward to the next seven weeks here and feel like we've got a good basis for me to end my mission with some real solid work.
We've been doing a lot of work with less actives this transfer, and saw a real fruit of our labors this Sunday. All of the less actives we had met with and invited to church this Sunday ended up coming. While the investigators we were hoping for didn't show up, it was great to see so many people we have been working with at church. Another success on Sunday was the unveiling of the new Ward Mission Plan from Daniel and along with that a new program that we are doing with the members. It's something I've done with the members in two other areas in order to build a better relationship with the members that is focused on missionary work. Our presentation on Sunday seemed to go over very well and we seemed to have started something that will really help this ward get back on its feet.
On Thursday we decided to go by a referral that hadn't been successfully contacted in over three months. Apparently they had been on vacation in America for an extended period of time. We arrived at their apartment in the late afternoon, not really expecting anyone to be home, but to our surprise caught them home days after returning form America. We had a great first lesson with Thomas Verhagen (his wife was asleep to due the lingering jet lag), and made another appointment out for next week. He's very skeptical of organized religion, but is at the same time very open and still searching for the truth. When we first were let in to his apartment and I saw all of his America paraphernalia, my first thought was "great, another guy who just wants to talk with us about America with no real interest of hearing our message," but as soon as we started talking I could tell he had a sincere desire to hear our message to see if it is something that could help him come closer to the truth, which is all one really needs at the beginning to embrace the message of the restored gospel. I'm really looking forward to meeting with he and his wife next Tuesday and feel that this man has a good a chance as any of making the steps to Baptism.
Hope this next week proves to be a great one. Take care!

-Andy

The field is still white and ready to harvest

It`s very strange to think that in two months from now I`ll be celebrating New Years with you all back home. I`ve learned so much on my mission but feel like there`s still so much I need to learn that couldn`t possibly be crammed into two months. In the past couple months I`ve learned a lot about righteous desires and where a good missionary`s desires should be. My desire at this point is to serve the Lord and fulfill what he has called me to do for these next two months, whatever that may be.
The work here in Unna is picking up, granted not as quickly as I would like, but picking up nonetheless. We were able to make contact with some less active families that hadn`t had contact with the missionaries for awhile and made followup appointments with them. Something I feel this ward really needs is some solid reactivation of less active members. I think once the already active members see less actives coming back to church, they`ll be more excited about the gospel and missionary work. We also had a lesson with a former investigator who had one time was very close to baptism, which is a great story in and of itself...
Judith Höhn was a very promising investigator about a year ago. She had been to church several times, made many friends in the ward, and had on at least one occasion a baptismal date. For whatever reason, however, she sort of fell off the map and broke contact with the missionaries and the members. After trying to get a hold of her for quite awhile, we were finally able to make an appointment out with her and brought our Bishop and his wife along, both good friends of hers from the ward. The lesson started off well, we asked her what she remembered from what she had learned previously, and she, to our surprise, proceeded to bear us her testimony of the Restoration and of Joseph Smith. Just as the lesson seemed to be heading in a good direction for at least a new soft baptismal commitment, we received a very skeptical and critical visitor in the form of Judith's cousin. As soon as this lady entered the room, you could feel a very different spirit, and not a good one. As we tried to involve her in the lesson as well, her skepticism and criticism came out fairly quickly. We soon realized that we had been thrown a huge curve ball and had to completely rely on the spirit. For awhile things were somewhat shaky, but the strong testimonies of our Bishop and his wife, combined with the spirit of the Lord being very strong in the room made it a very powerful lesson that softened the heart of this woman who had come to tare us and our beliefs down. We were able to get her to accept a commitment to take a Book of Mormon and read Alma 32. Our Bishops wife thinks that this woman has a very strong influence on Judith, and that if we can get her to let us teach her, than we will be able to help Judith come back with very little problems. This experience was a great reminder for me that when we do everything in our power, the Lord will take care of the rest when situations are out of our power.
I hope you all know how much I love you, and how I always pray for you. I hope you all know how grateful I am for all the support and love I have received from you over the past 22 months. I could never repay you all for that but look forward to at least trying in a couple months. 'till then, the field is still white and ready to harvest, and for the next two months I'll be getting my last bit of hardcore sickle-thrusting in. Chao!

-Andy

My greatest strengths...building relationships

October 18th, 2010




Man, being in a car area is quite the experience. I feel like I don't know how to do missionary work anymore. When you spend your whole mission in medium sized cities and then come to an area that covers a heck of a lot of ground, you have kind of remold and turn your brain on again to come up with a whole new game plan of how you're going to do the work effectively. That's what Elder Vogel and I are in the process of doing, and I think we've got a good hold on things now after the past two weeks of kinda running around with our heads cut off. Well, maybe It was just me feeling like that. Who knows?
Its really cool to be working with Daniel again. He definitely hasn't forgotten what he learned on his mission. Our ward here has a lot of the same issues, as far as missionary work is concerned, as Erlangen did, and we're taking the things we did in Erlangen that worked, modifying them a bit, and trying them out in this ward. Over the past few days, and especially in church on Sunday, I came to this realization that this ward, and the gap between them and the missionary work that needs to be bridged, may be the reason, or at least one of the main reasons, why I was sent here to Unna. I think that one of my greatest strengths as a missionary is my ability to build good relationships with the members and wards here, and maybe that's just what this ward needs in order to make some progress and heal some wounds that have been caused by fallings away.
Last night we taught a great family whom I think stand as good a chance as anyone of being baptized. They are friends of a member in our ward who has taken them to church with him a couple times before I got here. We taught them about the restoration last night, and watched the Restoration DVD with them. The children are pretty hyper-active, but extremely bright and susceptible to the spirit. One of the boys even participated in our teachings and explained to US a principle with an angelic innocence and clarity that really touched us. The father, Herr Lauderlein, is very open, and very interested in the gospel. He also has that key support system of a member friend, which is always invited. I'm really looking forward to teaching this family and ask for your prayers in their behalf.
Hope you all have a great week. Take care!

-Andy

Working Hard to Be more Obedient

Once again, I'm writing my first email from my new area. It's been an interesting first week. It's very strange to be in a car area again. I don't know how much I like it. This is kind of a dead area, and it's harder to do a lot of contacting to find new investigators when you're driving around to these little towns and villages all the time. Guess we'll just have to plan things out well and get some good strategies going.
From what I understand, a lot of missionaries have spent their last months on the mission here, sort of puttering out early and coasting through it, not getting much done. That's definitely not what I want to do. I've been working hard to be more obedient and more loving so I can be a better tool in the Lord's hands for my last run, and I don't want to further slow down the work in this area, nor in Germany as a whole for that matter.
My new companion, Elder Vogel, is pretty young on his mission. He's a pretty cool guy though and has a really great taste in music. We've been able to have some pretty solid music discussions and have a common love for Art Rock (David Bowie, Velvet Underground, etc.). I always try and take those things that I have in common with my comps and make that a common topic of conversation in order to build unity and focus on what we have in common instead of our differences.
It was a blast to be able to chill with Daniel again. We went over to his house to talk about the missionary work on Thursday, and it was great to see that he hasn't lost his urgency for the missionary work one bit. This ward has a lot of problems, and needs a strong ward mission leader and some strong missionaries to get things going. I think he and I will be able to do some real good work together like we did in Erlangen. Not too mention we'll have some good laughs as well just like the ole days. After all, when all is said and done, he Achtmann and I are truly partners in crime.
One great thing about this area is that it's gorgeous. It covers half of the Sauerland, which is basically like my first area minus the alps. It'll be nice to have some good aesthetics in my last few months. I'll definitely be able to get some good pictures out of it.

Love you all,

-Andy