Week Seventeen

This week I think I am going to be short,  I do not have too much to talk about, it was kinda a slow week.  It is the first week back to school after holiday and everyone seems to be getting sick... like everyone... So this week we did a ton of contacting and doors.  So it was just a very slow week as far as lessons go.  But we did have the opportunity to work with a lot of the ward this week which was very nice.

The ward here is so awesome, it is one of the bigger wards in the area, we have about 70 active members.  They are so amazing, I love listening to the testimonies and conversion stories from these memenbers, they are some of the nicest and strongest members.  I am extraordinarily fortunant to be in this ward.  And the missionary work in the ward has really started picking up in the last few weeks.  So we are really excited for the coming months, Chistmas is fast approaching and is a great time to do missionary work.

I said last week that I would take a little time to talk about the visit from President Monson.  So President Monson has been in Germany since last Saturday, when we saw him in Hamburg.  Since then he has been in Berlin and München, and then yesterday he was in Frankfurt, which was broadcasted to all of Germany.  So in the past 4 weeks we have heard the prophet talk on 3 of those weekends.  It has been such a spiritual couple of weeks.  The first time we saw him we were there live, in Hamburg.  We traveled to Hamburg with the ward in a big bus.  That was alot of fun, we just played games the whole time, because it is like a 5 hour drive one way.  So most the day was spent in the bus.  But we got there and there were so many members there.  It was so neat to see all these German members gathered together.  I haven't seen it that much, there is not a very big Mormon population here in Germany.  But there were a couple thousand there, and I heard that we had one of the smaller ones. It was a really good talk about choices and the way we can live what we believe and become more like Christ.  He talked about how to listen, love, labor, and learn.  It was really good.  And the bonus was the fact that It gave me the chance to practice my german.  Because he was being translated, he would say a sentance and then the translator would just repeat it in German.  So it was fantastic language practice. But that was the Hamburg trip.

Yesterday, in stead of a normal church meeting, we had the broadcast from Frankfurt.  He talked about obedience and then again about becoming more like our Savior.  That seemed to be a really big focus for him while in Germany,  becoming like Christ.  That is always a good topic to hear.  And something that I have really been putting a focus on in my personal study, so it was super nice to have the prophet talk about the same thing. Really other than that, not much happened this week. 

I love all of you guys and I hope that everything is going well.  I am having so much fun and learning so much.  There is so much to learn about this gospel, I feel like I am not even scratching the surface, but at the same time I have learned so much it is increadible.  I love this work so much, there is really no greater joy that this.

Elder Blackley