Called to Serve: I love God's work (June 17)

I cannot believe it is already P-day. I seriously have no idea where this week went. It has been a nice transition week of pure service to incorperating in some missionary lessons.

I don't know if I sent the picture of the Zarda family last week (cool pants guy). But they were really cool (super funny), and we are going to visit them later this week.

So Last Tuesday, we were able to go to Zone Training, but we were able to hear from Elder Nelson before hand! It was great to hear people from the 70s with international accents.We then had a question and answer time with Elder Nelson. It was really cool. I sure hope his body guard is not LDS, can you believe how many conversions we could get if the body guards of these inspired men just sat and listened to them all day! What a cool job, travel cool places, look tough, listen to revelation all day. Anyways, I actually really enjoyed the training more than normal. The "Training Sister Leaders" (I hope they come up with a better name Sunday haha) taught the topic of Charity. We all know that is the Pure Love of Christ and how important that quality is. Yet, they presented it in such away, that it really touched me and motivated me to focus on that important quality. It's been quite wonderful. I always think of the quote I wrote in my scriptures, Moroni 7, years back: charity isn't something you do, its something you become. Anyways, I am just saying, Heavenly Father sure answers prayers a lot quicker, when you are willing to do something about it. Well, that has been my experience this week. I sure hope to really grow in charity on my mission because this is something everyone seriously needs to work on.

Because the water level is back to normal and everyone worked their butts off 2 weeks ago, Passau is doing great. There are so many parties celebrating the hard work. Which is great, except the ones that our neighbors have... doesn't everyone know it is time to go to bed at 10:30? haha. We are getting back to traditional missionary work. Our tauftermin untersucher is doing good. We had a wonderful lesson with him this week. The Word of Wisdom. Seriously, this guys willingness blows me away. Before we could even say what it is, he opened the pamphlet and said, "I can do this, except, what is wrong with tea?" Of course, Germany is HUGE on tea. So after he actually let us explain what it is and what he had committed to, we talked more in detail over tea. We explained about schwartz tea, and how I drink peppermint tea pretty much every day. We then took a field trip, fun right? We went to the store, and tried to find the tea he drinks to see if it's okay. Unfortunately, it wasn't there. So we showed him how to look at a box with all this German gibber and find if it's okay. It was quite fun, he was LOVING it. Turns out his tea is okay by the way. I don't think he will have any problems.

Miracle of the week, I had my first joint teaching appointment! It was awesome to have a member there! We taught our two most interesting people of course. One, loves the NT and he really needs a lot of proof, so it's been really hard for him. But after we practically quoted the district "you are holding in your hands, the evidence of what we say is true... and you haven't read it" (District is the funniest thing, I totally have missionary humor...) He finally said, okay I will read some of the BOM. So we picked out some good ones and he said he would read them by our next meeting. He is Russian Orthodox, so he says it's against the rules to pray with other churches, so since this was the first appointment where it wasn't weird to kneel, Sister G, the member, and I kneeled, while he watched us say a prayer. Kind of awkward, but I know he will get there. At least when he accepts the Gospel, we wont have to worry about him keeping to the commandments. Interesting thing about him, in our first meeting with him he opened to Matt 16:18 when we talked about the apostasy. We have studied and told him EVERYTHING. We have had many ideas from our district leaders, Jesus the Christ, the scriptures, and other missionary resources. We even quoted Elder Nelson and showed him every reference to the Great Apostasy in the bible. But his argument is why would God's church fail, as mentioned in that scripture. It's pretty difficult when he doesn't like to internalize what we are saying. But I know he will be baptized because he keeps asking for appointments, and he continually gives examples of how he does things (searching things out before accepting things). It is all good! The member who assisted in the discussion was a little flustered as well, all she said at the end was that he is clever. Hopefully we didn't scare her off. We also taught the guy we met on the train a month back that said we could meet in a month. It went great. I have high hopes for him as well, but he wants to really space out our meetings, and obviously that wont do..

On Saturday, our stake organized a Helping Hands event! It was really cool. I got to rip out a movie theater floor. Yeah, they questioned giving me the..., whatever tool that was. But it was awesome and a LOT of work. I may be just a little sore.

We got Elders in Passau this week. Honestly, it's weird. I am used to being able to teach who I want when I want and go where ever we go. Now we have to do a lot of coordinating with them. But it will be awesome to get twice the amount of missionary work done. It's just too bad they don't live outside of the city so we can teach people farther out in our area. One has been on his mission a year, and studied German before. He is a pro, needless to say, the ward loves him. The other is a golden.

So Yesterday was great. We went out dooring, I feel like I haven't done that in forever! We met SO MANY COOL PEOPLE. This, is how the Lord blessed us from all the service we did, I am sure. We met this one guy, who at first wasn't really interested, but he asked a lot of questions, was very patient with our German, and ended up taking a book. He said it may be awhile till he can read some because his daughter is really really sick but we can come back in... well we decided a month. ;) I am really excited because I can tell he needs the Gospel more than ever, and he was really appreciated the concept of two witnesses of Christ. We also got a guy that asked us to come back. One that had received a BOM when he was in SLC. He said that he was too old to change his ways(everyone here says that, he is probably 55) but he is going to look for his Book Of Mormon and read some because he felt good feelings..... oh boy. We will definitely come back to visit him. And the funniest of all, a younger woman opened the door. We talked. She took a Book Of Mormon, and as we were setting up an appointment, her dad comes down, obviously was listening the whole time, "The catholic church already makes us happy, thank you" shuts the door. bahaha. So funny. We have NO idea how old she was.

Anyway, Sunday brought me a lot of joy, not because it was sweaty hot and half of the people were swimming or barbecuing, but because we found some people that have been prepared to listen to us! Hooray for Israel.

I love God's work.

So I have been thinking about faith a lot, obviously with that one guy we teach. It is SO important. Check out Enos. Faith and references to prayer are all over the place. They go hand in hand. And God blesses us because of our faith. So man must have it! Haha, that sounds totally German.

So pray to have faith, and have faith to pray.

It's big in the grand scheme of things ;)

Have fun in Utah! Tell the family I love them!

Tschüß

Sister Regnier