Rain, rain, and clouds

Well I guess the last time I was in Germany I got really lucky with
the weather... Cause I still haven't seen the sun haha. Hopefully the
summer will bring back the sun... I've heard it just gets darker from
here. But holy cow I love these East Germans!

At YSA (old divorced people and strange investigators) family home
evening the East Germans were ranting about how much they loved it
back in the DDR days, that was interesting. I made sure to be extra
American to make up for their love of communism.

This week while I was on an exchange we found this really cool Asian
guy named Tung! Elder Fernandez and I are teaching him tomorrow, so
everybody eat some fried rice for me as good luck.

Love you all!
Zane

Me vs. East Germany

This week flew by!  We are doing well here and working super hard.  Sadly this week we had pretty much every appointment get bailed on.  But we actually did well in improvising and teaching random people off the street.  

The ward here is super cool.  There are 3 big families that pretty much do everything, and tons of little kids.  All the other elders are jealous because the kids love me the most.  I took a page out of my dad's book and brought random toys and treats.  I gave this boy Friedrich a little toy car and then he asked to sit by me in sacrament meeting.  Then he talked the entire time... haha I didn't understand really anything of what he was saying because he was whispering and talking really fast.  But his Dad, the bishop, was staring me down as I was trying to get his son to pay attention haha.  Well I hope that the kids will help me find someone to baptize.  

There is this family called the Mill's that speak perfect english and they always tease me for my love of all things German.  But that's pretty much my job... just walk around and love everything.  Then I figure that everything will work itself out.  This woman gave me the weirdest look today because I was just beaming at the haltestelle.  It was amazing. 

Love you all!

-Elder Openshaw

Wonder Week

I was so discouraged at the start of this week.  I have been praying so hard for just an ounce of success.  Literally just one person to stop and listen to what we had to say.  I have honestly been trying to talk to everyone on the street.  I can get everyone to stop and talk for a little bit, but they just walk away as soon as I start to talk about the church... haha German people are very blunt too.

I was getting a little frustrated because I had been trying my best all day.  Literally stopping everyone that I had the chance to.  But nobody was talking to me.  Then I saw this guy and I knew I had to stop him, (I have some self challenges to stop the most scary-looking, angry, rushed people).  And this guy looked pretty rushed and angry.  So I went up and asked him what the family meant to him...

Well it turns out that he used to be a DJ in Finland, but one day he woke up and realized that he wasn't happy.  Quit smoking, quit a bunch of drugs.  And started reading the bible to try and find the truth.  Honestly he was an answer to my prayers.

This German mission business is no joke.  Literally we are on our own out here just trying to get people to talk to us.  It leaves lots of room for God to bless us.  

I love you all.  I'm loving Erfurt and Weimar. 

-Elder Openshaw

Feeling like a missionary

Wow! What a week!  I finally started feeling like a missionary this week (I think that means that you are tired all the time but not allowed to sleep).  But I have some cool stories from this week!

In my area we have a car, and I am the designated driver.  We surprisingly did a lot of driving to appointments, and etc.  Seriously Germany is the most beautiful place on the planet! We would drive through these ancient villages and then out into the countryside where you can just see ancient castles out in the distance.  AND EVERYTHING IS SO GREEN!!  But that's no surprise because it has literally rained ever since I've gotten here.

I have a ward here, so lots of people on Sundays!  But also tons of hilarious drama because they used to be three separate branches.  I guess I accidentally opened a can of worms in ward counsel (bringing up some inactive members) because they all started yelling...  but it's just typical German discussion I was told... (?)

We made a street display in this city called Apolda.  It wasn't super successful because there weren't a ton of people on the street.  So Elder Mayer, a Zone Leader, and I went to go find people on the street.  We didn't have a ton of luck and we were headed back to the street display when we say this drunk man talking with the sisters... and we knew they needed to be rescued. 

This man was the most picture-perfect drunk man I had ever seen.  A huge, burly, hairy guy, wearing liederhosen and a tank top under a sweatshirt.  We saw him trying to kiss the sisters so we ran up to talk to him and they ran away.  His beard was wet and was covered in throwup and drool.  He grabbed my hand and kept getting closer and closer to me, and I had to keep stepping back so that he didn't drool on me.  But he kept yelling louder and louder because I couldn't understand him.  Then Elder Mayer said that we had to go, and we ran over to the fountain to wash ourselves off, because we were covered in hobo throwup and drool.  It reminded me of a story my mom would tell from when the drunkards would try and kiss her in Ukraine. 

My spiritual thought for this week comes from another man that we found during our street display.  Elder Mayer and I came up to him and started chatting, and then we ended up teaching him the first lesson.  He has a wife and a 6 year old daughter and hopefully they end up going somewhere.  I was really stricken by the fact that he claimed to deny God but then at the end of the conversation he was telling us how much that God loves him.  \

Love you all so much!

-Elder Openshaw

Mein erste Gebiet, ERFURT‏

WOW!!! I am the luckiest person in the world, back in Germany at last.  My first day was interesting.  We woke up at 3 am in order to catch our flight in Salt Lake (I think they schedule it like that so we don't have to worry about families stalking us hahaha).  Then we flew to Chicago, and had an hour layover there.  It was around 12pm when we were there.  Then we flew to Frankfurt and it was 4am again.  From there we flew to Dresden, where we met our mission President.  It was interesting because it honestly felt like we had 3 days straight of sunlight.  President Fingerle is awesome, my first conversation with him was weird though haha.  He came up and introduced himself in English, I responded in German and then he immediately said "Why did you waste your time going 6 weeks to the Provo MTC? You should have done 3 weeks and then came here."  I didn't really have much choice haha, but he's probably right.  

After meeting our President we went to Radebuel, a city right next to Meissen (where I was for my exchange), and I discovered that President Monson had spent time in that area when it was East German.  He gave a dedicatory prayer over the land of East Germany and promised the people that they would see the blessings of the temple.  I think if you Google the dedicatory prayer over East Germany you will be able to find it.  It's honestly one of the coolest things I've ever read, because it is all about my mission.

We then went to the Freiberg temple and did baptisms.  I have some pictures of the new Freiberg temple, it's amazing.  We spent the night in a hotel near the Temple. 

The next day we had a meeting and met our trainers.  My companion is Elder Römer, a native German from Wisconsin. We were assigned Erfurt as our area.  Seriously everyone came up to me and told me how lucky I am.  It is the best area in the mission, the most beautiful, the best ward, and just an outstanding city.  We then took the train to our first area... except the train got delayed for 4 hours because of a bomb threat.  So then we took a bunch of other trains to try and get around Leipzig, where the bomb threat was.  But we ended up having to go straight there.  We just waited for a while and then got to our apartment at 10 30 to discover that the other Elders had gone out looking for us.  So we waited for a long time until they finally came back.  We went to bed super late.  

The next day we unpacked and just went through our area book and stuff, trying to figure out everything.  Finally we got to go finding!  I was so excited, we walked into this beautiful square and then the first person we talked to was Chabar.  He is from Hungary and he seems super interested in the Gospel.  We have our first lesson with him on Saturday.  Our luck didn't persist though, nobody else would talk to us.  

General Conference was awesome, though I had to watch one session completely in German.  

Ok, not sure what else to talk about.  I'm so excited to be here.  I've decided to add a little spiritual thought to the end of all my emails. So here it is...

I've been thinking a lot about my mission in general.  And especially about my calling as a missionary.  As we met our mission president he really emphasized the fact that we are not just here to plant seeds.  That our mission is to baptize the people of Germany.  Every missionary who comes here is told that they probably won't baptize someone, but that just isn't true.  I believe in the literal gathering of Israel, and the restoration of the 10 tribes.  The things that have been happening in the world are part of God's plan of gathering.  I would encourage all of you to read President Monson's dedicatory prayer over the land of Germany, and to read some of the prophesies concerning Germany.  Because I am not here to plant seeds, I am here to labor and in the vineyard and gather the fruit.  I have a testimony of the work of the Lord.  I have a testimony that this Church is true.  I have faith that we will all see the gathering of the children of God.  Thank you to everyone who has shown me your support and love.  I also want to share why I am serving a mission.  I am serving a mission because I believe that this gospel can change people for the better.  And especially because of a promise that I made with God.  The day I found out the news about my family's accident I was with some of my German friend's in their backyard.  I started telling a story about my Dad and I started to laugh.  And then they asked me how I was able to laugh after something so terrible had just happened.  And I remember the feeling of the spirit, and I remember the looks on their faces when I told my German friends that I knew I would see my family again.  That is my testimony, and that's why this work is important.  Because we can all live with our families again.  I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Zane with his mission president