meetings, meetings, meetings

received 7/17/2017

This week was busy and I haven't had any time to breathe... but it was such an amazing week!  Man, I've lived some miracles in Jena! Here are some..

-a man decided to become active in the church again because he received an invitation for our musical fireside (from Easter...)

-Nadine, one of our good friends, talked to her grandma about the church... and it didn't go bad!!!

I have to add in that her Grandma is an East German through and through so we weren't expecting good things to come from a conversation about the church.  BUT GUESS WHAT!?!?  Nadine's Great Grandma's doctor was a Mormon, and is one of the heroes of their family.  (I love good mormons).  She also remembers when the temple was built in East Germany, and that she really wanted to see it, but the line was too long and she never was able to make it.  So we are inviting her to come tour the grounds with us soon!

-it doesn't sound super significant, but we honestly find exactly who we are looking for every time we go out of the apartment... (we don't really have time to street contact anymore because we run into too many of our friends on the street)

-and honestly there are tons more but I want to tell them after my mission.

I'm doing really well, happy as can be! The church is such a blessing, I'm so glad that I was born into a family that has always enjoyed those blessings!  I hear lots of missionaries say that they think it would be cool to be a convert into the church... I politely disagree haha.  I'm so glad that I know the primary songs, I don't know the difference between church words and regular words, I have met so many of my heroes through the church, I was born in Provo, Utah, etc.  It's just a good thing, this church. 

I love you all! Tell your dad thanks for baptizing you! 

Love,

Elder Openshaw

P.S I took no pictures this week... so here are some randoms from the computer at the church

Deutsche Träume

Receeived 7/4/17

Well, the title for this week is "German Dreams," mostly just because
I was asleep on a train and having a nice german dream and then elder
Hsu woke me up to remind me to write you guys. So if you get this
email today, you owe a big thanks to elder Hsu because I was just
going to "forget" to write this week haha.
If you're now wondering who elder Hsu is... I'm fairly sure I can give
you a good description. I have spent 2,643 hours with him, straight.
We actually celebrated when we made it 1/4 of the way to 10,000 hours!

-Elder Hsu is a good guy, a Taiwanese guy nonetheless!
-He loves to cook and sleep and sleep and eat.
-He's also a very good missionary, and can rock a good object lesson!
-He never dries his hands after using the sink (I still don't know
why... still get surprised by all the wet doorknobs all the time)
-He loves his Asian food
-I love his cooking
-he always has candy with him and will shamelessly give it to all
kids. (Yes, even on the street and train and bus)
-He could honestly be the next Apple product presenter, he's got some
incredible stage presence.
-his dream is... "to be a normal Asian dude with a Chinese store"

The mission is pretty cool. It's pretty cool as just an average Utah
guy to come to Germany to live with a guy from Taiwan! As you can
imagine, I love it. My abs are pretty toned from laughing these 2,643
hours straight haha.

Well, now I'm getting off the train to hang out with some friends!
About to get trashed in some soccer like normal... sad. I love you!

Love,
Elder Openshaw

P.S study D&C 138, it's incredible.

"Don't touch me, I'm sweet" -Hsu

Received 6/26/2017

Great week once again! (I actually hope to have a bad week sometime
soon so that I have something entertaining to write about haha)

I don't have much time to write because we just got back from going on
a hike to a cool old ruined castle. (No sorry I totally forgot to take
pictures...)

Best things this week!

-finally got our awesome English Class advertisements printed! Stoked
about those.
-ate lots of good food
- randomly met a bunch of people that we know!
-played basketball with the Chinese crew for the last time this semester 😕😕
-got my mind BLOWN by german at least 5 times this week! (For those
learning german... think about the word Doppelgänger for a minute...)
also Schienenersatzverkehr (SEV)
-invented some new words that I'm stoked about... JenaNiveau,
Anfängerabendmahlsversammlung (no spaces), Hsuigkeit.
- also had an enjoyable time at church, like always.
- that's pretty much it.
- the church is true

I studied the Spirit World this whole week and it's been really
incredible for me. I would encourage you all to read D&C 138 and to
think about it. There is incredible knowledge that we can gain about
the life after this by study, pondering, and believing. Find out for
yourself what you believe about the next life, it's probably worth
your time. I love you all!

Love,
Elder Openshaw


Just our English flyers... sorry

Jena (yay-nuh)

received 6/19/2017

What a week!! Life is still good here. Oh man, I'm getting really
burned out trying to write these emails every week... sorry.

Highlights!

- I received an awesome german license plate from my first companion!
(Thanks elder Römer if you get this email)
- Nadine, probably one of my best friends/our investigator, has been
coming to seriously EVERYTHING with all of the members. (We also found
some ancestors for her, which was really cool)
- working with nadine just keeps reaffirming to me that the church is true.
- we met this random German that lived in Texas and is scared to death
of Mormons... funniest conversation of my life honestly haha.
- talked to a nice American couple on the train, best of travels to them.
- ate lots and lots of good Chinese food, (elder Hsu and I have
started just cooking for our friends, best way to make appointments
with college students haha)
-  I've been doing some family history every Sunday, and it's honestly
becoming the highlight of my week (although there are lots of
highlights, it's hard to decide.
- we finally tried the Schwarma place right next to our apartment,
it's good. (don't call it döner)
- I got to see all my friends from my first area, and meet tons of
people from the stake at a super cool stake activity!
- rediscovered that Jena is the best city in the world, and that the
members here are the best people in the world.

Probably the spiritual highlight of the week was this member's talk in
sacrament meeting. He talked about what it means to be a branch, what
it means that we meet together and call each other brother and sister.
His whole point was that we need to stop judging each other and accept
accept our differences. It really strikes me every week, the way that
it feels just to be in this branch. It just feels right. Just by
sitting down with them, you can tell that the people are good, that
they love one another, and they are trying their best to live
righteously. I love that feeling. It's something that makes our job so
so much easier, when we can invite people to be a part of an amazing
branch.
Try and be the change wherever you are, make your ward feel that way
for others.

I love you all,
Elder Openshaw

1. License plate
2. The long walk to the monkey forest

No time, but I'm doing fine

Hey everyone, it was a fantastic week! I'm sending this late because I
never had any wifi yesterday. (I also didn't really have time to
write)

Highlights:
-President Fingerle came and visited our branch! It was awesome to
have him there, and I he kept saying that he was "ein großes Jenafan"
(a huge Jena fan)
-We did a bunch of service projects this week, and I became the hedge
trimming master
-we went to a stake priesthood meeting and the stake president gave
one of the best talks I've ever heard (he spoke for an hour about
being worthy for the blessings of the Lord, missionary work, and being
good husbands)
-the stake president here is honestly so cool
-I discovered that giving out flowers on the street is not as easy as
I thought it would be.

Biggest Highlight: We had a first lesson with one of my good friends
here, and it went amazing! To be honest, I was so scared to ask her if
she wanted to have a lesson with us. But I asked anyway, and she said
yes! It was a super incredible lesson, and she has been reading the
Book of Mormon, praying, and asking us lots of great questions. She
also came to church even though one of her good friends (who is a
member) was out of town! (Those are the things that missionaries get
really excited about haha).

I want you all to do the same thing that I did this week. Invite
someone close to you, a good friend, to experience what you believe
(to either come for the first time, or to start the journey back).
It's such a wonderful blessing that in our countries we have the
freedom to invite people to join us at church. You'll be amazingly
blessed with happiness and joy as you see others experience God's
love.

I love you all,
Elder Openshaw


P-Day at the monkey forest

Jena Paradies

By now you all know how much I love this city, so there's not much to say about it. It's the same old University town with the same old DDR housing and the same beautiful streets, parks, everything. Even the main train station is called "Jena Paradies" (german spelling is
actually way better than English spelling by the way)... this week was honestly just a big adventure, and I'm tired.

Monday we had a crazy fitness training/sport night with all the young single adults in the branch, and some non-members. I decided that I like sports a lot more than just random fitness garbage. (If you are reading this and you know who Ian is... don't tell Ian.) but it was a cool experience where I talked to lots of people about their religious history and heard some pretty incredible stories! One guy was actually going to become a monk/priest, and spent a ton of time in a Kloster...cluster?... (no idea in English) but then decided to leave and he has lived all over the world since then, super cool guy.

What else...?

-there was a goth convention in Leipzig. Craziness
-met with tons and tons Chinese people
-had lots and lots of fun
- overall great week
-watch this video
http://mediasrv.lds.org/media-services/ML/size/909550151001/1280/720/1544974


Love,
Elder Openshaw

Dragon Boat Festival

Hey. Still happy. Still staying in Jena. Gonna be here for at least 6
more weeks. Still with elder Hsu. Still very awesome mission work.

-this week is dragon boat festival in china, so the Chinese
members/friends have been treating us extra special!
-they give us this special food called lo zhong! So so so good! (It's
pretty much a mix between a Mexican tamale, sushi, and kalua pork. All
wrapped in a palm leaf, so so good!)

-we have many friends in Jena, and whenever we go out on the street we
see at least one person we know. I love this place!
-I'm going to live in Jena after my mission. I don't know how or why,
but it's going to happen.

-German children are the cutest in the world. We often walk past this
kindergarten where the teacher will take them all out for a walk in
the morning. She puts them all in this big long wagon and pulls them
down the sidewalk, and they always smile and wave at us with their
cute reflective vests on! (Germans will make their kids wear the
funniest things sometimes)

-the branch was so happy that elder Hsu and I are staying, so they had
us both give our testimonies. I talked about the story of Jonah (our
mission president's wife read the story to us and it has really been
on my mind.)

Here is my favorite verse of the story,
Jonah 1:6   So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What
meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God
will think upon us, that we perish not.

Sometimes I fear that many of us are "sleepers," that we coast from
place to place, and sometimes we feel that we have fled "far from the
Lord."
Sometimes we hide our emotions deep in the belly of the ship of our
lives, and let our spirituality sleep soundly as we go from day to
day.
We don't need stormy seas or fearing shipmasters to wake us from our
slumber. We just need to wake up to the little moments of kindness
that we often let slip by.  We are never far from the Lord, and he
will hear our cries even from the belly of the whale.

I love all of you!
Don't be sleepers!

Love,
Elder Openshaw