28.04.2014

Dear friends,

I absolutely love you! :) Your support and prayers are probably what kept me going this week. I have pretty much recovered from my sickness, much faster than I would have ever anticipated. I don`t even have the time to write back to everyone who sent me good wishes but just please feel universally loved as you read this. :) 

This week was interesting. Actually, no. It involved an exchange, a Presidentially endorsed "day tourist" trip to the mountains and city of Luzern and a trip to the Temple. Lets start with the latter. We are allowed to go to the Temple once a transfer since we`re serving in Switzerland. It`s such a blessing! :) It`s really good to be able to participate in an actual saving ordinance when you`re serving in a place where a decent percentage of good and dedicated Missionaries would never do so otherwise. It has definitely helped me see the eternal purpose of my Mission and my life in general :) It`s so easy to forget.

I also had my first exchange with my District leader, Elder Zepp. We went to his area in Wettingen and did Gemeindesport (playing field hockey with the ward, i.e. their young man, mostly). It was fun! Besides that, not much going on while I was in Wettingen. 

Last to Luzern! I called President Miles about my health condition and he suggested that, if I felt well enough to do it (which I miraculously did by the time it came to it), me and Elder Marshall should take a train down to Luzern and spend the day there as tourists (tourists seems to be all there is in Luzern). There is a beautiful lake and very spectacular mountains, in addition to some wonderful central-Swiss architecture. It`s very recognizable, actually, and I haven`t seen it anywhere else yet. It was a great day and it helped me gain energy again after my sickness, because otherwise all we would have done would have been walking around and somehow try to talk to people...which, I think, is the most exhausting kind of Missionary work there is. President was totally inspired in his instruction, and by no later than Thursday I felt totally normal again.

We also had a less-active lesson yesterday which went quite well. It was the only lesson of this week, but next week we have plans for at least 8. Which would be the most in recent history in Dielsdorf. By far. Prayers and fingers crossed, please! It would be amazing if I actually got to teach here, right where I am. :)

Transfer calls are Saturday. Odds are that I`m staying. 

Random AGSM moment: When in Luzern sitting on a bench, two JWs started talking to us. We were like, "Oh no, not again!", because they are everywhere in our area and they are quite annoying to talk with because they just won`t stop talking. Well, turns out that they had been meeting with the Elders in Luzern a few times and they just came to tell us that we should tell them hi if we saw them :) Crisis avoided. Finally one of them who seems to understand that contention is of the devil...

ANYHOW. I`ve just felt that the same words and scriptures that once inspired young Elder Hinckley could also inspire and encourage me. In Mark 8:35, it reads, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it." This past week I`ve just come back to realize why I`m a Missionary, and how I should work to become my best self as I serve the Lord. 

Stay strong! Stay faithful! Feed the seed (Alma 32)! :) Much love!!

Elder Friedmann

21.04.2014

A very brief hands-up due to lack of time. Today is P-Day. And Easter. Happy Easter. I`m sick. Badly. Like, "write an emergency e-mail to President" sick. This weekend in particular has been awful. Your prayers are appreciated. In fact, going home (temporarily or even permanently) has been on my mind a lot. Of the 280 Missionaries in the AGSM, I`m probably the one who wants to go home the least, but I will do the things necessary to do what the Lord wants me to, and most of all, to get well and healthy again. I understand that this goes on a public blog so I don`t want to share a lot of details on my condition, but just be aware that it`s not good. 

Other news: G______ is really close to actually having a baptismal date. We taught him early this week and he pretty much explained everything in the lesson better than I could ever have, especially in my mediocre French. He`s doing great but he`s headed for a very busy week, including two trips to other parts of Switzerland so we might or might not meet with him. He came to Church and stayed the whole three hours even though he didn`t understand a word of what was being said. The language of the Spirit is amazing. The end. :) I`d love to "live" as a Missionary to see him get baptized. Because I`m pretty sure he will be. 

Other appointments or success stories: None. Everyone is on vacation. We maybe had 15 people at Church yesterday. 

I hope all of you are doing better than me. Much love :)

Elder Friedmann

Neue Nachrichten

 

Hey friends!

 

This is me rocking it still at the England MTC! I hope all of you are doing just great. I know I am. Being a Missionary is hard, the days are long, but I`m learning so much and it`s so rewarding! Elder Schiffer and I are still companions and we get along great! I`m the leader of the Benjamin District...which at first freaked me out but I`ve come to love them all so much! They are like my kids ha :) Elder Wipf is a convert and he`s from Alberta, Canada. HE KNOWS THE HENINGERS. So cool! He laughs a lot and is a complete stud. One of our teachers shared D&C 88:67 with him because he was laughing so much ;) Elder von Wallwitz is from Brazil but he`s essentially fluent in German. He`s like my twin! We`re both PR majors and we both love basketball. We also have the same toothpaste. It`s almost creepy :) I love him. Like in an appropriate way. Sister Wiborny is from near Frankfurt and we know a lot of the same people! She`s great too. She even wrote me a note yesterday saying I`m the best District leader in the MTC (there`s five). Made my day! :) And then there`s Sister Taylor from Oregon. She is great as well but a little shy because she thinks her German isn`t as good as everyone elses yet...which isn`t necessarily true. She`s so nice nontheless :)

 

We went to the Temple today. I loved it! The entire MTC had a session for themselves. In total, there`s 29 of us Missionaries here :) I know them all by name, even without tags. Being in a small MTC is so fun :) The sun was shining and it was almost 50 degrees today (which is essentially summer over here, as some other locals told us at the Temple grounds). We embraced it and took a lot of pictures, none of which you`ll get in this email. Bummer! But you will eventually see them, I promise :)

 

One of our "fake" investigators has a baptismal date. Teaching is so much fun! :) We`ll be in Munich a week from now, can you believe it?? Halfway there, living on a prayer...oooooohoooo.... :)

 

I love you all! Keep your heads up :) My spiritual thought for you today is D&C 80. A short section that gets overlooked so easily. President Edwards talked about it in a devotional...showing us how no matter where we go, there will be people who are waiting to receive our message! :)

 

Love,

Elder Friedmann  

Neue Nachrichten

 

Hey friends!

 

This is me rocking it still at the England MTC! I hope all of you are doing just great. I know I am. Being a Missionary is hard, the days are long, but I`m learning so much and it`s so rewarding! Elder Schiffer and I are still companions and we get along great! I`m the leader of the Benjamin District...which at first freaked me out but I`ve come to love them all so much! They are like my kids ha :) Elder Wipf is a convert and he`s from Alberta, Canada. HE KNOWS THE HENINGERS. So cool! He laughs a lot and is a complete stud. One of our teachers shared D&C 88:67 with him because he was laughing so much ;) Elder von Wallwitz is from Brazil but he`s essentially fluent in German. He`s like my twin! We`re both PR majors and we both love basketball. We also have the same toothpaste. It`s almost creepy :) I love him. Like in an appropriate way. Sister Wiborny is from near Frankfurt and we know a lot of the same people! She`s great too. She even wrote me a note yesterday saying I`m the best District leader in the MTC (there`s five). Made my day! :) And then there`s Sister Taylor from Oregon. She is great as well but a little shy because she thinks her German isn`t as good as everyone elses yet...which isn`t necessarily true. She`s so nice nontheless :)

 

We went to the Temple today. I loved it! The entire MTC had a session for themselves. In total, there`s 29 of us Missionaries here :) I know them all by name, even without tags. Being in a small MTC is so fun :) The sun was shining and it was almost 50 degrees today (which is essentially summer over here, as some other locals told us at the Temple grounds). We embraced it and took a lot of pictures, none of which you`ll get in this email. Bummer! But you will eventually see them, I promise :)

 

One of our "fake" investigators has a baptismal date. Teaching is so much fun! :) We`ll be in Munich a week from now, can you believe it?? Halfway there, living on a prayer...oooooohoooo.... :)

 

I love you all! Keep your heads up :) My spiritual thought for you today is D&C 80. A short section that gets overlooked so easily. President Edwards talked about it in a devotional...showing us how no matter where we go, there will be people who are waiting to receive our message! :)

 

Love,

Elder Friedmann  

Gruezi wohl miteinand! (that was Swiss German)

This is me in my first area...it`s called Dielsdorf, Zuerich Stake, Switzerland! Woot!! :) I love it here even though it is supposedly one of the most difficult areas in the Mission. I get why people would say that. Yup. It`s small. It`s just a bunch of small towns and villages near Zuerich. We have no investigators right now and only two less actives we can really work with, but we hope to change that! By employing the names from the HUGE binder full of potential investigators. Like, seriously, it`s so big, I would normally say that everyone who lives in our area is in it. This is not quite true but almost...on Saturday we tried to contact about 15 of them. 14 of them lived in very close proximity from each other (as in, a few houses apart from each other). For number 15, we had to climb up a very steep mountain for about half an hour. Needless to say, the man was not home. Oh well. It was good exercise. Gotta love serving in the Alps, especially in the great AGSM :) Generally, only one of the 15 was home and she happened to be in the shower right as we rang her doorbell. Her daughter answered it and said we could bring by an Albanian Book of Mormon sometime. Success! By far my biggest one in the field thus far. Granted, most of this weekend was spent with watching General Conference so we didn`t do much else. Wasn`t it just great?? I was a little upset that no one really started pushing Missionary work, until Elder Ballard came! And he rocked it as usual :) So, I plead with you, even if you`re not a Missionary...get a Preach My Gospel for FREE, set up a family Mission plan, have the Missionaries in your area over for food and invite your friends to join in! It`s really a lot less awkward than you think ;) We are all in this together! 

This upcoming week...we have three lessons and two dinner appointments! Pray with us that they all happen. That`s a really good number for our area, actually, and we really want this to be the standard for the future, or even better, increase it even further :) Elder Marshall and I are really here to roll up our sleeves and work :) In fact it`s warm enough for short sleeves. Anyways. We all get along great! :)

I hope all is well with you all!! Much love! :)

Elder Friedmann

02.04.2014

Hello friends! :)

To those of you who have remembered and anticipated my arrival in the Mission field today...sorry but it didn`t happen. Lufthansa, the airline we were supposed to fly with (and President Uchtdorf`s old employer) is on strike. So, our flight was delayed from early this morning to 12:20 a.m. to 1 p.m. and then it was cancelled. Oh well. We went to the airport in Manchester (a good hour drive, one way), waited in line for almost two hours and no one could really help us find out about our flight, We sent off the Frankfurt and Berlin Missionaries with some delays, but for the Munich ones, all hope and excitement faded quickly. We`re now back at the MTC with nothing to do really for the rest of the day. It`s not awful though. We were fed well, talked to some very interested people whose flights also got cancelled, placed a few pass-along cards, and now we have the MTC for us. Well, there`s a small German second-language district but it`s still weird when there`s only 10 of us here. Of course we have no teachers or anything so it`s just up to us to plan what we do. I kinda wanted to go finding but I know they won`t let us. So I`ll just exercise a little after finishing this blog post and catch up on letters and my journal. And then we`ll move back into our rooms and go to bed, because we are getting up and outta here who knows when. All of this mixed up our companionships a little. I`m now a triplet with Elder Schiffer, and Elder Gomez from Spain has joined us because his companion left earlier today. The other two Alpine Missionaries stuck here are Sister Pentz from Colorado and Sister Starns from England. I could have worse company, they are all really nice :) As to when the strike is over, about anything can happen. We were even told about a minuscule chance we`ll leave tonight, but actually Friday is likelier than that. We`ll see!

I love you all!! :)

Elder Friedmann