Hello Everyone!!
Wow what a week haha a lot of new news going on with me! So I will start off with my Birthday. On Saturday my comp made me breakfast in bed haha I was already out of bed of course but he made me get back in before he gave me the breakfast so that was nice of him. Than we had gotten invited to a seventh day adventist church and their church started at 9:30 so we went there and it was really wierd they have 2 hours and than we had our phone on silent so we didn't know if anyone had called so between the church hours I looked at the phone and noticed we had a missed call from President and also a text from President so I was thinking maybe he was taking our car away cause that has been talked about in the past that we don't need a car or whatever. And the text just said when you have time give me a call. So we waited untill after the second hour of church and I went out and called him back he answered and said. Elder Voran surprises happen all the time before Christmas and thats what has happened here you will be going down to LEIPZIG to serve with Elder Wilson and you will be leaving this coming Tuesday so a week before transfers. So I have been transferred or otherwise known as blitzed cause I am being transfered before the normal transfer. I am so excited Leipzig is a huge city of 500,000 people I will be living in a 4 elder apartment with the Zone Leaders down there. And I will be serving with Elder Wilson who I went to high school with and he was also in one of my earlier districts he is an awesome guy. I was totally surprised but I guess that was a great birthday present for me! It is just so crazy that pres is moving us around right before christmas but I guess the other guy who was in Leipzig has foot problems and needs a ctiy with a car. Leipzig has 2 wards down there with 300 active members I am so pumped! It will be a little bit different than here in Prenzlau. My comp was pretty sad and I was kinda too. Elder Larson and I get along very well so I guess that happens my 2 favorite comps i have only been with for a short amount of time. My trainer I was only with for 1 transfer and now Elder Larson for 5 weeks but I will go wherever I am supposed to go I guess. Man I am still shocked!! I don't even know what to think! Another thing. Elder Wilson and I are basically white washing that area the Leipzig 2 elders program. White washing means that none of the original elders stayed and 2 new ones come in. So there was another Blitz last week and that is when Elder Wilson got blitzed to Leipzig now I am coming in a week later so he has only been there for a week and probably doesnt even know the area its going to be a lot of fun I think! So my birthday was really good after our day of work we were invited over to the Senior Couples house. They made us homemade pizza man it was soo good! I ate so much I about exploaded and we were also able to watch 17 Miracles thats such a good movie about the pioneers man it was really great! So my birthday was really fantastic. Oh and it was basically birthday and christmas combined because I opened my christmas present only because I didn't want to pack all my wrapped gifts when I leave tommorrow morning. So Sorry G ma Sondra I know you wanted me to wait untill Christmas but the situation was pretty hard! I will re wrap the presents and open them on christmas!! Other than that we have had a pretty good week here probably taught the most lessons I have had since I have been here in Prenzlau. I am happy to say that I can leave the area better than when I found it so that is really good. We werent able to get 7 new appointments this week but we got 6 so that was good. We worked pretty hard and are seeing some of the benefits of our labors. I am way excited to go to a big city a little bit nervous as well. And considering here in Prenzlau they don't even have an appointment on Christmas day I am sure they do in Leipzig. I am excited we will see what happens. President said it doesnt make a whole lot of sense but its what the Lord wants so hahah I guess thats what we will do. The only thing that sucks about it is now I don't know what time I will be able to skype and what I will be able to do! I am sure I will still be able to skype but its kinda unclear when so just plan on the time I told you. And I will see what I can do. I called President this morning and he gave me permisison to e mail in the middle of the week when I get everything figured out to let you know the details with skype and everything. So it might be good mom if you could send me by wednesday or Thursday your skype information and your name on skype and stuff and I will do the same!! Other than that not a whole lot new here in Germany. I am excited for the change and I know its what is supposed to happen I was suprised but its time for me to move on and I am happy about where I am going!! Thanks for everything and have a great week!! Love you all!
--
Elder Christian J. Voran
Friday, January 13, 2012
12-11-11
Hello Everyone!
This week might be kinda short!! I am in Berlin right now for p day and we are here with the Eberswalde Elders from our district so we are going to hit up the Christmas market and everything I am way excited. We had a pretty good week in Prenzlau. We were able to reach the standard again of 7 new appointments!! I seriously don't know if that has ever been done in Prenzlau before! But it was great we were really blessed!! Its all about little miracles every day and when we can notice those miracles and thank Heavenly Father for them than he will be more willing to give us more!! So it has been great! We met a guy from Africa last week his name is Kennedy and he was super solid!! So interested and everything we had an appointment with him and it was really great he was excited to get the book of mormon than we made out a return appointment. And we met him at the Ausslander Heim which is like a big complex of all these refuges from different countries and so we went back to our return appointment and a girl answered the door she was probably 20 or so also from africa and we asked for Kennedy and she said he wasn't there than we asked when he would be back and she said he didn't live there but he lived in HAMBURG and he was just visiting his girlfriend in Prenzlau haha so that was a bummer! But we talked to the girl who answered the door and she was way interested as well and so we have an appointment with her next week! I have noticed God works in mysterious ways its crazy! We had a pretty dang good week as far as teaching goes. The most lessons I have got since I have been here in Prenzlau. We were a little bit short on Member lessons this week but mostly because its really hard to get member lessons here!! There are so few members that its almost impossible. We had 10 people at church yesterday 4 were missionaries haha so kinda dissapointing. Elder Larson gave a talk it was only supposed to be 15 minutes but they only had 2 speakers lined up and the first one only took about 5 minutes so he had about 30 minutes to go haha and he couldnt quite wing an extra 15 minutes but he did a good job took about 20 or so! It's crazy how different the church is over here! I am reading a book I don't know what its called in English but its Thomas S. Monsons journal entries from when he was working here in East Germany and some of the people mentioned in that book are in our branch! Its crazy one of the biggest German Pioneers came from Prenzlau!! Walter Krause! And his kids are still in our branch. You guys should all look for that book and read it! Also a book called In Harms Way by a prefessor from byu has the story of Sister Mcclellen the senior misisonary couple it has the story of her family and stuff so I want to read that book as well! I never realized how much church history was here in Germany its really great to a part of that! Tommorrow we have Zone Conference so I will be getting my packages I am excited about that! We should have a pretty good week this week as well!! Well thanks for everything and have a great week!! Love you all!!
--
Elder Christian J. Voran
This week might be kinda short!! I am in Berlin right now for p day and we are here with the Eberswalde Elders from our district so we are going to hit up the Christmas market and everything I am way excited. We had a pretty good week in Prenzlau. We were able to reach the standard again of 7 new appointments!! I seriously don't know if that has ever been done in Prenzlau before! But it was great we were really blessed!! Its all about little miracles every day and when we can notice those miracles and thank Heavenly Father for them than he will be more willing to give us more!! So it has been great! We met a guy from Africa last week his name is Kennedy and he was super solid!! So interested and everything we had an appointment with him and it was really great he was excited to get the book of mormon than we made out a return appointment. And we met him at the Ausslander Heim which is like a big complex of all these refuges from different countries and so we went back to our return appointment and a girl answered the door she was probably 20 or so also from africa and we asked for Kennedy and she said he wasn't there than we asked when he would be back and she said he didn't live there but he lived in HAMBURG and he was just visiting his girlfriend in Prenzlau haha so that was a bummer! But we talked to the girl who answered the door and she was way interested as well and so we have an appointment with her next week! I have noticed God works in mysterious ways its crazy! We had a pretty dang good week as far as teaching goes. The most lessons I have got since I have been here in Prenzlau. We were a little bit short on Member lessons this week but mostly because its really hard to get member lessons here!! There are so few members that its almost impossible. We had 10 people at church yesterday 4 were missionaries haha so kinda dissapointing. Elder Larson gave a talk it was only supposed to be 15 minutes but they only had 2 speakers lined up and the first one only took about 5 minutes so he had about 30 minutes to go haha and he couldnt quite wing an extra 15 minutes but he did a good job took about 20 or so! It's crazy how different the church is over here! I am reading a book I don't know what its called in English but its Thomas S. Monsons journal entries from when he was working here in East Germany and some of the people mentioned in that book are in our branch! Its crazy one of the biggest German Pioneers came from Prenzlau!! Walter Krause! And his kids are still in our branch. You guys should all look for that book and read it! Also a book called In Harms Way by a prefessor from byu has the story of Sister Mcclellen the senior misisonary couple it has the story of her family and stuff so I want to read that book as well! I never realized how much church history was here in Germany its really great to a part of that! Tommorrow we have Zone Conference so I will be getting my packages I am excited about that! We should have a pretty good week this week as well!! Well thanks for everything and have a great week!! Love you all!!
--
Elder Christian J. Voran
12-4-11
Hello Everyone!
Man this week was great!! We started right we worked hard and finished strong!! We really saw miracles this week it was great! I guess I will give you all the run down! So we have been going through our area book and finding tons of people who have interest still that missionaries just gave up on cause they weren't progressing as fast as they could be. I see it that when all we are doing is finding and there are people to teach even if they aren't fully proggressing so fast its ok cause it is giving us a chance to teach them and to become better missionaries. And who knows these people could connect differently with us than they did with the previous missionaries! We had Thanksgiving on Monday that was great!! I took some pictures I will have to send my SD card home soon. It was a full feast! It was us and the Eberswalde Elders and the senior couple of course cause they cooked. The eberswalde elders are cool guys including my MTC Comp Elder Gibson we have a lot of fun in our district. We were able to reach the standard again with 7 new appointments which was great! I don't know if that has ever happened in this area 7 new appiontments 2 weeks in a row!! Thats got to be crazy haha I will probably go AP now! haha just kidding. But we were really blessed with miracles! We found some way cool people. Also the hope of gettin a baptism before Christmas has increased!! We got back into contact with a former investigator her name is Mariela she is from Argentina and has a friend that lives in Utah that is a member and she saw the missionaries on the street last march and was excited to see them and she is SOO GOLDEN. We were finally able to meet with her the only problem is that she is a nurse so she is on call all the time and working and she has a daughter that she takes care of by herself cause her Husband works in another country so he is only home on weekends which is a bummer so appointments are hard but if you fight for them you can get her on a free day! She is the nicest lady ever! She reads the book of mormon every day she said she sets aside 20 minutes every night just to read even though she is so busy thats even better than most members of the church haha! She has already read it through once and is in Alma so she is just awesome. She also asked us to order her D and C and the pearl of Great price in spanish for her!! We are going to get her baptized before christmas or at least that is our goal she is so prepared and its just amazing to see her and how strong she is in the gospel without even being a member she would play such an essential role to the branch here especiall cause her daughter is 7 so that means in a year its one more member being raised into the church that would be great!! I will let you all know the progress with her as it happens!! We also increased our lessons taught this week by 3 lessons so slowly we are progressing we should have even more this coming week! We have about 7 planned already and these are not member lessons so it is going to be a good week I just know it! I get the feeling I am going to get transferred after this transfer but we will see. It will be great to spend Christmas here even though we don't have an appointment for Christmas yet which is kinda a bummer but it will happen I am sure probably the Branch president and his wife will have us over that would be good. We have an appointment with Sister Meilike my favorite member!! On the 26th so that will be good!! She is so solid she is the one that every calls her Mutti cause she is always taking care of us!! We had a couple of dissapointments this week as well but its ok the work will go on!! Our solid appointment with Rheinhardt in Schwedt fell through and we were so stupid we didnt even get his contact info so now there is no way we could get in contact with him unless he calls so we are praying for that! Elder Larson got blitzed this week!! We were driving to an apointment and all of a sudden we see this blitz box and he was going like 50 over cause he didnt see the speed limit change so than it flashed and took a picture of us haha so he will have to pay some money for that!! I have been blitzed once but mine wasnt too bad I only had to pay 25 euro or so.... Anyways we also had a ward christmas party this week it was pretty good!! Its funny to me how some members come to the party but than not the next day to church!! They just dont quite fully grasp what church is all about and thats kinda sad! I have had a hard time being nice to people this week cause they are so ridiculous they have all there Christmas stuff up there lights and there nativities than we go ring there doorbell and ask if they believe in God and what God means to them and they say no I dont believe in that thats all nonsense and I have been tempted to ask them why they are celebrating christmas!! Man when everyone would understand what Christmas really means than this world would be soo much better!! But the Christmas market is up in our city now and we went the opening day and scored some free crepes they were delicous man they sale the best stuff there like all type of roasted nuts in like some sugar deliciousness my favorite is the cashews!! Its funny the people are so much happie at christmas market mostly becasue they are all hopped up on this drink called Glühwein its a warm alchohol drink so they all get owned on that!! I was on exchange this week and went to Eberswalde and we went by on this less active member and oh my gosh it was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life!! His apartment is just a pig stie! He had old food all over his couch like food that is supposed to be in the fridge and he was just eatin it oh my gosh i almost puked!! He had this bottle of some type of drink and it had been sittin there forever and there was a couple of flies inside and he pours it into his cup and just drinks away man it was so gross and he doesnt shower he just walks around in like a belly shirt haha it was insane!! Well that was my week!! Hope you all have a great week!! Love you all!!
Man this week was great!! We started right we worked hard and finished strong!! We really saw miracles this week it was great! I guess I will give you all the run down! So we have been going through our area book and finding tons of people who have interest still that missionaries just gave up on cause they weren't progressing as fast as they could be. I see it that when all we are doing is finding and there are people to teach even if they aren't fully proggressing so fast its ok cause it is giving us a chance to teach them and to become better missionaries. And who knows these people could connect differently with us than they did with the previous missionaries! We had Thanksgiving on Monday that was great!! I took some pictures I will have to send my SD card home soon. It was a full feast! It was us and the Eberswalde Elders and the senior couple of course cause they cooked. The eberswalde elders are cool guys including my MTC Comp Elder Gibson we have a lot of fun in our district. We were able to reach the standard again with 7 new appointments which was great! I don't know if that has ever happened in this area 7 new appiontments 2 weeks in a row!! Thats got to be crazy haha I will probably go AP now! haha just kidding. But we were really blessed with miracles! We found some way cool people. Also the hope of gettin a baptism before Christmas has increased!! We got back into contact with a former investigator her name is Mariela she is from Argentina and has a friend that lives in Utah that is a member and she saw the missionaries on the street last march and was excited to see them and she is SOO GOLDEN. We were finally able to meet with her the only problem is that she is a nurse so she is on call all the time and working and she has a daughter that she takes care of by herself cause her Husband works in another country so he is only home on weekends which is a bummer so appointments are hard but if you fight for them you can get her on a free day! She is the nicest lady ever! She reads the book of mormon every day she said she sets aside 20 minutes every night just to read even though she is so busy thats even better than most members of the church haha! She has already read it through once and is in Alma so she is just awesome. She also asked us to order her D and C and the pearl of Great price in spanish for her!! We are going to get her baptized before christmas or at least that is our goal she is so prepared and its just amazing to see her and how strong she is in the gospel without even being a member she would play such an essential role to the branch here especiall cause her daughter is 7 so that means in a year its one more member being raised into the church that would be great!! I will let you all know the progress with her as it happens!! We also increased our lessons taught this week by 3 lessons so slowly we are progressing we should have even more this coming week! We have about 7 planned already and these are not member lessons so it is going to be a good week I just know it! I get the feeling I am going to get transferred after this transfer but we will see. It will be great to spend Christmas here even though we don't have an appointment for Christmas yet which is kinda a bummer but it will happen I am sure probably the Branch president and his wife will have us over that would be good. We have an appointment with Sister Meilike my favorite member!! On the 26th so that will be good!! She is so solid she is the one that every calls her Mutti cause she is always taking care of us!! We had a couple of dissapointments this week as well but its ok the work will go on!! Our solid appointment with Rheinhardt in Schwedt fell through and we were so stupid we didnt even get his contact info so now there is no way we could get in contact with him unless he calls so we are praying for that! Elder Larson got blitzed this week!! We were driving to an apointment and all of a sudden we see this blitz box and he was going like 50 over cause he didnt see the speed limit change so than it flashed and took a picture of us haha so he will have to pay some money for that!! I have been blitzed once but mine wasnt too bad I only had to pay 25 euro or so.... Anyways we also had a ward christmas party this week it was pretty good!! Its funny to me how some members come to the party but than not the next day to church!! They just dont quite fully grasp what church is all about and thats kinda sad! I have had a hard time being nice to people this week cause they are so ridiculous they have all there Christmas stuff up there lights and there nativities than we go ring there doorbell and ask if they believe in God and what God means to them and they say no I dont believe in that thats all nonsense and I have been tempted to ask them why they are celebrating christmas!! Man when everyone would understand what Christmas really means than this world would be soo much better!! But the Christmas market is up in our city now and we went the opening day and scored some free crepes they were delicous man they sale the best stuff there like all type of roasted nuts in like some sugar deliciousness my favorite is the cashews!! Its funny the people are so much happie at christmas market mostly becasue they are all hopped up on this drink called Glühwein its a warm alchohol drink so they all get owned on that!! I was on exchange this week and went to Eberswalde and we went by on this less active member and oh my gosh it was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life!! His apartment is just a pig stie! He had old food all over his couch like food that is supposed to be in the fridge and he was just eatin it oh my gosh i almost puked!! He had this bottle of some type of drink and it had been sittin there forever and there was a couple of flies inside and he pours it into his cup and just drinks away man it was so gross and he doesnt shower he just walks around in like a belly shirt haha it was insane!! Well that was my week!! Hope you all have a great week!! Love you all!!
11-27-11
Hello Everyone!
Well my week has been pretty good!! We worked hard this week and were able to reach the standard of 7 new appointments this week. We actually made out about 10 or so but only 7 count so thats ok. So this next week will be even better cause we will have people to teach. We found a couple of way cool people and we have been doing a lot of area book stuff so old contacts and they are still interested so its good!! Zoran our investigator got deported back to Serbia hhaha kind of a bummer but what can you do!! I thought the Germans let everyone stay here but I guess not! But we found some really solid people. Steffanie didnt make it to church that was a bummer as well but maybe one day she will come! What can you do. Our job is to invite not to force so its been good. I was in Berlin on Friday for President interviews and that was really good. President gave his lesson about something we are starting in the mission. called the Advent of Miracles. In German Der Advent der Wunder. And this is an awesome program that president has set up he really recieved revalation to do this. So the goal is to fill the church and he has given us a certain list of things we should do each week. So this first week is about finding and we are supposed to do our best to find people and every day invite someone to church. Next week is about teaching and we are supposed to continue to invite people to church. And than baptizing and than keeping. It would take me forever to explain it all. But there are 4 Advents here and every advent you light a candle and each advent has a meaning. The first advent was yesterday and that is the advent of Hope. Than next week will be the advent of Peace than the Advent of Joy than Of Love and than you get ot christmas and that is when you light all candles plus the Christ Candle they all have deeper meanings but you can look that up on the mission blog. Anyways we are convinced that with the help of the members here we will see tons of miracles and we are really excited. We are going to do a mission wide fast next week on the 4th of December you are all invited to participate as well. We have returned missionaries praying for us every night and especially for areas they have served in. We are saying a kneeling prayer together as a companionship every day before we leave asking for miracles. And we are writing all the miracles down! Its going to be a great time! I love this time of the year we are going to see so many miracles! Here in Prenzlau we have already seen some small miracles. We were in Schwedt on Tuesday that is our big city and it has so many doors just huge ddr apartments! I need to take a picture so you guys can understand what i am talking about! Anyways and we were dong doors and just getting owned nobody wanted to listen to us it was pretty rough! Anyways we were able to make out an appointment with this lady doing doors she didnt seem to interested but she had visitors at the time so said come back next week. SO we got done it was only 6 pm so we said ok we could do some more doors and than we both felt that we should do some street contacting in the city so in the city square. And the first guy I talked to was waiting for a bus and he just opened right up to us and was so solid and told us his whole life story it was awesome and we just taught a bit about what we beleived and it was good than he said i am really interested in hearing more. So we set an appointment for tommorrow its going to be great he is really solid. His name is Rheinhardt! I am glad you all had a happy thanksgiving my thanksgiving was good haha a little chinease food! But today we are getting a real thanksgiving with pumpkin pie and everything so I am really excited about that! I crappy thing that happened this week! I was on exchange on wednesday its the first time I have left Prenzlau since being transferred here and that night my comp and the other Zoneleader got in the NEWSPAPER here in Prenzlau I was so ticked when I came back!! But its ok haha. THey talked to a reporter on the street and they were on the front page just a tiny little article... It was pretty cool! Other than that not a whole lot new with me!! Thanks for everything!! Have a great holliday season and remember why we celebrate Christmas!! Love you all!!
-- Elder Christian J. Voran
11-20-11
Hello Everyone!!
So first things first! My new comp Elder Larson is a joke of a missionary and I cant stand him!! Haha Just kidding he is prob one of my favorite comps so far we have a lot of fun together and we work really hard so that is good! ITs cool cause he only has 2 transfers left but he wants to finish strong so that is good for him! We have a lot of fun finding people and just cracking jokes. He is from Mesa Arizona. Sadly he is not a big sports guy but he knows some things about sports and his uncle plays in the NFL haha so now I have hook ups! We have already seen quite a bit of success together! His first day here we made out 3 new appointments in 1 hour before our lunch break man we were on fire and the first guy we talked to his name is Zoran and he is now an Investigator we had a good appointment with him on friday and he is from serbia so his german isnt perfect but nonetheless he understood us enough and we understood him and at the end of the lesson he is like where do I sign up? Haha so we prob could have set a baptismal date but we think he needs to kow a bit more first. We set another appointment for saturday but he didnt show and didnt come to church on Sunday but we have his address so hopefully we can get into contact with him again! Its crazy we get shut down a lot here and people don't want a whole lot to do with us but we always seem to find the diamond in the coal! If we just stay diligent and talk to everyone that we see than we are bound to find someone! The other day we were doing Street contacting before lunch and we had about 2 hours of street contacting. (which gets really old). And we talked to everyone that we could see and nobody listened than there was this cute girl she is young prob 20 21 and I was like ok I will talk to her. (which is sometimes hard when the girls are cute) And so I did and her name is Stefanie and she had a lot of interest and will be coming to church this next week!! Which will be awesome cause since next week is the first Advent we are starting something in our branch where all the talks are focused around Christ so that will be great for her to hear! We have been doing tons of door to door here and just get owned but its ok haha cause we have a good time. The other day we were in the big city Schwedt and we were doing doors all they have are ddr apartments so huge complexes with tons of apartments in them and we decided to split up and I would klingle one house while my comp klingles the other and if we got let in than we would hollar at the other. So these houses have little speaker boxes by the klingle(doorbell) so they can talk to us from their apartment. Anyways so we were doing that and I got let in to an apartment and I tried to call for my comp but he was busy talking to someone over the speak box. So I went up by myself and started talking to this Russian lady. ( there is a lot of russians or polish people) cause the city is right on the border of Poland. Anyways and she was saying how she didnt need any other books about Jesus and she had them all and I said well you dont have them all cause you dont have the book of mormon and I could hardly understand her cause she was russian. And I had a good chat with her probably about 5 or 7 minutes than the neighbors from the floor underneath come out and start yelling at me telling me to get out of the apartment so my talk with the Russian lady was done anyways so I went down and this one lady man she was like evil! She had some serious fire red hair! And she was like get out of here and I said why haha and she said how did you get in here and I told her the lady upstairs let me in and she said all this crap with religion is not allowed here and I said Doch which means yes it is. And she was getting mad and I tried to explain to her that I had permission from the Government to do what I was doing and she cant kick me out of the house unless she was the owner of the apartment complex! But than I just left anyways cause I was a bit ticked off at the time haha so I walked out. It was a rough 3 hour door to door session but we felt good after cause we were diligent and everything! Other than that not a whole lot new this last week. We made out lots of new appointments and came back into contact with a golden investigator that had lost contact for 6 months or so!! She is from Argentina and totally loves the church she was taught by the elders in Argentina and than a little bit here in Germany too. Her name is Mariela. I dont know her yet I have only talked to her on the phone she is way excited to meet us. She had a baptismal date at one point in time. Her only prob is that she is so busy with work so its hard for her to find time to meet with us but we will meet with her soon I am sure! So for thanksgiving my comp and I will be treating ourselves to a little chinease buffet haha and than we will have a more legit thanksgiving next monday with the senior couple. Since we are in Berlin this friday Sister Mcclellen doesnt want to stress about thanksgiving the day before so we are going to do it next monday. I am excited!! Well I hope you all have a great thanksgiving!! Remember what we should really be thankful for!! Have a great week!! Love you all!!
So first things first! My new comp Elder Larson is a joke of a missionary and I cant stand him!! Haha Just kidding he is prob one of my favorite comps so far we have a lot of fun together and we work really hard so that is good! ITs cool cause he only has 2 transfers left but he wants to finish strong so that is good for him! We have a lot of fun finding people and just cracking jokes. He is from Mesa Arizona. Sadly he is not a big sports guy but he knows some things about sports and his uncle plays in the NFL haha so now I have hook ups! We have already seen quite a bit of success together! His first day here we made out 3 new appointments in 1 hour before our lunch break man we were on fire and the first guy we talked to his name is Zoran and he is now an Investigator we had a good appointment with him on friday and he is from serbia so his german isnt perfect but nonetheless he understood us enough and we understood him and at the end of the lesson he is like where do I sign up? Haha so we prob could have set a baptismal date but we think he needs to kow a bit more first. We set another appointment for saturday but he didnt show and didnt come to church on Sunday but we have his address so hopefully we can get into contact with him again! Its crazy we get shut down a lot here and people don't want a whole lot to do with us but we always seem to find the diamond in the coal! If we just stay diligent and talk to everyone that we see than we are bound to find someone! The other day we were doing Street contacting before lunch and we had about 2 hours of street contacting. (which gets really old). And we talked to everyone that we could see and nobody listened than there was this cute girl she is young prob 20 21 and I was like ok I will talk to her. (which is sometimes hard when the girls are cute) And so I did and her name is Stefanie and she had a lot of interest and will be coming to church this next week!! Which will be awesome cause since next week is the first Advent we are starting something in our branch where all the talks are focused around Christ so that will be great for her to hear! We have been doing tons of door to door here and just get owned but its ok haha cause we have a good time. The other day we were in the big city Schwedt and we were doing doors all they have are ddr apartments so huge complexes with tons of apartments in them and we decided to split up and I would klingle one house while my comp klingles the other and if we got let in than we would hollar at the other. So these houses have little speaker boxes by the klingle(doorbell) so they can talk to us from their apartment. Anyways so we were doing that and I got let in to an apartment and I tried to call for my comp but he was busy talking to someone over the speak box. So I went up by myself and started talking to this Russian lady. ( there is a lot of russians or polish people) cause the city is right on the border of Poland. Anyways and she was saying how she didnt need any other books about Jesus and she had them all and I said well you dont have them all cause you dont have the book of mormon and I could hardly understand her cause she was russian. And I had a good chat with her probably about 5 or 7 minutes than the neighbors from the floor underneath come out and start yelling at me telling me to get out of the apartment so my talk with the Russian lady was done anyways so I went down and this one lady man she was like evil! She had some serious fire red hair! And she was like get out of here and I said why haha and she said how did you get in here and I told her the lady upstairs let me in and she said all this crap with religion is not allowed here and I said Doch which means yes it is. And she was getting mad and I tried to explain to her that I had permission from the Government to do what I was doing and she cant kick me out of the house unless she was the owner of the apartment complex! But than I just left anyways cause I was a bit ticked off at the time haha so I walked out. It was a rough 3 hour door to door session but we felt good after cause we were diligent and everything! Other than that not a whole lot new this last week. We made out lots of new appointments and came back into contact with a golden investigator that had lost contact for 6 months or so!! She is from Argentina and totally loves the church she was taught by the elders in Argentina and than a little bit here in Germany too. Her name is Mariela. I dont know her yet I have only talked to her on the phone she is way excited to meet us. She had a baptismal date at one point in time. Her only prob is that she is so busy with work so its hard for her to find time to meet with us but we will meet with her soon I am sure! So for thanksgiving my comp and I will be treating ourselves to a little chinease buffet haha and than we will have a more legit thanksgiving next monday with the senior couple. Since we are in Berlin this friday Sister Mcclellen doesnt want to stress about thanksgiving the day before so we are going to do it next monday. I am excited!! Well I hope you all have a great thanksgiving!! Remember what we should really be thankful for!! Have a great week!! Love you all!!
11-13-11
Hello Everyone!
So this week has been pretty much the same as every other week here in Prenzlau haha. But what is different is that transfer calls were this week and a total surprise happened!! My comp is being transferred to Leer he is going to serve with my buddy Elder Sullivan haha and Elder Sullivans trainer is coming here. I know Elder Sullivans trainer pretty good cause he trained my mtc comp Elder Gibson as well and whats funny is that Elder Gibson is in our district so its a total father son reunion haha we are all pretty excited cause Elder Larson (my new comp) is way cool! He is really funny. So I am sure we are going to have a good time together! And he is a hard worker as well so I am excited it seemed like 1000 pounds were lifted off my back it was pretty crazy. I mean I like Elder Breuer but we were in a situation here where nothing was moving forward cause we werent working so how could we see miracles if we are not working and when that happens something has to change to spark up the work! So I am excited it was seriously an answer to my prayers after 6 weeks of just skimming by I am ready to go full force!! It will be great! My german has increased a lot and thats what I wanted so I guess I win either way! I have noticed that God answers all of our prayers even if we don't like the process in which it is being answered we look back and we see that it was answered! I have also noticed that if he doesn't answer right away you just need to keep bugging him and pushing untill you get an answer because I think he tests us sometimes to see if our desires are really righteous and if we really want the things we ask for and how far we are willing to go to get the things we are asking for! So before you pray think about what you really want and if it is a righteous desire don't let go of it and make sure you keep praying!! My testimony of prayer has grown so much this transfer! Thats another thing I am really grateful for! I guess every thing has a reason!! I am pretty sure my new comp will be the 2nd counsler in the branch presidency but I dont know. I sure hope its not me!! haha but we will see. As far as the week went we didnt have so much success. We only made out three appointments but we had tons of member lessons and we even had a service project so that was good!! The branch president the one who is a senator here in Germany is always gone but his wife pretty much always comes when she can! Man that Lady is seriously so awesome she has 4 kids and they are all younger than 8 yrs old with the youngest being about 1 or so. She brings them to church every week without her husband and she brings us food and we eat at the church after the meetings are over!! Yesterday she said she didnt want to cook on Saturday night so she woke up at 3 am to cook us Schnitzel potatoes and vegtables man it was so delicious!! Its members like that, that really strengthen your testimony and help you keep going!! The kids are great too!! They seem to like me quite a bit!! The 3 yr old his name is Linos and he is a pretty wild kid. And he never says goodbye to you when you leave he just walks away and his mom said that he doesnt even say it to his dad when his dad leaves. And yesterday I finally got him to say goodbye to me!! I was way excited about that haha he didnt say goodbye cause thats english but he said Tschüss which is german haha it was awesome I was pretty proud of myself to say the least!! But the kids are always climbing on me and stuff so its pretty fun!! I still havent got my packages. But I will be going to berlin on the 25th of November for a meeting so I will be able to get them all then!! Thats next friday so thats not too bad! A day after Thanksgiving! Man I am going to miss thanksgiving at home!! But it will be good here in the misison field!! I can't believe that November is already halfway over!! That just blows my mind! The mission just seems to go by faster and faster and now that I am almost at my year mark its going to fly!! I remember my first couple of transfers were sooo slow and drawn out but now it doesnt even seem like I can keep up with how fast time is going!! I feel pretty comfortable with my German and that makes it go by even faster cause I am not stressing about German everyday hahah so thats also good!! One bad thing about the transfer is that Elder Ramage the zone leader here got transferred man we became really close this transfer he also had a German companion and we went on exchange and decided the reason it is so hard with them is because they have grown up in a total different world!! But he is going to Leipzig and I am gonna miss him he likes sports and so he is like the only one here that I can talk sports with!! Also he played Football at Dixie before his mission haha so who knows I could have seen him! He is way cool though. And the new zone leader coming in is the guy from my last area he was my zone leader over there and he is SOO WIERD!! We shall see haha but I am excited for a new transfer a new start and I hope everything goes really well!! The senior couple here is going to feed us tonight because Elder Breuer is leaving they are making Roast!! Which I havent had in forever!! And Klüse which is some type of potatoes!! Its really delicious its hard to explain look it up on the internet its a german thing they are like potatoe dumpling balls!! Prob my favorite german food!! So I am pretty excited about that!! Other than that not a whole lot new! I am sure next week my e mail will be better! Probably see some miracles!! Well thats all for this week!! Thanks for all you do!! Thanks for the prayers!! I feel them everyday!! I love you all!!
Ps. Schöne Woche Noch!!
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Elder Christian J. Voran
So this week has been pretty much the same as every other week here in Prenzlau haha. But what is different is that transfer calls were this week and a total surprise happened!! My comp is being transferred to Leer he is going to serve with my buddy Elder Sullivan haha and Elder Sullivans trainer is coming here. I know Elder Sullivans trainer pretty good cause he trained my mtc comp Elder Gibson as well and whats funny is that Elder Gibson is in our district so its a total father son reunion haha we are all pretty excited cause Elder Larson (my new comp) is way cool! He is really funny. So I am sure we are going to have a good time together! And he is a hard worker as well so I am excited it seemed like 1000 pounds were lifted off my back it was pretty crazy. I mean I like Elder Breuer but we were in a situation here where nothing was moving forward cause we werent working so how could we see miracles if we are not working and when that happens something has to change to spark up the work! So I am excited it was seriously an answer to my prayers after 6 weeks of just skimming by I am ready to go full force!! It will be great! My german has increased a lot and thats what I wanted so I guess I win either way! I have noticed that God answers all of our prayers even if we don't like the process in which it is being answered we look back and we see that it was answered! I have also noticed that if he doesn't answer right away you just need to keep bugging him and pushing untill you get an answer because I think he tests us sometimes to see if our desires are really righteous and if we really want the things we ask for and how far we are willing to go to get the things we are asking for! So before you pray think about what you really want and if it is a righteous desire don't let go of it and make sure you keep praying!! My testimony of prayer has grown so much this transfer! Thats another thing I am really grateful for! I guess every thing has a reason!! I am pretty sure my new comp will be the 2nd counsler in the branch presidency but I dont know. I sure hope its not me!! haha but we will see. As far as the week went we didnt have so much success. We only made out three appointments but we had tons of member lessons and we even had a service project so that was good!! The branch president the one who is a senator here in Germany is always gone but his wife pretty much always comes when she can! Man that Lady is seriously so awesome she has 4 kids and they are all younger than 8 yrs old with the youngest being about 1 or so. She brings them to church every week without her husband and she brings us food and we eat at the church after the meetings are over!! Yesterday she said she didnt want to cook on Saturday night so she woke up at 3 am to cook us Schnitzel potatoes and vegtables man it was so delicious!! Its members like that, that really strengthen your testimony and help you keep going!! The kids are great too!! They seem to like me quite a bit!! The 3 yr old his name is Linos and he is a pretty wild kid. And he never says goodbye to you when you leave he just walks away and his mom said that he doesnt even say it to his dad when his dad leaves. And yesterday I finally got him to say goodbye to me!! I was way excited about that haha he didnt say goodbye cause thats english but he said Tschüss which is german haha it was awesome I was pretty proud of myself to say the least!! But the kids are always climbing on me and stuff so its pretty fun!! I still havent got my packages. But I will be going to berlin on the 25th of November for a meeting so I will be able to get them all then!! Thats next friday so thats not too bad! A day after Thanksgiving! Man I am going to miss thanksgiving at home!! But it will be good here in the misison field!! I can't believe that November is already halfway over!! That just blows my mind! The mission just seems to go by faster and faster and now that I am almost at my year mark its going to fly!! I remember my first couple of transfers were sooo slow and drawn out but now it doesnt even seem like I can keep up with how fast time is going!! I feel pretty comfortable with my German and that makes it go by even faster cause I am not stressing about German everyday hahah so thats also good!! One bad thing about the transfer is that Elder Ramage the zone leader here got transferred man we became really close this transfer he also had a German companion and we went on exchange and decided the reason it is so hard with them is because they have grown up in a total different world!! But he is going to Leipzig and I am gonna miss him he likes sports and so he is like the only one here that I can talk sports with!! Also he played Football at Dixie before his mission haha so who knows I could have seen him! He is way cool though. And the new zone leader coming in is the guy from my last area he was my zone leader over there and he is SOO WIERD!! We shall see haha but I am excited for a new transfer a new start and I hope everything goes really well!! The senior couple here is going to feed us tonight because Elder Breuer is leaving they are making Roast!! Which I havent had in forever!! And Klüse which is some type of potatoes!! Its really delicious its hard to explain look it up on the internet its a german thing they are like potatoe dumpling balls!! Prob my favorite german food!! So I am pretty excited about that!! Other than that not a whole lot new! I am sure next week my e mail will be better! Probably see some miracles!! Well thats all for this week!! Thanks for all you do!! Thanks for the prayers!! I feel them everyday!! I love you all!!
Ps. Schöne Woche Noch!!
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Elder Christian J. Voran
11-6-11
So my week was kinda slow pretty normal here in Prenzlau nothing really too special. Something cool though last tuesday we had Zone Conference which is always great to hear from President and to see all my buddies from the mtc and wherever else. Anyways on Monday the Zone Leaders assigned us to give a warm up story at Zone Conference so just a cool story to tell the rest of the missionaries to invite the spirit or bring a little excitment to the work. So My comp and I were like ok we have no cool stories really we havent found anyone super solid and so I dont know what were going to tell the missionaries. But we decided we would work monday night to see a miracle or a warm up story. So we prayed that day that it would happen and since we only have 3 hours to work on Mondays it was looking a little difficult. Anyways we were over at Elder and Sister Mcclellens house and we had them pray for us as well before we left to do work. We decided to drive down to Schwedt its the big city in our area but its like 45 minutes away so we dont get down there too much probably 1 or 2 times a week anyways so we went down there. We talke to everyone on the street and nobody really had interest we met some younger guys prob 20 or 21 and they seemed a little interested but no time to meet with us cause they work outside of Schwedt in Berlin or somewhere. Anyways it was getting late it was about 15 to 9 and we needed 45 minutes to get home and we are supposed to be home at 9 so we called our Zone Leaders and they said stay out till 9 and the one Zone Leader said I know you guys will make out an appointment and they prayed for us as well. So we said ok and we talked to a couple more people on the street and nothing we didnt make out an appointment. Than I got the idea to call a member and have her pray for us because that is how missionary work is supposed to be. So I called her and asked if she would pray for us and told her our situation and where we were at so it was good and she was excited to pray for us! She is like prob the strongest member in the branch and always helping out the missionaries she has a picture of every missionary who has served here and calls them every year for birthdays and goes to america every 4 years to visit haha so she loves the missionaries. Anyways so she prayed for us and less than 1 minute later we stopped a younger guy on his bike and talked to him he was really interested and we made out an appointment! That really shows us that missionary work is also a responsibility of the members. So help the missionaries out when you can! haha anyways the sad news of that story is that the appointment fell through. But we did get a warm up story for Zone Conference. Other than that a pretty slow week. But yesterday for P day we were able to go to Berlin. President has given us permission to go to Berlin for 1 p day a transfer. Man how I love Berlin its probably my favorite city ever its really a dream to serve there!! So many people and so many cool things!! We were able to tour the government
buildings with our branch president who is a state senator and President Pimentel and Sister Pimentel came along with us so that was really cool the Eberswalde elders and also the Mcclellens were there too. It was way awesome we toured the Reichtag which is the equivelent to the Capital in DC so that was way awesome and we went in some places where only government officials can go and normal tours can not so that was cool. So there is so much history there! It was really amazing. I took 120 pictures so I have a lot of pictures to send home! That is why I wasnt able to e mail yesterday cause our train left kinda early and we didnt have time to do e mails. and we didnt get back untill 6 and it was time to work at 6 so thats the story behind that. Anyways Berlin was awesome! Now for a funny story. So I am sure I have told you all about the Hannemans they are less active and it is only a son and the mom the son is 60 and the Mom is 88 and so he just lives with her and takes care of her and everything and he is really wierd we actually think he is probably Homo and I think he has a crush on my comp hahah he will like rub my comps head its really really wierd. Anyways the Mom is so funny she is just so old and half the time has no idea whats going on. Like one week we were making animal noises and she would try to copy them man it was funny and I always talk to her in a donald duck voice and she almost dies of a heart attack everytime cause she is laughing so hard! So last week not this last Sunday but the Sunday before I think that was the 30th of October anyways we were at there house cause we meet with them every sunday and I showed the Grandma my planner and I have a picture from Hunters baptism on my planner and its the one in front of Grandma Sondras house with the whole family so I showed her that and she loved it and said next time will you bring me a copy of that picture and I will pay for it! I will buy it from you haha so I said ya I can bring one but you dont have to pay for it! So I took a picture of the picture and printed it off and took it to her and when we got there this last week I told her hey I have a gift for you but you will have to wait untill later so we ate first and than I pulled it out and she was so excited haha she was like trying to kiss me it was a little bit wierd but she gave me a big hug and she told her son to put it in her shelf right in front of her and she said she was gonna buy a frame for it! Haha now she loves me which is funny cause I always sit by her and now she puts her hand on my leg sometimes which is a little bit awkward but what can you do haha she is 88 yrs old! Anyways that was my funny story for the week!! Nothing much is new here! Its the last week of the transfer already I cant believe how fast time goes by! I dont know if anything will change but we will see!! Cross your fingers!! Change is always good!! Anyways thanks for everything have a great week!! Love you all!!!Elder Christian J. Voran
10-23-11
Hello everyone.
Man so this week has been ok! This area is not easy we have seen a little success though we made out quite a few new appointments this week and have been finding basically all day everyday. Doors and street contacting is basically all we do and that makes a man CRAZY. I am really losing motivation here haha which is sad but I am trying to somehow keep myself motivated! All of our appointments fall through we found 2 solid people last week and both appointments fell out and one of them didnt show up and the other said she had no interest and another investigator that we had that my comp said was way solid we went by on her and she said she didnt want to meet with us anymore haha hasnt been too much fun this week! My comp doesnt really have a lot of motivation left either because he is going home in 2 more transfers and he doesnt want to end his mission here but he probably will because he is the 2nd counsler in the branch presidency. Speaking of the branch there were only 9 people at church yesterday and 4 of those 9 were missionaries and the other 5 were all sisters. We had 3 priesthood holders at church and we were all missionaries. It was so ridiculous I have never seen such an empty room for church. The branch president has only been here 1 sunday of the 3 that I have been here haha he is always busy because he is like the german equivilent to a senator here so he is in Berlin all the time and flys to paris and all over to have meetings and stuff. He has 4 kids so there are kids in the ward but I have only seen them once and ya they dont come a lot. Hmm what else happened this week haha. We were doing street contacting in a different city in our area called Pasewalk and there was seriously nobody on the street it was so ridiculous and we were like what the heck there is nobody this is dumb and so we started just walking around and we were looking in the window of this watch store haha cause the advertisement poster of the girl she was way cute so my comp was picking which one he would marry and it was about 9 at night so time for us to go home and this bike started coming in our direction so I thought alright I will stop her and see if maybe she will talk to us. it was an older woman so not old but probably in her 50s or so. And when we stopped her haha she thought we were the police because she didnt have a front light on her bike she is like ya I know I am just going home right now and I will get a light on it and all this haha and we were like no we are from the church and started talking to her she is catholic but we told her what we believed and about how there was an apostosy and everything and she said ya that could be and she had a lot of interest so we set a new appointment with her which was pretty cool. Man the weather is getting crazy cold here!! Its been like 4 or 5 celc but I dont know what that is in Farenheit?? 0 cel is 32 farenheit so freezing so its getting pretty cold here!! We are starting to see ice on our windshield and everything! I cant believe that this transfer is half way over! Its pretty crazy the longer I am in the mission the faster it goes by! I finished reading the Book Of Mormon again this last week so that was cool. Oh man the highlight of my week was Tuesday I almost forgot! So I had to go to Berlin with my comp cause he had a leadership meeting with Pres and all the district leaders and zone leaders and everything. This was in Tiergarten berlin which is the coolest area ever its right dead center in berlin where all the sights are and everything the Gate and everything. So I was there the whole day with another missionary from my golden group and we did street contacting!! There was so many people it was amazing and they were all nice to us! We made out an apointment for the ZLs in Berlin within the first 20 minutes of street contacting!! It was super solid! My comp and I wanted to stay there in Berlin we thought about just sleeping in the train station or something its so cool. I also was able to see the white house for the German president that was pretty cool I saw alot of cool things and than I realized why serving in the city berlin is my dream!! It was really so cool. But than we came back home!! Hahaha. Na ja we will see its just hard to stay motivated when you cant get anything going! And all the members are like ya its really slow right now.... But when Elder Ott was here he had a lot of success haha so they compare us to him which is kinda annoying. We will see how it goes!! Other than that nothing really new. For P day we are going to continue building our chocolate temple we get this nasty chocolate every sunday from this member with the old mom the one who is really funny. Anyways so they started building a temple a couple of transfers ago and we are making it legit its getting there. We bought a big wood board to put it on and also a green carpet haha its like legit carpet we can put the carpet on the board to make it look like grass for the garden and everything haha so its gonna be cool I will send pics when I can. I forgot my cord at home today but I have a whole sd card filled and ready to send. I found out last week that in my last area I got blitzed so here in germany they have whats called blitz boxes and when you are going to fast they take a picture of you and the car and everything and send it to the address of the owner of the car. Hahah so I have to pay a 25 euro fine. Which sucks but whatever haha maybe I can talk the guy into copying the picture of me and sending it to me that would be cool!! Well everyone thanks for the prayers!! I need them!!! Love you all have a great week!!
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Elder Christian J. Voran
Man so this week has been ok! This area is not easy we have seen a little success though we made out quite a few new appointments this week and have been finding basically all day everyday. Doors and street contacting is basically all we do and that makes a man CRAZY. I am really losing motivation here haha which is sad but I am trying to somehow keep myself motivated! All of our appointments fall through we found 2 solid people last week and both appointments fell out and one of them didnt show up and the other said she had no interest and another investigator that we had that my comp said was way solid we went by on her and she said she didnt want to meet with us anymore haha hasnt been too much fun this week! My comp doesnt really have a lot of motivation left either because he is going home in 2 more transfers and he doesnt want to end his mission here but he probably will because he is the 2nd counsler in the branch presidency. Speaking of the branch there were only 9 people at church yesterday and 4 of those 9 were missionaries and the other 5 were all sisters. We had 3 priesthood holders at church and we were all missionaries. It was so ridiculous I have never seen such an empty room for church. The branch president has only been here 1 sunday of the 3 that I have been here haha he is always busy because he is like the german equivilent to a senator here so he is in Berlin all the time and flys to paris and all over to have meetings and stuff. He has 4 kids so there are kids in the ward but I have only seen them once and ya they dont come a lot. Hmm what else happened this week haha. We were doing street contacting in a different city in our area called Pasewalk and there was seriously nobody on the street it was so ridiculous and we were like what the heck there is nobody this is dumb and so we started just walking around and we were looking in the window of this watch store haha cause the advertisement poster of the girl she was way cute so my comp was picking which one he would marry and it was about 9 at night so time for us to go home and this bike started coming in our direction so I thought alright I will stop her and see if maybe she will talk to us. it was an older woman so not old but probably in her 50s or so. And when we stopped her haha she thought we were the police because she didnt have a front light on her bike she is like ya I know I am just going home right now and I will get a light on it and all this haha and we were like no we are from the church and started talking to her she is catholic but we told her what we believed and about how there was an apostosy and everything and she said ya that could be and she had a lot of interest so we set a new appointment with her which was pretty cool. Man the weather is getting crazy cold here!! Its been like 4 or 5 celc but I dont know what that is in Farenheit?? 0 cel is 32 farenheit so freezing so its getting pretty cold here!! We are starting to see ice on our windshield and everything! I cant believe that this transfer is half way over! Its pretty crazy the longer I am in the mission the faster it goes by! I finished reading the Book Of Mormon again this last week so that was cool. Oh man the highlight of my week was Tuesday I almost forgot! So I had to go to Berlin with my comp cause he had a leadership meeting with Pres and all the district leaders and zone leaders and everything. This was in Tiergarten berlin which is the coolest area ever its right dead center in berlin where all the sights are and everything the Gate and everything. So I was there the whole day with another missionary from my golden group and we did street contacting!! There was so many people it was amazing and they were all nice to us! We made out an apointment for the ZLs in Berlin within the first 20 minutes of street contacting!! It was super solid! My comp and I wanted to stay there in Berlin we thought about just sleeping in the train station or something its so cool. I also was able to see the white house for the German president that was pretty cool I saw alot of cool things and than I realized why serving in the city berlin is my dream!! It was really so cool. But than we came back home!! Hahaha. Na ja we will see its just hard to stay motivated when you cant get anything going! And all the members are like ya its really slow right now.... But when Elder Ott was here he had a lot of success haha so they compare us to him which is kinda annoying. We will see how it goes!! Other than that nothing really new. For P day we are going to continue building our chocolate temple we get this nasty chocolate every sunday from this member with the old mom the one who is really funny. Anyways so they started building a temple a couple of transfers ago and we are making it legit its getting there. We bought a big wood board to put it on and also a green carpet haha its like legit carpet we can put the carpet on the board to make it look like grass for the garden and everything haha so its gonna be cool I will send pics when I can. I forgot my cord at home today but I have a whole sd card filled and ready to send. I found out last week that in my last area I got blitzed so here in germany they have whats called blitz boxes and when you are going to fast they take a picture of you and the car and everything and send it to the address of the owner of the car. Hahah so I have to pay a 25 euro fine. Which sucks but whatever haha maybe I can talk the guy into copying the picture of me and sending it to me that would be cool!! Well everyone thanks for the prayers!! I need them!!! Love you all have a great week!!
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Elder Christian J. Voran
10-16-11
Hello Everyone.
Well my week has been pretty good. Man the work here is so much different than my last area but its work none the less and it needs to be done. Its so sad to see the effect of the DDR here and how run down things are. Like I think I said last week we havent been working in the city of Prenzlau because everybody already knows us and so its kinda crappy but we have just been going to little dorfs cause our area is so big and working there. The time just keeps going by so fast I cant believe 2 weeks of the transfer are already over. Than before I know it I will hit my year mark. Its crazy to think that I am as old in the mission as my trainer was when he trained me haha what the heck!! My german is getting so much better. I gave a talk in church yesterday and this time it was 10 minutes which was the longest talk I have had to give. I wrote my talk and everything but I only used what I wrote like 2 times in my whole ten minutes most of it was just me talking so thats good I am getting more comfortable with it. I got a lot of compliments on my german too. It kinda sucks cause the elder here before me was 1 transfer older than me and his german is terrible so the members kinda think that mine is too so they dont really talk to me but hopefully now they will start because my german is ok! Yesterday was pretty crazy I gave my talk than I sat down in the front and I couldnt believe it the spirit hit me so strong it was the craziest feeling I have ever had like butterflies times like 1000 maybe that was just a confirmation that I did a good job? Hopefully haha. I spoke about baptism and the importance of baptism I was also able to tell Peters story so that was good too. Other than that we have been doing a lot of finding here. Our teaching pool is like nothing so that kinda sucks most of my time here has been spent knocking on doors mostly or talking to people on the street. This week wasnt quite as good as last week we only made out 4 appointments so that was too bad. But man there are some crazy people here. I really think that some of them think that the wall is still up or something. The other day we were doing doors and we came to this pretty big house and not many people in east germany have big houses so we knocked and this guy came out and initially he was pretty friendly but he started saying how capitalism is crap and he is all about Karl Marx and all this stuff and he said I dont believe in God but if you want to talk about Karl Marx than that will be good. We were sitting there thinking what the heck he is rich and living in a large house and he is a Karl Marx fan? That doesnt make any sense but than we just left him alone! I have kinda been wanting to record some of the reactions of people it would be so funny. Sometimes when we talk to people they act like we have a sickness or something and start freaking out and say oh no oh no and close their doors haha its pretty funny. Yesterday we went to this small dorf and we parked in fron of this apartment building which is most of east germany big one room apartment buildings. So we started ringing and they didnt have a speaker box like most so we just rang and hoped they would stick their heads out the window or something or come down and talk to us. So we rang about 4 people and nobody came out but there was this old guy walking on the street and he was talkin to us so we went and started talkin to him and in the middle of our conversation this guy about 40 or so storms out the door and just starts yelling at us saying that we cant klingle here and all this garbage and my comp is like we have permission from the country to be here and to klingle and he was probably a couple of centimeters from my comps face! And I thought they were going to get in a fight. Because my comp kinda sorta likes to argue with people. Which is one thing I am thankful for that I dont know the german language perfectly is I cant argue with people. Hahah and than this guy who was freaking out saw our license plate and our license plate is from Frankfurt and he started calling us wessies which is like a bad thing for people from the west. Oh man it was crazy but than we found some pretty cool people too. On Friday we were doin street contacting and it was cold and late and time to go home and we couldnt find anyone everyone was unfriendly but on the was back to our car I talked to this younger girl probably 17 or 18 and she was the last person on the street and she was way open and telling us she didnt have a faith or anything but she had read the bible and we talked to her about eternal families and she said thats great cause her dad died when she was 12 or something and we had a really good conversation on the street than we made out another appointment man it was awesome! So ya there is still cool people here hahah. Its really like living in a different country coming from far west Germany to far east Germany its nuts!! Hahah It will all be good though. Man how I am missing football!! One of my zone leaders loves football too he is a huge kid and he played for dixie before he came on his mission he is from pleasent grove. But its good he calls sometimes and we chat about football so thats nice hahah. Thats great that BYU is finally starting to look pretty good! Well not really anything too new this week.... Hahah thanks for everything and I hope you all have a great week!! Love you all!!
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Elder Christian J. Voran
10-9-11
Hello Everyone!
Man what a week I have had its been crazy with gettin transferred again and again to the complete other side of the country!!! It was a long train ride but it wasnt so bad haha. The only problem was I reserved a seat on both trains and in the second train an old lady was sitting in my seat I had reserved and I didnt want to say hey thats my seat. Well I did but I thought it would be nice to let her sit there. And the train was pretty full so I had to sit in the little cafe thing on the train haha it wasnt too bad!! But my new area is so East Germany I think some of the people we talk to still think the wall is up or something they are so DDR brainwashed its pretty ridiculous. But to be honest its not too bad we have had a lot of success this week. We made out 9 new appointments and the most they had made out here was 5 or something. Me and my comp get a long dang good. He is so funny. I have never spoken so much german in my life and I am sure it has already increased so much. He says my german is pretty good but thats cause he has to say that! He is way cool. His name is Elder Breuer ya like I said last week he is from stuttgart so way down south. He doesnt have much longer on his mission 2 more transfers after this one. So we will see what happens he thinks he will die here. So dying on the mission means to finish your mission. But I think he will get transferred this next transfer and I will stay. But we will see we have 5 weeks to go! This week went by really fast. We have a lot of fun together so thats way cool!! So its pretty much normal as far as missionary work goes with him cause he is the second counsler in the branch presidency we arent required to visit members or anything plus there is only like 20 members anyways and 10 active haha it was such a surprise yesterday in sacrament meeting to see only 8 or 9 people there and us missionaries were half of the total because the 1st counsler in the branch presidency is a senior couple missionary. I think my comp is ready to go home when his time comes. He is a hard worker and he has been really in some crappy cities his whole mission I feel bad for him. He has only been able to baptize one person on his mission so far but maybe we can get a couple here soon!! I dont think he has a hard time serving close to home its probably about the same as me serving in Idaho or something its pretty far away. And ya I have séen elder Gibson he is actually sitting right next to me right now. Its been cool to see him and be in the same district he has been in his city now for 3 transfers and with the same companion. But he is doing good. My district is way cool. Elder Gibson and his comp me and my comp and the Zone Leaders which are way cool!! SO we have a lot of fun!! Its starting to get kinda cold here. And kinda windy too which sucks but I think I will be ok!! It isnt too bad!! My area is crazy its a pretty big area and we have been doing work in little dorfs because everyone in prenzlau already knows us and its hard to work here and prenzlau is actually not even the biggest city in our area its one of the smallest so we have been going to bigger cities in our area or little dorfs and we have really seen a lot of success so its been cool. My comp and his last companion who was here before me didnt really get along so thats probably why the work was so dead but we get along great! The senior couple here is freaking awesome! haha I dont know if they are as cool as the Thoms though. They actually invited us over for Tacos today so I am excited to eat mexican food again. They are from California they are pretty cool. Man I cant believe I have been gone for so long. I was just thinking that my birthday and christmas is coming up thats nuts. There are very few members here in Prenzlau but they are all pretty nice. There is one sister Sister Meilicke and she is like the mother for the missionaries and she stays close with every missionary who serves here and takes a trip to america every year to visit and calls on there birthdays and everything she is super awesome! She made us dinner yesterday and it was pretty dang good! But there are also some crazy people here. Haha so every sunday we have an appointment with this in active family and the guy is prob 60 or so and its just him and his mom he takes care of his mom cause she is 88 and we play a game with them every week its some ddr game from east germany a long time ago and this old 88 yr old lady is so nuts hahah its so funny we make noises and she tries to copy it and everything and like she is pretty much still there just kinda funny. And we were making animal noises last night oh my gosh I wish I would have recorded this old 88 yr old lady trying to make animal noises and she is always laughing she thinks everything is funny. I asked her yesterday what was so funny and she said what do you want me to do should I be sad or something haha. And so I was thinking thats a really good answer we can choose to be happy or not! Although she is a bit crazy I think she likes me hahah she was smaking my leg like it was funny haha and then my comp haha he told them that I have a way good voice and love to sing!! Which is completely not true and so they wanted to hear me sing oh my gosh I was like what the heck elder you know I dont like to sing hahah and so I did a solo of Love one Another and thank goodness that my voice is better than theirs so I could pass with having a ''good voice'' Anyways it was freaking funny!! Other than that nothing really new here I am having a good time! I have already learned tons more german haha. SO that has been fun. Anyways Hope you all have a great week. Love you all!!
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Elder Christian J. Voran
10-2-11
Hello Everyone!!
So I guess I will start out with Transfer Calls. I have been transferred and you wont believe it I am going back to the other side of the country!! This time north of where I was before about an hour north of Berlin in a little city callled Prenzlau. Its in the Neubrandenburg zone. My new comp is German he is from Stuttgart which I am way pumped about that I will be able to learn German a little bit better and everything It will be way cool he is also the Second counsler in the branch presidency there and the district leader haha so I am going to another small branch. Thats ok though I will work hard and try to make it bigger! It was way funny nobody from my group went senior comp I guess we have a lot of older missionaries right now and not so many young ones! Anyways I am excited its a long transfer I go from Rheine to Berlin and than from Berlin to Prenzlau with the train so it will be fun at least I only have to catch one other train so it will be ok. I am sure I will be there in Prenzlau for the winter and that scares me because the Neubrandenburg and Berlin areas get the winds from Siberia in the winter but na ja it wil be good haha. It is going to be so wierd leaving this place!! It was pretty crappy too cause we had transfer calls saturday and had to leave to Osnabruck to watch conference so I didnt really get to see any of the members because they all watch conference live on their internets! So I guess I will have to visit some of them today so that I can say goodbye and I also need to pack today so I am going to be pretty busy! Before I forget here is my new address Wittenhofer straße #1 17291 Prenzlau Germany. So that is where I will be for a while I am sure back to the east. Oh and another thing that is cool about that is I will be in the same district as my Mtc comp and the same zone as Elder Wittwer from the mtc so that will be furn!! Anyways other than that we have had a pretty good week. General Conference was awesome I cant remember what my favorite talk was because they were all so good but when they are over I cant remember who said what haha. The first talk from President Monson well I guess it wasnt really a talk but a thing where he announced the temples that was dang funny when he just got up and said HELLO haha we all got a kick out of that he was really funny this conference! I couldnt believe that they are putting another temple in Provo thats nuts!! Elder Eyring was even kinda funny this conference it was really good his story about Spencer W. Kimball and how Elder Eyring and Elder Holland had to move his chair and he said oh dont hurt your backs haha it was great. Man but Elder Hales looked way bad!! Do you know what happened with him? He looked so different I could hardly even recognize him! And Packer is not looking so good either! Anyways we had a good week we met some Venezuelans I dont know how to spell that but its ok and they are way solid investigators now so that is good. We have seen Peter a couple of times this week and we taught Florian once as well so it has been pretty good. Its going to be a whole different world for me where I am going haha kinda like where I came from but I am so much more mature as a missionary and able to handle harder cities and areas. At least I think so! I am really happy with the work I have done here and feel good about leaving but it will definately be hard cause I have LOVED this area but its time to go and move on I guess thats the life of a missionary! I have learned so much and I am grateful for that!! As far as everything else goes! I finished A Marvelous Work and A Wonder it is such a great book I couldnt even set it down it was awesome! And I have also been reading The Book of Mormon which was talked about so much during conference I am somewhere in 3rd Nephi so I am getting near the end. And I am also reading the New Testemant haha so I am kinda all over the place!! Anyways its great to learn about the parables of Jesus Christ and the things he taught his disciples sometimes they are kinda confusing but it makes you think and helps you understand things better. I can not believe its already October man time goes by so fast and its hard to believe (now that I am leaving) that I have been here since MAY wow how crazy we have accomplished a lot here and thats what matters!! anyways Sorry that this week was so short not really a whole lot going on because we had to be in Osnabruck for general conference! So I guess I can explain how that works. On Saturday we see the Saturday Morning session live but here its 6 at night but we still see it live. Than the next morning at 11 am we see priesthood session recorded and than at 2 pm we see saturday evening session. Than we are able to see the Sunday morning session live at 6 pm again so thats good than the Sunday evening session we dont see untill the next week or sometimes we just have to watch it on our own it all depends on the ward or branch your in!! Other than that nothing really new going on!! thanks for everything!! love you all!! Have a great week!!
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Elder Christian J. Voran
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Elder Christian J. Voran
9-25-11
Hello Everyone!
I will give a little run down of my week this e mail may be a little bit short cause I cant think of a whole lot to say! First of all yesterday was great Peter recieved the gift of the Holy Ghost and right after church we had to drive to Osnabruck for Florians baptism! And that went really well his dad was able to baptize him and the whole family was there which is way cool cause his mom hasnt really been to church since she was baptized back in May. I think Florian is really going to be a spark for that family to get back to church and to live how they are supposed to. He is a great kid I have some pictures I will attach they are kinda funny cause Florian didnt smile in any of them which is funny cause he is ALWAYS smiling and laughing haha. Elder Ririe gave a talk we actually had a double baptism cause the Elders in Osnabruck had a baptism as well we are just dunking everyone down here in our district its great!! I guess Florian really likes us so thats good. He liked the presents you sent mom! He loves like colored pencils and pens and stuff so it was perfect for him haha. It was kinda funny we were sitting in church it was about 10 minutes before church started and Peter text us and said he would be late and we are like oh great he needs to be here to get the gift of the Holy Ghost and what not so we told Elder Thom and he said we would do it after sacrament so right before Sacrament he walks in and so he sat there than after Elder Thom got back up and said now we are going to give Peter the gift of the holy ghost and we looked at him to come up to the front and he was like what?? haha he had no idea what was going on we had told him he would be getting the gift of the holy ghost but I am not sure if he understood that it would be in front of the whole branch and since he is kinda shy he was a little nervous I guess! He also had his Priesthood interview yesterday so he should be getting the Aaronic priesthood the week after conference! On friday we went up to Hamburg for President Interviews that was pretty good kinda short but I think President just likes to get through all the missioaries haha and he talks to the ones who have problems longer so that was good! We did some street contacting in Bad Bentheim on Wednesday and the third guy we talked to was from Venezuela it was probably the easiest appointment we have ever made out in our whole missions!! Hahah But it was this younger guy his name was george and he was way cool! We set the appointment for Saturday but he wasnt home when we went by. But last night we were at the Blankens for dinner and we were telling brother Blanken about this guy because Bro. Blanken served his mission in Venezeula so he speaks spanish than he is like ok after we are done eating we will go over there and see if he is home! So after we were done eating he went and got dressed and we drove over to Georges house. And we clingled so a clingle is kinda like a door bell but they have clingle boxes where you can talk to the person from inside. So anyways this Lady answered the clingle and she is like who is there and so Bro. Blanken started speakin in spanish and she came out and was way excited to hear about the church and the book of mormon and everything and we had a joint teach right there it was perfect! Than she said she will definately come to church after conference and she said I am moving right now and she didnt know the address but she knew the directions so she gave the directions to us and we found her new house and she ended up being Georges mother so we could have 2 new venezualens here soon which is way cool!! This transfer is almost over! So transfer calls are coming this coming Saturday! I am pretty sure I will be going but I dont know where I am kinda thinking I will stay kinda close I will either go to the Hannover Zone or Hamburg Zone we will see though maybe I will go back to the east! That would be interesting! My dream is to serve in Berlin though so maybe I will do that soon. This transfer is big. Since it will be my 6th I will either be going senior comp or maybe I have 1 more as junior we will see. This next transfer I will be as old as my trainer was when he trained me thats so crazy!! Everything is good here In Rheine we are just working trying to survive untill next transfer haha! I havent given any talks in Church recently but I am always involved some way or another either saying a prayer or doing the sacrament or both! I dont think Peters family knows a whole lot about him getting baptized! And we still meet with him but we didnt too much last week because we were busy or he was busy. But we still have to teach him all the lessons again plus the 5th lesson so we will see! I am way excited for Conference we will be in Osnabruck cause we dont have a satelite recepter at our church! So we will go there on Saturday cause the first session isnt till 6 at night here than we will just stay the night and watch them all on Sunday than we will prob have P day in Osnabruck as well Idk how well that will work if I need to pack and have to leave early Tuesday morning! But we will see! I will let you know what happens next week!! Sounds like everything is good at home!! Love you all have a great week!!
Elder Christian J. Voran9-18-11
Hello Everyone!
Wow what a week and what a day yesterday was amazing!! I guess thats what the whole mission is about! So yesterday was Peters baptism it was so cool he passed his baptismal interview on Wednesday and I wasnt here we were on exchange cause the Zone Leader had to do the interview anyways and I guess they were talkin to him about how the baptism would be in Osnabruck which is the city about 45 minutes away and they have a baptismal font and we dont so that is where we do our baptisms as well. Anyways Peter said why do we have to go to Osnabruck I dont want everyone to have to go there we can just find a lake or something? So I came back to Rheine on Thursday and Elder Ririe told me what had gone on and so we looked at our maps and looked at all the big bodies of water on the map and did some investigating the second one we went to was called Quendorfer See so the call Lakes Sees here anyways we went there and it was such a nice place a lake kinda tucked away in the trees and we decided to do it there since it was only 10 minutes away from the church and everything. So it was nice cause we could have the service at the church and drive 10 minutes to the lake and do the baptism! Anyways so we got that all figured out and got the program set and all the everything prepared and what not it was really great a lot of work but it was good. Than come Sunday we get to church around 10 and our meetings start and Peter isnt there and I was kinda freaking out like uhh what the heck are we going to do if he doesnt show up cause people had brought food and stuff for after. So we get a text that said he missed his train but he will still be coming. I guess he left his white clothes at home so he had walked to the train station which is 10 minutes away from his house than forgot his stuff so he had to go back home and get his stuff than come back again anyways so than he didnt show up for quite a while but he finally came which was kinda a relief haha to say the least! So than our meetings finished and we wanted to start his baptismal program so I went to the bathroom to get changed into my whites and everything and I guess Peter was getting kinda nervous and saying I hope its the right decision and all this stuff than Elder Ririe was talkin to him and he's like ya and I dont know where Elder Voran went and was just getting a little nervous haha anyways I came out and he went in to get changed and than we started the program. The program was really great actually Sister Weel so the relief society president gave an awesome talk about baptism it really invited the spirit and we also had Brother Feith another member give a talk about the Holy Ghost! Than we were off to the lake for the baptism. Now I have to add something here the whole last couple days the weather has been really bad! Rain and wind and clouds and it was like that on sunday too. So we get to the lake and its not raining or anything which was nice but it was still cloudy! And so we were all ready I walked into the water and it was COLD as crap but it was ok because I only had to walk in waist deep! Anyways than Peter walks in and he was freezing!! Hahah it was funny I was telling him this is what you asked for haha but than he got out there and right when I put my arm up to do the baptism the clouds broke and the sun came out it was probably the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life! So than we did the baptism it went really smoothly I did it in German and I didnt mess up and he went all the way under it was just great!! So than we had to change out of our wet clothes somewhere but since its germany there are no public restrooms so we just changed in the trees haha it was quite the experience Elder Thom and Bruder Blanken who is the 2nd counsler in the branch presidency held up a towel for us to change behind it went really well we had a good turn out. Than we all got back into our cars to go back to the church to finish the Service and it started RAINING it was so crazy we got so blessed it was awesome! Than we had a good lunch and everything went really well! So Elder Hardman and his comp came back for the baptism since Elder Hardman was here when we met Peter so that was cool I forgot how much I liked him he is a cool guy! Anyways so we hung out with them and we made steaks for lunch and everything it was really a cool day! Than we went to the Thoms to take them brownies because I made brownies for the baptism but all the kids ate them before Elder Thom could have any and he was sad about that but we had a whole pan left so we took it over to them and we were just talkin about the great baptism and Sister Thom comes in and says we should play a game! So we played 2 games of Yahtzee it was really fun I got crushed both times there was so many Yahtzees rolled it was ridiculous Elder Ririe had never played and he won both games the second game he rolled 3 Yahtzees so crazy anyways so that was a lot of fun! But other than that we had 4 investigators to church which was awesome and we are now preparing for Florians baptism this coming week which is going to be way cool we are really excited for it he is ready and he wants it so bad so we are really ready and excited!! I was really blessed to be able to do the baptism and especially in a lake its really the coolest thing ever I have some really good pictures I will send! Well other than that nothing really new!! Thanks for everything and all the prayers! They help me every day!! I love you all very much!! And Have a great week!!
Elder Christian J. Voran
9-11-11
Hello Everyone!!
So this week was pretty good but it was a little bit slower than normal sadly but its ok!! So Florians baptism was pushed to the 25th acutally because stuff with his family and they all want to be there so they had to arrange some things but that will be good anyways! With Peter we only met with him twice this week because he has been really busy at work and stuff and than we got busy with some other things than he got sick he wasnt able to come to church cause 2 of his children got sick but we had contact with him and he said that he was planning on coming just couldnt cause of the children I am sure we will meet with him tonight yesterday was supposed to be his quit smoking day so hopefully he achieved that!! I am sure he did he is still doing good but we will see tonight! Its been kinda slow as far as new investigators go we just need to take one day and have a finding day to get us some new investigators to teach! The elders in Osnabruck had a baptism yesterday so that was really cool to be at and to see this kid is 18 he has been investigating the church for 3 yrs but his parents told him he couldnt be baptized untill he was 18 so he finally is and was able to be baptized the spirit was way strong and it was really cool!! So on Monday when we met with Peter last week he wanted to show us how his marketing skills could help us with our finding and stuff so he took us for dinner first at a Doner laden dont ask what that is cause its something thats hard to explain its kinda like a taco stand in utah basically... Anyways and we had a really good talk with the owner there who is a muslim but was willing to listen to us and we taught him a first lesson it was really cool and when we were leaving we gave him our card and he said hold on and wrote down his number for us and said if you ever need help with anything give me a call! So he was way cool it was kinda funny how we started a conversation with him because at first he thought we were peters kids haha but than he noticed we were speaking english so he said were you just speaking english or dutch? Cause he knows peter and knows that peter is dutch and we said wir haben gerade englisch gesprochen which means we were just speaking english and he said wait isnt he your dad and we said na wir sind aus amerika! that means we come from america and he said what wait what are you doing here so than we had a really good conversation about what we are doing here and he told us a little about his faith and that was really cool so now we have a friend that owns a doner laden and doners are freaking the best!! Anyways so after we left peter was like see you can be with me and get more lessons than you would if you were talking to people on the street! So than it was getting kinda late and it was time for us to go home and he is like lets get a drink and we were like huh? And he said I mean a cola! So took us into this bar man it was seriously the most uncomfortable place I have ever been in my life! The bar tender was pretty attractive and it was really wierd so we were just sitting there and he was trying to teach us how its easy to give people our pass along cards he said we have to give something that they want plus something that we want to give them than they have to take it. So he was demonstrating with the bar tender and when he payed for our drinks he gave her a card and she took it and smiled and he said thats how you do it! Hahah than he was taking pictures of us it was really wierd than he said he needed the bar tender to take a picture of all three of us! But instead of doing that he called the bar tender over to be IN the picture with us so she came up behind us and put her arms around us man it was weird! I was like hmm I dont really feel good about this but than we left and we told him no more bars!! Than we met with Peter on Tuesday and we went to the train station cause there is a bakery in there and we just got a little sandwich or something and we were asking him more methods to talk to people and he was trying to explain something but we werent really getting it so he said I will show you an example haha so he went in the middle of the bahnhof oops sorry train station and started talkin to random people and trying to get them to come and sit down with us and listen to us it was funny but he wasnt very successful cause the train station there are always people coming and going so its kinda hard so than we were leaving the train station and we see sanga and we started talking to us and Peter was really surprised kinda like you know this guy? and we introduced them we said ya this is Sanga he is a member of our branch and Peter said HE IS A MEMBER and just started laughing he is like I just asked him a minute ago to come have coffee with me so you guys could teach him and he told me he didnt drink coffee haha it was way funny he tried to get Sanga to come sit with us but offered him coffee and sanga didnt know we were there cause he couldnt see us and told Peter he doesnt drink coffee it was great! Anyways thats my stories for the week it was pretty good and funny Peter thinks he figured out how we can get more books of mormon to people and make out return apointments so he is going to be doing door to door with us this week sometime it should be interesting!! We also had a ausstellung so a street display this saturday we made out an apointment within 10 minutes so that was really cool! As far as grace goes we havent been in contact with her this week we need to give her a call and start teaching her again cause she is way cool!! Other than that nothing really new!! THanks a ton Love you all have a great week!!!
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Elder Christian J. Voran
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Elder Christian J. Voran
9-4-11
Hello Everyone!
We had another great week here in Rheine\Bad Bentheim. Again achieving the standard of excellence with 20 lessons and 7 new apointments! I was pretty excited about that. We are really being so blessed here with people ready to accept the gospel! We have a baptism this week with Florian the 14 yr old we have been teaching him 2 times a week and he is such a stud of a kid! He goes to school in Bad Bentheim and his parents live in osnabruck. He really is the coolest kid and he understands that he has to get baptized to be with his family forever!! SO we are working with him and he will be baptized this Sunday! He is so cool and we are really excited for him! As far as Peter goes!! WE finally set a baptismal date and it was so funny how it happened so I asked him to be baptized several weeks ago and he said he needed to think about it. And everytime we met with him I would mention it and say have you thought about our question and he would always say ya but I still need to think about it. So come Tuesday night we were at his office and we werent even talkin about the gospel at the moment and he said well I know your going to ask so I will just tell you right now and he said it wouldnt be so bad if I was baptized!! And I didnt even know how to respond haha it was so funny and he said but I cant do it on the 11th cause that was the date we had tried to push him to and he said he had a lot of projects going on at work that week so he cant do it cause he knows he will come out of the water and be thinking that someone needs to be somewhere for his work and with too much stress so we pushed to the 18th and he is excited about it and we are too! We know that he has really recieved the answer and a testimony of the gospel and what we have been teaching him! He still needs to be taught a couple of things but that is not a problem because we have daily contact with him and make sure he can really make this covenant and be ready for it! I will be baptizing him so I am really excited about that. Its really cool for me because I have seen the whole story and miracle unfold! So it will be really nice to be able to baptize him as well. He likes us missionaries alot but he loves the ward members too he traveled up to Oldenburg which is about almost 2 hrs away for District Conference yesterday and he went with Sister Weel they are good friends and they are both dutch so that works well! And Florian also went with them up to Oldenburg. Peter was able to meet President Pimintel who was also in Oldenburg for district conference and of course he loved President Pimintel everyone does haha! So we have had a pretty good week! But I have to tell you some warning first dont put anything on facebook about peters baptism because he is keeping it a secret from his girlfriend in Peru so that he knows he is doing it for the right reasons and not for her!! So remember that even when I send pictures of the baptism dont put them on facebook!! Or congratulate him unless its a personal message to him!! Just FYI. Anyways Its been really good. As far as everything else goes. With our new investigator Grace we werent able to meet with her this last week which kinda sucks but it is ok we have her phone number and we will give her a call so that will be good we will give her a call and meet with her this week! We are going to be so busy this week with preparing things for the baptism! Its great because it will be in Osnabruck because we dont have a baptismal font here in Bad Bentheim and the Osnabruck elders also have a baptism that day so there will be 2 baptisms in our district!! The work is going forwards and it is so great to be a part of it!! Now for a funny story of the week. On Monday Peter took us to a mongolian buffet thing with the thoms as well and its way nice and pretty pricey its about 13 euro per person so its expensive!! Anyways my comp and I have been there before Elder Hardman and I went there a couple times but just to the lunch thing which is only 6 euro but they bring you this juice at the begining and say its on the house and its always way good!! So we all drank it this week on Monday and we ate and it was really great. Than the people came after we were finished and said is there anything else you would like and he said we would like the check and some more of that green drink so she brought it out and this time it was in little shot glasses so Peter asked and said what is in this actually? And the lady started naming off all of the juices that were in the mixture and at the very end she said and a little bit of VODKA!! haha we were like no way it was so good and it tasted like juice so Peter was like is it alchohol free vodka and she said no haha so we had a problem becuase well first of all we had dranken Vodka it wasnt that much but still I felt like a sinner. Ingnorence is bliss I guess!! Hahah but we had ordered this special last order of it so it would be rude not to drink it! So we were all sitting there and Peter is like there is a plant behind Elder Voran he can just secretley put it in the plant haha but of course if I would have done that people would have noticed so I came up with the idea to put all in a bigger glass and I would take it to the bathroom and put it down the sink so we did that! But it was sooo funny haha especially because we were with the Thoms and he is the branch president and she is just the sweetest lady than I called Elder Hardman and told him to start his repentance process haha so it was a good time!! Well thanks again for all you do!! I hope you all have a very great week!! Love you all!!
8-28-11
Hello Everyone!
We had a pretty good week this week. Oh first I need to start out with transfer calls news!! So here it is!! I am staying here for five more weeks! With Elder Ririe. I was really surprised I thought for sure I was gone cause I have been here for quite a while this will be 4 transfers here! I guess President likes what we are doing here. We could have 3 baptisms within this transfer which is really exciting! Hard work pays off. This week was good we were able to teach 20 lessons again. We found a new investigator her name is Grace she is from Kenya a refferal from Sanga and she is way cool! She just had a baby 4 weeks ago she speaks perfect english and german and swahili or whatever her african language. She is married to a German who teaches in Holland. She is 24yrs old and has been in Germany for about 2 yrs she is way cool and was way interested and understood everything we told her. She totally understood and was really interested she is a really religious person and wants to come to our church but her baby is still really young but she will come in a few weeks. We have another appointment with her this week she is way awesome! We also came back in contact with a couple former investigators they are both younger guys but are both way cool and still interested in our message which is awesome so we have appointments with them this week as well. We were able to meet with Peter 3 times this week and he is making progress. He is way awesome. We had an awesome experience on Thursday. We were talking with Peter and he had some concerns about some things. Because he studied theology he knows tons about the Bible he is way smart haha and Elder Ririe and I are just like ok ya we have no idea about anything like that. But there is a scripture in Daniel that says the Anti Christ will change the days and months or something and in the year 386 the general foundation of the Christian church changed the sabbath and created hollidays and whatever else. And he said I dont understand why since you have so much more than all these other churches like the Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants and a Living prophet why are the days and hollidays still based on what happened in 386. Elder Ririe and I were stunned we had never answered a question like that before. So we just kinda sat there and thought for a while and had nothing to say back. Than as clear as day a thought came into my head and the spirit totally took me over it was one of the coolest experiences I have had on my mission and I just started talking and I had no Idea what I was saying it was just coming out and I was loud and stern it was way cool. I said well I cant tell you why but I can say that it doesnt matter right now and that we know when Jesus Christ Returns he will organize things how he wants it to be organized but we as human beings are not ready to make all of those changes and be perfect yet thats why we are growing here and than I went off about the law of conscecration and how we are not there yet but we will be someday than I bore testimony that he will never be happier unless he gets baptized and that baptism is the only way and than I went silent after about 3 minutes of talking and everything was silent and he looked at me and said you know your right! I was way pumped haha but than he said I sitll need to think about this baptism thing and than he asked us to teach him everything that goes on at baptism so the whole process and everything so he is SOO close he will get baptized soon I know he will! Anyways thats really the cool story for this week. We have had a pretty good week and are ready to start a new transfer!! We are going to work really hard and increase our teaching pool even more than it is! There are plenty of people here that need the gospel so we are going to find them!! Other than that nothing really new this week still working hard still doing the Lords work!! Actually I gave a talk yesterday in Sacrament about Repentance it went pretty well. I was scared because the Stake President was there haha but he was way cool. He is the brother of Erich Kopishke of the Seventy so he is way cool!! Other than that nothing new! The Gospel is true and the Book of Mormon is the corner stone of our religion its such a strong testimony of Jesus Christ and what he did for us! Thanks for all you do!! I love you all!! Have a great week! And keep the letters coming now that I will be here for 5 more weeks!!
--
Elder Christian J. Voran
8-21-11
Hello Everyone!!
What a crazy week I have had. I am back in Rheine but I don't know how long I will be back here. I was in Osnabruck untill saturday morning than came back here but last Pres said was at least for the week end? So I dont know what will happen its really wierd cause its not like Pres to just leave everyone hanging nobody really knows whats going on and maybe Pres doesnt know either and he is just waiting till transfers at the end of this week to get rid of Brinkerhoff I have no Idea. But I had a good week in Osnabruck we worked hard and got that city a little fresh life. We were able to get 2 new investigators there and we taught about 12 lessons monday to friday so it was pretty successful but I was happy to come back!! Rheine has been pretty dead since I have been gone because they havent been able to do much of anything its pretty sad so when I got back we went by on like 5 people who they hadnt been in contact with and we got back in contact with them so thats good our teaching pool is still strong!! I am not sure how much longer I will be here. But we do have a baptismal date! This kid from Osnabruck lives here in Bad Bentheim because he goes to some school his mother and older brother are new converts and his dad has been baptized for a long time but was inactive untill a few months ago. He wants to be with his family forever he understands that so that is way cool he is 14 and will be baptized on the 11th of September. So Elder Ririe and I will be teaching him and helping him prepare for his baptism so thats really cool! As far as Peter goes. He is still AWESOME I guess they were able to meet with him here last week when I was in Osnabruck and had a good 2nd lesson he really loved everything and said he feels something at our church that he has never felt before and he loves it and loves the branch here so thats way cool! He says he believes everything is true but cant be baptized because it wouldnt all be for the right reason! SO I guess his friend in Peru is a GIRLFRIEND and she said the other day to him that she has always wanted to be married in the temple and he says that that would be part of the reason he would be baptized because he wants to marry her! So we have a bit of a problem but we are meeting with him tonight and now I am back I called him last night and he said OHHH HELLO how are you he was pretty excited I was back and said I missed you last week haha so maybe I can get through with him today. Because that is completely an ok reason to want to be married in the temple! We will see I know he will be baptized I am so confident about it its a done deal he is really the coolest guy! Mom maybe I will have him add you on facebook I am sure he would love to be in contact with you. He has some pictures of us that he can send via facebook as well..... Anyways thats about it as far as missionary work goes I dont know where I am going to be but I will know next week for sure. So dont send any letters this week and I will let you all know next week....
As far as a funny story for the week. So I had my first run in with the police here in Germany!! It was way crazy!! haha. So we went by on a contact in Osnabruck and he kinda lives in the outskirts of town and Osnabruck is a big city about 250 thousand or so. He kinda lives in the Ghetto of town so we got off the bus and started walking to his house and like 5 or 6 little kids came up to us and were like who are you are you police and we said no we are from America just for our church and they were all excited they thought we were famous or something so they started asking for our autographs on their arms and everything and it was so funny they were so enthraled with us so it was great than we said we need to go in and talk to this guy so we walked away and he wasnt home so when we came back out those kids had gone and gotten like the whole neighborhood kids and there was about 15 or so ages from 4 to 10 or 11 and they were asking us for our cards and everything so we gave them some and autographed those and than one kid said lets take a picture so we did like a group of the kids with me all happy and everything it was way funny they like loved us so than we said ok we have to go and walked back to the bus stop that was about 5 minutes away we were waiting for our bus and I hear the kids again and I was like great they are coming back to get more cards or more autographs cause it was quite a ways to walk to the bus stop. So than they come around the corner and this little kid comes up to me and says Hey I know who you are delete those pictures.. and I said what who am I? and he didnt say anything than a mother of one of the kids comes around the corner and you have to know these people are like ausslanders so not germans cause its in the ghetto so this lady was turkish and she started ripping us a new one saying how we were taking kinder photos and how we were criminals and so I pulled my camera out and said ok I will show you the pictures and I will delete them so I did and she saw me delete them but she was still freaking out and there was a guy there like a father of one of the kids and she said call the police. And I was ticked I was like well what do you want me to do about it and I told her everything that had happened and she said we were bad people and kept calling our church a sect and oh we were both getting really upset. And I said well I deleted the pictures so what are the cops going to do? and she said well I dont know I guess we will see. So before we know it we missed our bus and all the kids parents were over at the bus stop yelling at us!! It was crazy than the police came and we told them the story and they were way cool about it and they checked our cameras and said well it was way nice of you to play with the kids and give them your cards but its illegal to take pictures of people without their permission here in germany than we told the officer that the kid asked and he said ohhh and he said well now you know the rules and they let us go! The parents were Nuts!! So we called President because he is a Lawyer we thought it would be good to find out what could happen and he said oh wow thats something you guys will laugh about in the future. So we just went home and all was ok haha but it sure was a good experience!! So that is my story for the week! Now I am on record here in Germany!! How many missionaries can say that!!
Thanks for everything and have a great week. Love ya tons!!
8-14-11
Hello Everyone!
Where to start this week! Man my life has changed dramatically this week haha well not really but kind of! So I guess I will start off with zone conference, Zone conference was really great it is always great to hear from president and to see all your mission friends! I ran into Elder Sullivan haha he is in my zone in the city of Leer so that is pretty cool I will see him at every zone conference as long as I stay in this zone but we will see I dont know if I will be in the zone for long we shall see. As far as Peter goes man he is so freaking cool!! We met with him on Thursday and he has still been reading in the book of mormon and loves it and he really knows he needs to join the church he took us to dinner again and after he was like I have this hobby that I didnt know was a hobby and I dont know what it is called in english its when you look for your father and than his father and than his father and he was like whats that called and we said GENIOLOGIE and he said ya that I am already back to 1500 or something! He would make a perfect member haha it was so cool!! But than after that was the bad news of the week. President text us and said when you get a minute give me a call so I was driving at the time so Elder Ririe gave him a call...before I tell you what happened I will tell you the situation so there is 4 elders in our district us and the Osnabruck elders and last week Elder Brinkerhoff in Osnabruck hurt his foot and couldnt really walk well. So president asked elder Ririe what he thought if Elder Brinkerhoff went to Rheine with him and if I came to Osnabruck with Elder Bossart and Elder Ririe said well we still walk quite a bit here and President was really stern and said you need to do this for me! He said it may be a week it may be more so I am now in Osnabruck and I dont know how long I will be here it kinda sucks cause I am living out of my suitcases! I guess they found out last night that Elder Brinkerhoffs foot is broken in 3 places and has to be on crutches for 6 months so basically he either has to go home or has to go to the office! He really hurt our area in Bad Bentheim when I left they werent able to get any lessons cause he cant move!! It wasnt the happiest thing this week but thats how life goes sometimes! And sometimes I want to get frustrated about it but the song always comes to my mind I will go where you want me to go. Thats the life of a missionary. I really worked hard in Rheine and that place was really turned around so I guess I left it better than I got it! We had a mid transfer transfer cause some elders are going home to get to school! And the big news of that was that my trainer Elder Carlson is now a ZONE LEADER in Kiel I was way happy for him he is such a good missionary and will make an awesome zone leader! So Elder Bossart who I am with for now is one transfer older than me so we were in the mtc together for 3 weeks and thats kind of hard cause our german is about the same so I cant really learn much german from him which is what I need right now. But I am sure President will get everything figured out. I dont have much to write about because I havent taught hardly any lessons this week cause Osnabruck is dead! Elder Brinkerhoff really screwed up this area too so we have been doing tons of finding trying to get it back up! We will see what happens though!! Thanks for all you do! Hope you all have a great week! Love ya tons!
Ps. If you have sent mail and it has gotten there in the last week I havent recieved it yet cause I am not in Rheine so sorry if a letter doesnt come back asap I will get it soon though!!
-- Elder Christian J. Voran
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