Monday 13 August 2012

August 13, 2012, Hannover


Hallo Luening Family!

   First of all, Happy Birthday dad!! I'm sorry that you didn't get to sleep in and have a nice breakfast served to you on your birthday, but yeah, I guess the temple would be an amazing second place to be on your birthday!! I must have skipped a year somewhere because I thought you were 47 now and mom was 49...but 46 and 48 is good, haha! And mom I hope that you're recovery continues to get better...next time maybe don't be so competitive, haha. Nah, I guess that's impossible, it kind of runs in the family. Sorry things didn't work out with your job Jeremy. Thanks a bunch for the letter that you wrote me last week. It meant a lot and it made me laugh! I miss you guys.

   This week has been an awesome week. I learned a lot of things about myself, about Jesus Christ, and about the Gospel that I never knew before. Or maybe that I just didn't understand before. I am absolutely getting sucked into my scriptures and loving it. People are asking me questions throughout lessons and they make me really think. So I write them down and for my personal study, or at 9:30 PM I research the scriptures about the questions. I love it. The gospel makes so much sense and it's really helping me find out who Jesus Christ, our Savior, really is, and who God our Almighty Father is. I love the missionary work here in Hannover. We still don't have as many progressing investigators as we would like to, but we do have a couple. One big thing is that our planning has been getting a lot better so we're not wasting time when appointments fall through. We have back up plans. Sometimes it’s hard to plan because there are 4 of us just getting home at 9:00 PM and all we want to do is talk about how our day was, but we made it a rule that we can’t talk to each other until our daily planning is finished!

   Oh and I got left on a “Straßenbahn” again this week, haha.

   We got invited to a less active member’s home for dinner. We studied on Family Home Evening and I really learned the importance of it by looking back at all the times we had Family Home Evening. The gospel really does strengthen the family, and when we take this 1 evening out of our busy lives to come together as a family, it makes a difference. We taught them about it and challenged them to start doing it.

   I went to Hildesheim on” Tausch” with little Elder M from my MTC zone. It was fun. We road our bikes in the rain and got soaked but the investigators made us change out of our clothes so they could throw them in the drier, haha, It was weird, but nice leaving with dry clothes.

   I seem to be doing quite good with the language too. I can understand most people and I can hold up conversations without anyone’s help. But man, there are so many words and phrases that I still don't know, and seem to confuse me sometimes. But I’m learning. We're speaking German from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, which has helped a lot!

Elder W and I had Rugby training on Thursday, haha! We asked president if we could participate in training with a team to see if we could try to do some missionary work through it. Elder W played 3 years of rugby at home. About a month ago we knocked on a guy’s door. He was not interested, but was wearing a rugby shirt. He told us he was a trainer and that there is a U18 team that practices every Tuesday and Thursday. So we got permission and went to practice. We were so sore for the rest of the week, but we're going to go one more time, and if no opportunity to share the gospel comes from it then we're going to stop.

  We've had a pretty successful week. We had 2 investigators come to church on Sunday and they loved it. We also met 3 people from Fiji who let us come in and visit with them. Also we taught our Chinese friend from last Sunday. His name is X. It's weird to pronounce but he's totally cool. We went over the Plan of Salvation with him. He said he's learned this in his Bible class and also that he's searching to find God and that he wants to see us again next week. We’re excited.

  We met a black man from Kenya. He's a Christian and he's 33yrs old. He knows the bible inside and out and says he loves the Old Testament more than the new one because that’s where he found out who God and Jesus Christ really were. He let us into his house right away and began testing us and asking us questions about what we were doing and what we knew about Christ and God. It made me really think and listen to the spirit. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and by the time we left he wanted one He said that he would read it and find out for himself it was true or not. He then prayed for us when we left, and his prayer was so powerful. I loved meeting with him because you could really see how much he loved the Lord and how much it had influenced his life. He's really smart and has a huge testimony of the atonement. He grew a lot of respect for us because of how young we were but of how much Truth we understood and taught. The spirit was really strong as all three of us bore testimony, and ended with a prayer. It was way cool, and made me feel so good.

  Also a miracle happened on Saturday. We were all the way on the other side of a village that we visited and we needed to catch the train in 10 minutes. It would have taken 15 minutes running! But we ran and we said a prayer in our hearts.  After 5 minutes of running as fast as we could, a car pulled over and picked us up! He drove us to the “Bahnhof” and we made it in time for the train. It was 8pm and it’s an hour long train ride. Also the trains come every hour. So if we would have missed it, it would have been 10:30 PM before we would have been in our apartment. We were so thankful and felt so blessed that the Lord provided someone for us to catch the train on time, because we were exhausted!

  Anyways, yeah, so that has been my week. I've been losing myself in the work and in my studies. Elder W and I are doing well and we're working hard. My testimony has definitely been strengthened so much. Every time people question us I really do research and find out why things are the way they are. The scriptures are awesome. Also I’ve been challenged by President Kosak to finish the Book of Mormon “auf Deutch” before General Conference and I’ve been flying through it. I understand it too, and it's been helping me a lot.
 
 I hope you guys take care and keep enjoying the summer. I love you all and I miss you! oh mom you asked what I would like in a package...maybe some spitz because the ones here aren't very good, lol. Send my mouth guard and my boxing gloves, haha! Joking! We have an African investigator who does MMA. He wants to spar with me sometime, haha, but I told him I won't spar. But that we could show each other a little Jujitsu.

Hope you guys have a good week. “Bis” next week!

Love, Elder Lüning.

   Vocabulary:   Strassenbahn = tram        Tausch = companion exchange         bis = until
     

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