January 20, 2014, Hamburg

Jan 20

Yup, another week come and gone lol. What a blessing we have to be alive! Thanks for your emails Mom and Dad!

 We had an investigator call us, ( B., who hadn't met with us for 2 weeks because of work) telling us that he would be coming to church and that he needs to be baptized. He said,” I already know the church is true and that baptism is essential for my salvation.” He then said, “I've been blessed every day to be alive but anything could happen and I must live with the knowledge that I have be baptized and made a covenant with the Lord.” He's such an awesome man. He's 30yrs old and from Ghana, and has met with missionaries about a year ago in Russia. We need to go through the baptismal questions with him to see where he's at with his testimony and what he needs. We told him because of his crazy work schedule that if we met even for 15 minutes during the week, we could help him get ready. He participated in the class at church and asked how he could do better missionary work with his friends. He's got such a strong love for the Gospel it is amazing.

  Our other Baptismal candidate is Frank and he's doing great too. He's been to Church 3 times now and we've met with him 5 times. Because he speaks French we have a member there at every appointment and he's loving the Gospel. He told us that he started meeting with us because he was impressed that we were young, white, and had a strong love for Christ. It made him curious and respect us a lot. His testimony is growing too and he's very honest! We might have to move his baptismal date to the 15th of February from the 1st, but we'll see how it continues to go. He keeps all his commitments J

  We were also blessed with a new investigator from the Back Seniors. They invited a Chinese girl who's been here for about 10yrs now, over for lunch after church and we taught her the restoration right afterwards. She had met with missionaries for 4 years and stopped meeting with them about 5 years ago. The Lord has blessed her with another chance and she wants to meet with us again and learn more. She definitely felt the spirit during the lesson and asked good questions about prayer and answers to prayer. It was great! Go member missionary work!

 Charlene, great stories and miracles that happened to you! Thanks for sharing them! I was so excited about hearing all those things. It's like President Hinckley said, “if the members would do their missionary work the number of convert baptisms would double”!

  I'm loving the mission, I'm not “trunky” yet, ha-ha. Elder Cannon and I are working hard and we've made a game that helps us talk to people in the Bahns and buses which has been working really well! We're stretching ourselves and talking with more people than ever before! (I took some more modeling pictures but forgot my camera so you'll see them next week J )

Love you all and have a great week!

 

January 13, 2014, Hamburg

 

Dear Family,

Another week come and gone! I'm glad the Lord is protecting you throughout the bad winter weather. We have no snow at all, and last week Monday we ran around without a jacket on because we were too hot! It's cooled down since then but still doesn't get under 5°C. It's also a bit rainy now but hopefully that starts to clear up again soon. We dropped some people with whom we couldn't contact again, and found some new ones. We found a cool family. The wife is German, and the husband was born in India but has been here in Germany already for about 10 years. I gave them a call yesterday to see if they had time to meet and they did, so we'll be meeting on Tuesday. I went on exchanges with a District Leader in Pinneberg. He just got transferred there from Dresden. We worked hard together and did something cool. So, Elder C., (my companion) and I made a plan to talk more with people in the trains and buses by making a game out of it. We have to talk to at least 2 people every day, no matter what, and if we talk to 4 people we get a bonus point. If we talk to 5 we get 2 bonus points. These points can only carry over one day. If you have 2 bonus points you can buy yourself something from the bakery at the end of the day for Abend Brot. If not then “pech”(too bad)! Lol. So I told this Elder from Pinneberg about it and decided to do some Bahn-tacting (train contacting). It was a lot of fun. Since we're not allowed to proselyte in the trains and buses it gets you outside of your comfort zone. I used to do it a lot but got out of the habit about 4 transfers ago. I forgot how fun it is to talk to people about random things and how it always comes freely back to the gospel because you have a big black name tag on that says Church of Jesus Christ, lol.

 

   We also have an investigator on baptismal date for the 2nd of February but will probably have to move it one week back to make sure he understands everything. He's from Ivory Coasts in Africa and speaks French, and basically no German. But we have 4 members who also have their mother language as French so it works really well. We've taught him the three lessons from Preach My Gospel already, and made sure he understood everything during the last meeting. We went through the interview questions with a member to see where he was at and to show him what kind of questions would come up during the interview. He said he needs to find out if Joseph Smith is a prophet and is working on reading and receiving an answer from the Book of Mormon. He's a really solid guy and really sincere. He's been to church twice now and likes it a lot. So we're praying and hoping that he'll receive an answer and continue to build his faith in the restored gospel of Christ!

 

  I love this work, and love the Gospel. I also have awesome missionaries in our apartment. Elder S. has made huge changes in his life and missionary work and is an awesome hard working Elder. Elder S. is now new in the apartment and a lot of fun. He's from Brazil and I was his Zone Leader in Kiel as he served in Rendsburg. He just got here from Cottbus so he told me lots of stories about Forst and caught me up on the members there, lol. Elder Cannon and I are killing it here and having a great time. I love you all and hope you have a great week! Stay safe! Enjoy the SNOW! :)

 

Love Elder Lüning

 

January 6, 2014, Hamburg

 

Dear Family,

Hey, well I'm down to my last transfer. We had transfer calls on Saturday and I received the good news that I will be staying in Hamburg! So it's my last transfer to give it all I have. I appreciate what you said mom about Trail and about the things that I've learned on my mission needing to change me as a person. They have and I agree with you about Trail. I don't want to stay there any longer than 8 months. That's like the max amount of time that I could stay, lol. Germany's so awesome! I also noticed this week how much I have changed this last year on my mission. I think that came with the blessing of being called a Zone Leader so young on my mission and staying one until the end. So nothing has really hit me yet about the idea of coming home so soon, probably because 6 weeks is still a long time. But the one thing that has hit me is how I've been stepping up my game a little bit more each day. I seem to be imperceptibly more intense about doing everything I can before my time is up.

 

   Elder Cannon and I are working hard. We had a lot of appointments fall through this week, but have had good back up plans which have been helping our program. There's nothing we could do about those ones that fell through; we had confirmed them and everything. We also have a big teaching pool, and have our focus on 3 specific people now who we feel can be baptized before the end of the transfer. I hope things work out and that we keep finding new people. The ward here is so cool. We're really trying to involve the members more and more, but it's tough when we're not sure if appointments will go through or not. We decided that we would tell the member beforehand that we have a back-up plan and if they want to do it with us if the appointment does end up falling through. That seems to work a lot better and seems fairer for the member.

 

    Something funny...we got into the bus which was really full and sat down at the back. We watched others get into the bus too and it was getting pretty full. We started driving and Elder Cannon looked at a lady who was sitting beside us and suddenly she YELLED at us 'DON'T LOOK AT ME!!' Elder Cannon jumped - ha-ha and I did too because I wasn't paying attention and it surprised me. This lady cursed at us for the next 3 stops just because we were LDS missionaries. We bit our tongues and didn't say anything at all to her, which I'm thankful for. Some people are just crazy...even in the west, ha-ha!

 

On New Years Eve it got dark at about 4pm so there were fireworks going off everywhere. We tried to go by on a member and got pretty close to his house. It sounded like a war outside, or a battlefield so Elder Cannon and I were having fun and made it seem like we were trying to get to a check point in a battlefield. I told Elder Cannon that I felt weird and that we have the rule to be home by 6pm because of this exact reason. I said to him we probably shouldn't be out here. Well, we came around a corner of a cul-de-sac, and there walking into the middle of the street was a big man, who had tattoos all over him (looked like a drug dealer) with his car door open. He lifted his arm up into the air and all of a sudden we heard five gun shots and saw the ignition from his hand gun in his hand from each fire. We just froze, turned around and walked from where we came from, and decided it was time to go home! We couldn't believe it, but we are thankful that we're always protected. We spent the rest of the evening with the Senior missionary couples and it was a blast!

 

Thanks for the love and support. I love you all so much. 

 

December 30, 2013 Hamburg

Hey!

 

 That was great being able to Skype and see you...or talk to you! J I hope you enjoyed your Christmas and that it was a good one! I don't really have too much to talk about, lol.

 

There were a lot of people that we managed to come in contact with last week after not giving up and continuing to call them every day. A lot of the new people we found made appointments with us and we have the opportunity this week to teach them. There are 2 people that we came in contact last week who are really very cool. One of them is a member and the other one is his friend. They're both from Ghana but met each other in Russia as they were studying there. The non-member was taught by missionaries for quite a while, and yesterday as he was in church he said,  “I hope and expect to be baptized soon.” He's so prepared, and we basically have to go through the lessons with him and then he's ready! They're having a hard time finding a place to live right now. The landlord kicked them out of the place they were staying because the apartment had 5 extra people sleeping there and they got caught. So they slept on the streets and then came to church in the morning. I couldn't believe it! But they just kept saying to us, 'it's no problem, we just pray and the Lord takes care of us. We are meant to 'sweat for our bread'. We all have our trials but we have the hope within us that the better days will come. We don't need to worry because we trust in God and he will help us through our trials.' They're so humble, but made sure they had a place to stay that night ha-ha, and the bishopric is helping them out too. It's such a blessing being part of this church, Christ's church!
 

I hope you all have a great week and enjoy the New Years!! J

 

Elder Lüning

 

December 23, 2013, Hamburg

Dear Family,

  Wow, don't you all just love last minute changes and unexpected events that pop up? If you said no, you could've fooled me because it seems to ALWAYS happen to you, ha-ha. Naja, I guess that's just life. What's awesome is that no matter what happens, we have the promise of spiritual peace which is 'not of this world'. What a blessing we have to be able to remember Christ in this Christmas Holiday! J

   I'm super pumped and excited to Skype, ha-ha. My last Skype session on the mission...wow. It's been a while since I've seen all of you and I'm really looking forward to it. We were have a tough time figuring out when and how we were going to Skype, and then suddenly Dane (Anika's husband) came up to us and asked us if we wanted to Skype at their place. They have 2 laptops so Elder Cannon and I could do it at the same time. It's great! So we'll be at their house Skyping at around 6pm our time. Maybe a little after but just be ready at, I guess, around 9am your time. Dane or Anika will probably call you to ask for your Skype account and set everything up and have it ready for us when we come. They are so awesome! I have no idea what I'm going to talk to you about, so if you have any questions just write them down so you don't forget. 1 hour goes really fast!

   Unlike Charlene, I have no idea what's happened this week. I honestly look back and don't remember anything! We are so busy running around, meeting people, teaching people, taking care of our District Leaders and Zones, and yeah, I just lose track of time! But something I do remember is that I. is going to be baptized on the 25th of January. He works so much so it's hard to meet more often as once a week. But he's been keeping all of his commitments and his story is amazing. He went from not believing in God, and wanting to take his life, to a complete turn-around. He now loves God more than anything and has seen BIG miracles in his life in this short amount of time (3 weeks) that has completely changed is perspective and belief. We've taught him things that he never knew before, about Christ, and the Plan of Salvation, and he loves it. Elder McKean and I found him in August, and then lost contact in September. But he contacted us about 4 weeks ago and said he needs our help. Well, we helped him, and he's allowed us and Christ to change his life.

   Now around this Christmas time it's been a bit harder keeping in contact with some of our investigators but we keep finding new people who want to meet with us. It's kind of a weird time of the year. Lots of people are open, but then lots are closed, so there's no real way to say if people are nicer during the Christmas season, lol. It's definitely more stressful for people than any other time of the year. We went Christmas caroling as a district last week by the Rathaus in Hamburg. It was a lot of fun. We handed out DVD's and Christmas pass along cards to people. At the end of the hour of singing our voices were shot! That's how good we sang J!

   I really hope that Jocelynn recovers well! That sounds so painful and I'm so sorry that that accident happened. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. If you can get in on the Skyping Kass that'd be really cool!

   Aunty Kirsten, Uncle Doug, Laurel, Jocelynn and Craig, I hope you have a great Christmas; too bad it didn't work out like planned, but have a wonderful one anyways! Thanks for the updates and I can't wait to see you again. I was really looking forward to it in Skype, but I guess I'll see you soon enough anyways. I really appreciate you guys and I love you!

  Thanks Mom and Dad for all you do for us, unlike Charlene I haven't opened my presents yet ha-ha. I will wait until Christmas J! So I'll probably tell you thank you on Christmas day when we Skype!

  Jeremy, you are such a stud, haha. I love you and hope that you keep having fun this winter. I miss the snow. It's not going to be a white Christmas in Hamburg...it's still like plus 8° outside. I haven't even seen snow yet! But I'll be back in February, so we'll be able to hit up the mountain together.

  Charlene, have an awesome Christmas! I loved Christmas last year with the members. It's so different, but it's still a lot of fun. Keep tearing it up with the missionary work. I'm proud of you! I had lunch with Florian Löhrmann yesterday, who babysat us as were little and he said he thinks it's awesome that you decided to go on a mission. It's true, and you're perfect for it. You've got a bubbly personality for it,ha-ha. Keep it up.

   Kass and Scott, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopefully we'll be able to do a 3-way Skype. If not, then enjoy the holidays and the SNOW! lol.

Thanks for everything and love you all! Please let the family know I love them and miss them!

Elder Lüning

December 16, 2013, Hamburg

Dear Family,

So this week has really run away on me. Anna is so cool. She met with us again last week and we taught her the Plan of Salvation. We had given her a Plan of Salvation pamphlet to take home and study before our meeting and she had done it. She said the part in 2 Nephi which talks about the need for an opposition in all things (misery to enjoy happiness) was a huge answer to one of her biggest questions about Adam and Eve. It was so cool how excited she was to tell us about it, ha-ha. She's a lot like you Kassandra. Her parents live in Kiel, so she's home until January now, but will continue to meet with us when she's back. We asked her if she's been praying too, and she said that her prayers have changed. She expresses more gratitude and thankfulness than she did before now that she does it daily. She said before she only prayed when she needed help, but never really expressed her thankfulness. She said it's a lot more personal now and that she really likes it.

Other than that our other investigators are also still doing well. Henry didn't make it to church because of a funeral but called me later in the day and said he missed us and made an appointment out with us. He's such a loving man. The ward impressed me yesterday with an investigator that we invited to church. We met him on the street, last week and then he came to church. He speaks a little German and English but mainly French. We have 3 members who speak French and they translated the meetings for him and explained a lot of things to him about the church the whole time. We barely had to do anything. He felt so welcomed and wants to come again. We also made an appointment with him for this week.

I thought I mentioned how things went with R and A. It was really cool and man I was pretty nervous, lol. I “klingled” the doorbell and Andrea opened up. She didn't recognize me at first until I stepped in and said hi, I'm Christopher, ha-ha, as I gave her a hug. It was super wierd because I only remember her a tiny bit, and yeah, she looks different, lol. Her mom had cooked dinner for us and so we chatted for a bit and then ate together. R is really, really strong Evangelisch. I asked if we could say a prayer before we ate, and she said “ja” and asked me to say it. I said it and then she said her own prayer afterwards, ha-ha. She didn't know I was planning on coming with my companion, and didn't know we always had to stay together. She really didn't know anything about the church except for that we don't drink alcohol. I tried a couple of times to teach a lesson but it didn't work too well until A asked me what the difference was between our church and the other ones. My companion was busy talking to the dad about American Healthcare and I took the opportunity to teach her the first lesson. She was really interested, R listened in a little bit, but more of the interest came from A. She doesn't live at home either. She lives in Barmbek which is 15minutes away from where we live. I see more potential in her than anyone else. They are really settled in their beliefs. We had a great time together though. We talked about kindergarten and the things we remembered lol, and about why I'm on a mission, and what things we do as missionaries. A left at the same time as us to go home, which gave me the opportunity to bear my testimony to her.  I'll try to see her again and see if she'd be open for the lessons or to come to church sometime.

   Thanks so much for the package mom, and I love the advent stuff you sent me. You are so awesome! I don't know where you find the time for that, (individually wrapping every one...thanks so much) and thanks so much for the Christmas CD's!! Everything else is still wrapped till Christmas. I'll let you know next week about skype times. We don't know everything yet, but I'll keep you posted. Thanks guys for your emails, I love you and have a great week. You're in my prayers, Merry Christmas!

Elder Lüning

December 4, 2013, Hamburg

Dear Family,

    Wow, -24 at night and -18 during the day?! O, CANADA! It's been warm here in Hamburg compared to that. It only gets down to about 5°C during the day time. I'm kinda glad it doesn't get that cold, but something I do miss is the snow. We don't have snow on the ground yet! We had a wind storm on Wednesday and then it snowed a little bit, but it was more like hail. So we're hoping for a white Christmas, maybe it'll snow soon J

   Well let me tell you how things have been going here in Hamburg lately. Let’s start with our new converts. H. is amazing. He cooked us African food again, and is now working on reading the sacrament prayer in German so that he can do it one day on Sunday. He's also getting to know the ward more and more and making family connections which are awesome. He's so solid, comes to church every Sunday and loves studying with us and his home teachers every week. We had the ward Christmas party on Saturday and he came, stayed afterwards to clean up, and then ended up cleaning the whole church building with Bishop Back because no one had done it yet. He's seriously the best African, ha-ha. He's so funny. Brother Stephens is also doing really,  really well. We taught him this week about Patriarchal blessings and after the lesson asked him if he would like something like that. He said 'Elder Lüning, I'm over-ready!’ Ha-ha, he told me to talk to the bishop and get him set up with one. It still amazes me every time I see him that he's 73years old. He doesn't seem that old or act like it at all ha-ha. He's super active and the members love him a lot. He bears his testimony to us every time of how grateful he is to have found the Church of Jesus Christ. He's also preparing to go to the temple to do baptisms. Oh, and he's now a home teacher and whenever we visit him he stuffs us with pancakes, lol.  We also met with C. this week and he's starting to change his life around again. He went to church on Sunday in Delingsdorf which was a big step since he hasn't been to church since two weeks after his baptism. He's still living with his girlfriend but also at his mom’s place and said by the end of the month he'll know if they'll break up or not. He said she's keeping him away from the church and that something has to change. He's going to meet more regularly with us again since the hand off to the Delingsdorf Elder's didn't work at all. They didn't visit him regularly when we handed him off to them which was too bad. But his heart is back in it and we'll help him!

   The members in this ward are so awesome! I love them so much, and now that Christmas is around the corner I feel even closer to them than ever. We really have a lot of support from our ward and we're seeing miracles every day. Last week we talked to a student on the street who had interest and then about 4 or 5 days later I made out an appointment with her. She came to the church and we gave her a church tour, told her a little bit about our standards and how the church is organized and how it runs. We then taught her the Restoration and she loved it! She asked questions about the word of wisdom and chastity and eternal marriage, and soaked everything up. We didn't go into too much detail of course but she loved everything we said. She's German, and married to a Muslim from Iran, and really open to learn more about our church and religion so we'll be meeting again this week. She also loved our sense of humour and how we had personal testimonies of what we taught. It was a blessing finding her just from talking with everyone we saw for 20mins of finding time that we had. We also got in contact with an old investigator who wants to change his life around and is very serious now. His names I. We're looking forward to helping him. Then there are a couple more people we're teaching and helping get closer to baptism.

   I'm stuck on Sunday being my absolute favourite day of the week. I feel it’s the most spiritual and happiest day that I have in the week. It's a time to reflect on the week and see how it went and remember where the Lord has helped me and others through me. I feel a lot of weight on myself  in leading the area, and the zone, ha-ha, and helping Elder Cannon learn everything that he needs to do, but I'm still happy all the time, no matter what!  Ha-ha. I always think of Christ calming the storm and think of it as him calming my storms. Whenever I have a ton of stuff going on and it is chaotic, I can call upon Him and there's peace. One of the assistants asked me why I'm so chill or relaxed and happy all the time, and I said it's because I'm Canadian ha-ha. But I think it's really just a gift that I've been blessed with that comes from the Gospel and doing what's right.

    Mom, thanks for the email. Sounds like your busy like always ha-ha. But it's impressive to see how you're rejuvenated with strength through just little spiritual moments of rest. It's a blessing.

   Dad, thanks for your example and for the way you raised me. I was at the Panitsch's for lunch yesterday and they showed me a video of the day that you and Mom drove down to Salt Lake to spend one day with them. They are still so impressed by that act of kindness and have a lot of respect and love for you and Mom.

   Charlene, I'm excited that she was baptized! Keep working hard! I know member work can be a bit slow at the start, but once they love you and trust you it changes everything. Then you can start role playing with them and help them do their own missionary work by going after less actives and friends. J

   Jeremy, I hope you had a great week and I hope you're enjoying the snow! I'm not sure how much it snows in Italy, ha-ha, so enjoy the last year of it! J

   Kass, I hope things are going well with the job, you didn't tell me your mailing address so I guess you won't get the tinsel in time for Christmas since it takes like 3 weeks to get to you. Too bad...but there's always another year I guess. J

   Have a great week everyone and stay healthy and strong!

Love, Elder Lüning

p.s. Oliver Back and his wife but St. Nikolaus in front of our door! They're so awesome! J