This week is a long email!
Well it's been a crazy two weeks! Also been 2 of the best weeks of my mission! Life is just cruising forward here in Friedrichsdorf. Elder Koch and I are just having a party working our hardest and seeing miracles.
Biggest thing is probably last week on Tuesday we were visited by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles! He is also the Apostle currently in charge of the Missionary department, and this is his home mission! So he shared lots of memories of his time here in the Frankfurt area and shared wonderful insights on how to work well with German members. It was a really uplifting experience. We all got to shake his hand and he thanked us for our work. And he spoke the whole time in German!
I got to see him at the very beginning of my mission as well, but I will say this time I understood his German infinitely better haha. It was an awesome experience
At that conference, I got to see a lot of old mission friends as well! including my Trainee, Elder Adams and both of his trainees! They are doing awesome and it was great to see them again. I also got to see a lot of my friends back from Dortmund, and we Dortmund Missionaries took a reunion pic. Good times!
Went on a few splits! This transfer is a bit slow split wise, but it's still going awesome! Last weekend I got to be with Elder Walker here in Friedrichsdorf. We had a good time and had a cool appointment with a less active member.
On this last Monday I got to split with the legendary Elder Frost in Wiesbaden. This was probably one of the best splits of my life. He's in his second transfer, so still in training and he's just such a good missionary. He's got such a heart and desire to improve, and we got to have a great day led my the spirit and kicking perfectionism in the teeth. He is awesome!
There have been a few baptisms in the Zone this transfer and its been awesome. Way proud of these Missionaries. The game we have been running this transfer is going really well and people are participating and having fun, so we are happy haha.
We have a wonderful new friend of the church named John who has come to church the last 2 weeks and just has the best questions. Pretty much every question out of his mouth is soul searching and humble, and he's just been soaking up truth at church and in out lessons. His friend who is always with him is pretty argumentative which can be difficult, but we are working on it! They are doing awesome!
I'm just really in a grateful mood right now. There were at least 3 moments this week where I was able to fill a need that needed to be filled and be an instrument in God's hands. One of them we walked past this homeless man on our way to go get lunch, and then I turned around and talked to him. It ended up being one of the coolest contacts of my mission. He is a really strong Christian, but because of a shady deal one of his coworkers made, he's lost his job and home and everything. He still believes that God has a plan for him, and though he has no phone or address, he was so grateful for a copy of the Book of Mormon. I gave him a hug and then went and got lunch.
This week I had an interesting moment of revelation. A quick connection was made and I wanted to share.
It connected two previous spiritual thoughts I have shared in the past, one had to do with the Hymn "Come Come ye Saints" and the other had to do with my understanding of Fear and what it means to fear.
One of the opening lines of the Hymn reads:
"Come come ye Saints,
No Toil nor Labor fear"
As I expressed then and revisited this week, I don't understand why it is that we can fear serving the Lord or truly working our hardest. Why we sometimes fear giving our all, and serving with "all [our] heart, might, mind, and strength" (D&C 4:2). I don't really understand why, though I definitely experience it myself regularly, we sometimes fear to Toil and labor.
What I expressed a few weeks (months?) ago about fear was simply that I believe almost all fears stem back to the fear of the unknown. That as we understand things better, we stop fearing them. Even the Apostles feared when the Resurrected Lord appeared to them, and as the Bible describes it, as they understood, they stopped fearing.
My thought was basically this:
We sometimes fear to ask and seek the Will of the Lord through prayer in everything we do, because we do not know what it is. It could be something really simple and doable, but it could also be really scary! We don't know what it could be, and so we experience apprehension.
But the interesting thing is that God has promised us that if we ask, we shall receive, and as we seek, we shall find (3 Nephi 14:8). So as we ask, we can know. When we know, we don't have to fear. As soon as we know what we need to do, the question stops being "What if it's scary?" and becomes "How do I overcome this scary thing with the Lord's help?". By asking, we invite the Lord to help us. That means we can trust it will all be okay, and we don't have to fear.
Essentially, when we experience hesitancy to give God our whole heart, all we need to do is ask! If you ask God for help and guidance, the fears will flee!
The peace and strength that come pouring in immediately are astounding. I promise you that as you seek the will of God with real intent, and then act as you know best, the fear will instantly be replaced with comfort and inner peace.
All you have to do is muster the courage to ask :)
I hope you all are doing well and healthy and I hope you know how much God loves you! You are awesome! Habt eine schöne Woche!
Elder Harps
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| Elder Walker and I |
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| Elder Adams, Elder Nielson, Elder Peterson, and I! Family picture! |
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| Elder Monilla from my original MTC Group and I at the Mission Conference |
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| Us and the Wiesbaden Distrikt at their Distrikt Council |
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| Us at a Family Olympiade that our Ward put on |
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| Dortmund Missionary Reunion! Schlingelei! |
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| Elder Frost and I on our split in Wiesbaden! (I swear I'm not that short! He's just 6'8"!) |
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| Really cool sunset at a Car Washing service project put on by the youth in the ward |
