Happy New Year

Christmas Eve was a wonderful day and we got to share our testimonies with other in the form of Christmas carols on the street and we watch a movie called "Silent Night" about Joseph Moor who wrote the beloved carol. It was very sweet and nice time together with the other missionaries.

We had a great Christmas! On Christmas day we had a lunch (Curry Rice) with the members of the Branches here in Athens who don't have family with them. We enjoyed the company and had some great talks and experiences. Then we missionaries went to mars hill and shared our testimonies with each other as our gifts to each other. It was nice experience for all of us. In the evening we watched the Muppet Christmas story xD Which was hilarious and had a good message.

On Boxing day we wanted to do some service projects but in the end they didn't work out, sadly... So we gathered in church and we got to hear about patriarchal blessings from Elder Elks (who's a patriarch) and about Adam-ondi-Ahman from President Freestone (who lives right next to it). It was quite interesting and cool. On Boxing day we also watched a movie called "Front of the Class" about a guy who has Tourrette's syndrome and manages to become a teacher despite great opposition.

We had some great experiences this weekend that I'd like to share. I really saw the Lord working in these. I think the Lord led us in our decision to do our weekly planning session this week on Saturday. Because that day it was raining all the day and we avoided the great part of it and the Friday before we were able to effectively work and help many people. That was the first thing in which I saw the Lord's hand.

We decided to call a few Greek-speaking former investigators to come to church and two said yes. Then in the evening in YSA a young Greek-speaking Albanian joined us for YSA and we invited him for church. He accepted. So we had three people saying that they'd come to church. On Sunday morning, two of them came and we enjoyed the service with them and I hope to teach both and help them progress forward on the path to Salvation.

In the afternoon we had another 2 miracles. Henry, one of our new Ghanian friends surprisingly announced to us that he'd come to church. The others had been telling us that they couldn't come this week because of financial reasons even thought they would like to come. That was awesome to have him there, even if we had to go pick him up at the bus stop because he got lost and were thus a little late for the meetings. Heavenly Father wasn't done yet. Before the sacrament meeting concluded our dear friend Daniel walked into the church with Ernest. We've been teaching Daniel for a while and he always expresses lots of love for the gospel and the Book of Mormon but we've never managed to get him to church. So we'd dropped him the previous Friday and told him we couldn't help him if he didn't come to church.... Well, it worked and he showed his desire and did his part to come to church. That was the Lord's work I'm sure.
Now, let us turn to the new year 2013. I wish you all a very happy new year! I hope you've got your new year's resolutions ready. Otherwise you'd better get cranking, As there are only a few hours left.

No pictures this week as my camera is broken (again)... So hopefully next week.

Remember to leave a comment if you liked this week's report.

Coming up: New Year's, Delfi, and a new Assistant to the President. This and more...

Merry Christmas

A very merry Christmas to you all out there! Enjoy this sacred holiday and I wish you all to enjoy friends and family. I have a small Christmas video recommendation for all of you. Let the Christmas Spirit enter your lives with these Good Tidings of Great Joy.

We had a great week! We met with a lot of success and wonderful experiences. Our dear friend Ahmed was baptized on Saturday and he was confirmed on Sunday. We had a wonderful time teaching him. He made great progress over the weeks that we've met with him. He's so eager to learn and study. He always comes to us with questions from the things he's read and studied. We had a very nice and spiritual experience.

Elder Uhlig, Ahmed and I

Honored Guests

We had a good week. It was dry and sunny weather for the most part. It has turned very cool though. We need to bundle up nicely to survive the arctic 10 degress out there. xD We had some great experiences this week. We met with some nice new investigators that we hope will start to progress soon. We also had a special training with the area president Elder Teixeira. It was very inspirational.

I saw the hand of the Lord in my life this week in many things. I was blessed by specific and clear answers to my prayers and questions through the training with Elder Teixeira. The days coming up to the training I had been praying for a specific and clear instruction from the Lord on some matters concerning my effectiveness in missionary work. I'd been asking for a way to be a more effective and a especially a more spiritually led missionary. As we started the Leadership training with Elder Teixeira he was soon already addressing that very topic and issue. I'm so very glad that the Lord uses other to answer our prayers.

The main meeting with Elder Teixeira was great and I felt encouraged to improve. I'm sorry to say that at first I felt a little overwhelmed by all the things he told us and I was starting to get a feeling of inadequacy and fear. However, after the meeting I was blessed by the Lord with respect to that fear. We had an appointment fall through and then we decided then to to contacting until we had the next lesson at the end of the evening without returning to the apartment to drop off our books and packages. It was heaving loading but we were blessed for our dedication. The Lord blessed me with a great love for the people at that time and I was able to cheerfully and openly approach people. We gave out many books in little more than an hour and I was blessed with an outpouring of the Spirit encouraging me that the things which Elder Teixeira had said were possible.

Our investigator Ahmed from Sierra Leone had his baptismal interview this weekend and he's going to be baptized on Saturday! This is super exciting. He is very special as he had some difficulty with meeting us regularly and keeping his commitments in the beginning. But after a week where we didn't manage to meet him he'd changed by the next time we saw him and he's been giving 100%. I'm so proud of him.

Also, Richard, who got baptized in our second/third week here in Athens passed the Sacrament for the first time this Sunday. He also showed up in a suit that was nicer than anyone else's including the missionaries. He looked absolutely brilliant and he did such a great job of passing the Sacrament. It was really wonderful to see.

After District Meeting with Elder Bernskov (Denmark)

This is where the true joy of missionary work comes from. Teaching lessons is nice and you get some satisfaction from it, but to see someone progress in his Gospel understanding, make covenants and move forward in his service to others (in the Priesthood) is great. The scripture in D&C 18:10-15 rings true in my ears!

Don't forget to leave a comment if you liked this week's post.

The Lord is in the Details

This was a nice week.We set up our Christams decoration in the apartment (we found a small bag of it in a corner). And we had a specialized training on Tuesday. We discussed some great things. We've been instructed by the Area Presidency to focus especially on (1) praying more and on (2) using the Book of Mormon as a springboard to revelation and lastly to realize that (3) we must come to church to stay i.e. we must become converted to the gospel. We had some great discussions and I learned for my personal improvement and how I can share that with the people I teach.

Our epic Christmas tree!

The Lord is in the details of our life!

I surely saw His hand in my life this week. I had some wonderful experiences. This week we met in the beginning of the week with Ahmed (investigator) and he'd been teetering on the edge of stopping to learn from us but on Tuesday we had an amazing lesson with him. We taught with power and authority given of God (not as the scribes xD). The spirit was thick in the room as we discussed the importance of scripture study and prayer just hours after having discussed it in the training. He felt the Spirit and you could see how He was teaching Ahmed. When we only mentioned church, he started bringing up excuses for why he didn't come, then he said he knew he should have come and then he committed himself to come every Sunday from then on forward without us having to say anything. It was truly the Spirit working on him. I know it was real as he came to church this Sunday and was there even before us!

Karim (member) who's preparing to go on a mission and I.

One other time where I saw the Lord having His hand in my life and in the life of my investigators was on Thursday. We had a lesson with a young man named Daniel. He lives here with his mom and has family in Africa still. We taught him the plan of salvation at a member's house. He's made quite some progress from the time we began teaching him. He grasps the gospel much quicker and he's growing in his desire to do good. As we were ending the lesson and we wished to share one last scripture, his phone rang and he picked up. After the phone call he looked shell-shocked. His sister in Africa had just died! All of us in the room went very still and you could feel that reverence that enters the hearts of men when they learn of the death of a loved one. Just as I felt that I didn't know what to say the word of President Monson came to my mind and I remembered his account of a similar situation and the scripture he shared. I turned to Alma 40:11 and I read it to Daniel. Then Elder Uhlig and I bore testimony of the truthfulness of that verse and the reality of life after death. He nodded and seemed to pull himself together and Elder Uhlig offered up a fervent prayer on his and his family's behalf. I know that the Lord placed us with him in that hour and he inspired us to teach him that doctrine in this time. He is looking out for His children.

Let us count the blessings we receive from our Father in Heaven on a daily basis and we'll come to see that we've received far more than we could have ever imagined from our Father. In the words of President Monson: I have found that, rather than dwelling on the negative, if we will take a step back and consider the blessings in our lives, including seemingly small, sometimes overlooked blessings, we can find greater happiness.
As I have reviewed the past 49 years, I have made some discoveries. One is that countless experiences I have had were not necessarily those one would consider extraordinary. In fact, at the time they transpired, they often seemed unremarkable and even ordinary. And yet, in retrospect, they enriched and blessed lives—not the least of which was my own. I would recommend this same exercise to you—namely, that you take an inventory of your life and look specifically for the blessings, large and small, you have received. (from: Consider the Blessings - Oct. 2012)

It is my prayer that we may heed the counsel of the Prophet of God!

Coming up next: Dinner with the Coleman's, Training with Elder Texeira and Ahmed's baptismal interview...

The Lord Will Provide

This was a really good and wonderful week. We had some wonderful experiences where the Lord had His hands in our lives. We also had a a baptism on Saturday. Sarfraz, from Pakistan, got baptized by Elder Uhlig. It went very smoothly. We also managed to have a really good District meeting with a wonderful Spirit present. But I'll focus on two extraordinary experiences this week.

Me, (Jesus), Sarfraz and Elder Uhlig

Event manager needed

This week was packed with action and events, as I'd expected. All the things that happened could have easily been enough for two weeks. xD I feel a little overwhelmed with all the things. We had a specialized training on Tuesday with President Freestone. We also had interviews with him. Then we had many event in church, with various councils. The problem with being the missionaries assigned to the YSA (Young Single Adults) is that you have to deal with all their activities all the time on top of normal missionary work. xD On Saturday we also had a great service project in church for the YSA where we cleaned up the top floor of the building and got rid of ancient  artifacts (from 2003) and started putting up the wonderful Christmas decoration. It was a fabulous success.

Happy workers!!

Illness and Recovery

We've had a fairly good week. It wasn't quite how I had hoped. Sadly I came down with a real flu by Monday night and I was out of the game all of Tuesday. I ended up just sitting at home and staring at the clock for a major part of the day. But I'm glad to report that I made a full recovery and I'm now back, full of energy and up to no good. Elder Uhlig was a great help during that time. I was pretty much out for the count by the time we got home on Monday night. He was so good, he insisted that I go to bed immediately and he took care of everything like planning, nightly calls and co. The next day he was also a great sport when I announced that I didn't feel well at all and that I think I should stay home, making all his planning from the night before void.

The view from Nafplio last week! Isn't it amazing?

We had some nice experiences this week which I loved and enjoyed. There were many learning opportunities this week. The Lord had His hand in my life again this week. As He always does. On Thursday I had an exchange with Elder Gibbons and we learned a lot from each other. But during the exchange we had a very interesting experience. We were just making ready to leave the church to go to his area when a man rang the doorbell and we went to great him. He's a refugee here from Iran and he had seen the church a few times in passing. We brought him back up to the 3rd floor and called Elder Coleman (he'd asked for the man in charge xD). Well, we sat down and we had what turned out to be a great lesson with this man.. xD We invited him to church and gave him a Book of Mormon in his language. And guess what! He came to church on Sunday! That was a real cool miracle. I hope the best for him and his future...

When I was sick we had an example of real Christian service by Elders Neville and Bernskov. They agreed to do an exchange with us (at expense of their time) to help us to teach one of our investigators that has a baptismal date. I think it was a big sacrifice for them but I'm very touched and grateful that they did that for us. It was a sign of love and support from them. It was also very helpful for us.

We had a great Sunday in church. We got the chance to serve before church started by helping a Nigerian member, who'd come from Georgia (the country) here and had been looking for the church for a few months, to come to church and find the building. He was super happy to be there. We also got to serve again when our Elder's quorum president turned to me right after sacrament meeting and asked if we could give the Priesthood class because he hadn't had the chance to read the manual. I answered "yes" without hesitation. Elder Uhlig and I then scrambled to get a manual and read what we were going to teach in less that forty minutes xD... The lesson went well. We had great input from the participants and we all learned together.

I'm looking forward to next week! We've got training, baptismal interviews and a whole new investigator coming up soon "in the footsteps of Paul"...

Canada (middle) with his friend Daniel and my companion Elder Uhlig.

Don't forget to drop a comment if you like this week's update.

Baptism!

Sorry for not updating last week. I ran out of time because of circumstances beyond my control. So here goes last week's update:

It was a great week. We had a great time with teaching and helping Canada progress towards baptism. And YES he got baptized and confirmed. (Canada is on the right in the pic and Karim (his friend who baptized him).)

Karim (middle left) baptized Canada (middle right)

Miracles upon Miracles

We've been blessed in many ways this week. We had a steady week of great lessons with great people. We were able to continue to teach the people we found last week in our efforts and the efforts of the members to help us. I have to say that the whole week was a great blessing. We managed to teach 20 lessons and get two new baptismal dates and one of our investigators (Canada) passed his interview for baptism! If those are not blessing of the Lord and His hand in my life I don't know what is....

Elder Uhlig studying Greek! It looks difficult :)

Tender mercies of the Lord

We've had a good week overall. It was interesting because it was a week of some change. It didn't go at all as planned. Then again, when does it go like planned? xD It started out quite difficult because we just couldn't manage to meet with the people that we wanted to. They were all busy, out of town, sick, or otherwise not interested anymore or unreliable. It was quite hard on me, and by Wednesday I was honestly discouraged. It wasn't too great.

Eating Giant Gyros on P-day. Elder Kopischke (right) had two!!!

Soldiers and Dinners

This has been a wonderful and also very eventful week. There is much to tell and not enough space to do so. I would like to share some very beautiful experiences I had with the Lord's influence in the work that we do this week. He does guide this work.. I know that and I've seen it again many times this week.

The guards at Syntagma, we saw them last Monday.

Last Monday evening we had family home evening in church and Karim, a member, who always comes didn't show up until late. So we were wondering what had happened to him. When he turned up he shared a miracle that had happened to him. He had been on his way here when he ran into a man we'd taught together and they started talking on the street for a little bit when the police suddenly showed up. The thing is that Karim has no papers. This meant that he was naturally very nervous. So the police started asking them questions and then seeing Karim's scripture bag they asked him to show it to them. They took out his beautiful new quad he has and when they saw it they seemed impressed and looked at him and said: "you are a good kid, be along your way." Then they just let them go and left as well! I know that was the Lord's influence protecting him so he can have the chance to go on a mission. (He is preparing at this time to go and serve.)

General Conference

I look back on last week with mixed feelings... We had a lot of people cancel on us in the last minute and/or change the appointment on short notice. This caused us to have to change plans on the fly and try to figure out how to still be able to meet up with these people as they really need our message and everything we can offer. Sometimes it is sad when people don't realize or even when they realize what they reject. The life of a missionary in the footsteps of Paul can be tough...

Jacob (whom we're teaching) and Elder Reading at church

Translators on the Loose

This week was very wonderful. We had a lot to do, many people to teach and as the icing on the cake we had a baptism on Saturday and I got to participate in the translation of General Conference into Greek. This was a great and wonderful opportunity. I'm so grateful for that opportunity that I had to do such a service for the Greek Saints and also to have such a wonderful learning opportunity.

Richard from Ghana was baptized on Saturday and he got confirmed on Sunday in church.

Elder Reading and Elder Stevens 

Athens, the Sleepless

We had a very good first week in Athens. I loved it. We were busy from the first night. Hardly finished with the training on Wednesday we had the great opportunity to go visit Karim (member) for a small lesson and we did a little contacting by the way. Elder Uhlig's first contacting and teaching experiences. I think he liked it a lot. The first person he spoke to was a little lady and he just jumped in front of her and said "hello, do you know the Book of Mormon?" Naturally she was quite scared and scurried off very quickly xD. He took it well and after some helpful tips it went quite well after that and we got our first name that evening. xD

Mars Hill (Acts 17) on Elder Uhlig's first night.

Back to Athens, finally...

It has been a really good week with a lot of activity and crazy stuff going on. Elder Greciano and I spend out last few days together until Thursday. We went back to Limassol on the bus a few times for meetings and teaching appointments. It was quite hectic and it messed up our schedule a lot. But it was worth it. Michael our investigator there was doing very well the last time we saw him.

Thursday evening, I left Elder Greciano with another Elder going home to go to Nicosia for the weekend before transfers this Monday. Elder Nicolls (England) and had a very nice few days there. We helped move an apartment from Nicosia to Limassol on Friday and then on Saturday we helped the branch president of Nicosia move a lot of his stuff across town to his new apartment. We felt like a moving company by the end of those two days. It was very refreshing to do some manual labor for a change and it was great to serve the people.

Sunday was a very nice day. We went to church in Nicosia, of course. It was my first time in that branch and they are very lovely. As Elder Nicolls always was saying: "They have character xD". We enjoyed the service and we were invited for lunch. But after that we just had a whole bunch of lessons in the church following each other. The cool thing was that most of them weren't planned and they just kinda popped up, just as we thought we didn't' have anything to do for the next hour someone would show up and we would have a lesson. It was quite miraculous. It was probably one of my best Sundays. xD I loved it!!!

Sunset in Athens from the Parthenon

Now, I'm in Athens and I'm here to stay for at least 14 weeks. I'm going to serve in Sepolia, Athens, which is in the north. I'm still going to the Acropoli branch to church. The one I was going to last time. I'll be training Elder Uhlig who is coming from the MTC tomorrow. He's from Germany and I'm told he's a very kind person. That is all I know. I'll have to update you on everything next time. I also don't know the area I'm going to. I've never been anywhere near there xD As I served in the south of Athens last time I was here.