Monday, June 20, 2016

Hello everybody! This week has been a crazy week! But what week on a
mission isn't crazy.
Tuesday we had zone Conference which is really cool in Switzerland
because everybody in Switzerland comes together. That is pretty fun.
We talked a lot about motivation and how it is so easy to lose
motivation but that we need to keep working even in the days we don't
want to do stuff. We also talked a lot about the 12 tribes of Israel.
Pretty interesting stuff. We also found our we will be the first
mission in Europe that gets to test the Area Book app on our iPads.
That is going to be way nice but a TON of work. We literally have to
take every single record in the book back to 5 years ago and type it.
But hopefully it will be better! It is defiantly interesting though
being in Switzerland, because a lot of the European missionaries are
actually pretty bitter against the American missionaries now because
there is a chance of them being kicked out of Switzerland. It is kind
of sad how much it divides our mission. But there are a lot of people
that are really nice too. Hopefully after some time it will be a
little more united as a mission when the Americans are not so new. But
after Zone conference we came home and met the APs and had exchanges
with them the rest of the night and just went finding. I was with
Elder Tholan who is also from Utah. (Just like most missionaries). He
was way cool though. We had a good time.

Wednesday after studies we headed out to Sankt Galen for exchanges
with the Zone Leaders. I stayed in Sankt Galen with Elder Mateer. We
had three lessons that day. We first taught a married couple and it
went really really well. The husband was worried about that to him the
prophets in the Book of Mormon and Joseph smith and everything are
just people and it will be hard to really gain a testimony of it and
we were able to explain that if he really just has a strong foundation
on Christ (he does) then if he prayed about it he would know they
really are prophets of God. They really asked a lot of questions and
you could tell they really had the desire to know it and learn more.
We invited them to be baptized on the 30th of July and they said yes
if they were in town but if they are already gone then yes after the
vacation and they have received an answer. It was a cool lesson. Then
after that we went to another guys house and he at first didn't want
to meet with us but then I saw that he was watching a bike race and
started talking to him about that and which race it was and we got
talking and then he started telling me about this book he was reading
about the Mormons history (totally false) and I told him that there
was some confusion in what was written and we would love to answer any
questions he had and he invited us in. We talked to him for about an
hour and explained all the misunderstanding and he invited us to come
back another time. It was pretty good though. Then we got to go to
institute which was really good. We split into two groups and the one
taught the restoration and the other group taught the plan of
salvation. Met some cool people there!

Thursday we changed back and then we went and did a service project
and pulled a bunch of weeds and also got to get in a swimming pool to
retrieve a chair. Haha. After that we just went finding and didn't
have a ton of luck. There was one guy that answered the door and asked
if we were JWs we said no and then he was like good because if you
were I would have counted to ten and you would have been on the street
with or without my help. Haha he was an interesting guy.

Friday was a good day. We only had one lesson planned but then the
First Lady I talked to on the street agreed to sit down with us at a
cafe and hear the first lesson. It was really good she understood it
all and said she believed it could happen. She wasn't from our area so
we passed her on as a referral but still really cool. She was in a
hurry at the end though so I just bought her coffee for her so she
could go. Then we dropped by Rafael just to say hi and ended up having
an hour long discussion about the plan of salvation and reading from
the Book of Mormon and the bible and comparing doctrines. Then we had
a lesson with Mark. He was a way cool guy but honestly had no interest
but to meet and talk. Good guy though. Then the rest of the day we
just went finding.

Saturday we had a pretty slow day but we started it off by going to a
members house to talk about what we need to do for the primary
activity we are helping with on Wednesday. They had three dogs that
were seriously wolves. They reminded me of Carley(right?) the dog we
used to have when I was a tiny little guy. They were sweet! Then we
went dooring for a while and actually found a pretty cool family that
said they were not that interested but that we were welcome to come
back and share our message. So we will see. Then we got back to
frauenfeld and found an Bahnhof for a bit and found another family
that we talked to and the mother of the wife is actually the leader of
a different church but we asked if we could share this message with
them and the were like yeah for sure. Would you like to come to dinner
and share it with us next Friday? Haha they were way cool. I am
excited to meet with them again.

Sunday we went to Tina's house for breakfast. It was really good. Then
we all went to church together and at church I had the opportunity to
pass the sacrament with all the deacons. And also got to introduce
myself and bear a quick testimony. Then in the YSA class we talked
about a subject I really liked. We talked about the difference between
weaknesses and sin. Sin is from Satan, weakness is from God. God gave
us weaknesses for us to learn from and make progress. If none of us
had weaknesses there would have been no point in coming to earth. I
really liked the topic. Then after church we went to Pascal and
Celinas house and had a really good. We ate spring rolls and played a
WAY fun good called "Ohne Furcht und Adel" we played a round with them
and I liked it a lot. There are a lot of fun games in this part of the
world! Haha afterwards we had to take a language assessment and watch
a bunch of videos for the new area book app and then we went to
Alejandro and Cisilias house. Alejandro is a member and she is not.
Alejandro told us she doesn't want to hear "The lessons" but that we
can always give a spiritual thought. Which is good! They are both from
Argentina, Alejandro speaks perfect German and she speaks no German at
all. Haha everybody there spoke either Italian or Spanish which they
can understand each other and so they could all talk back and forth
and Alejandro translated for me. Haha but it was great. We had
Argentinian food which was just all meat. He told us salad is
unhealthy. Haha we had something called Empanadas. He said they are
super typical Argentinian food. They were pretty good! He is way
funny. Then we shared my favorite Mormon message which is called
"Vater im Himmel, Vater auf Erde" (father in heaven, father on earth)
in honor of Father's Day. I love this video because it really makes
you realize God is not just some distant powerful person rather he
knows every single one of us and loves and cares for us. Just like our
fathers here on Earth. If you get the chance you should all watch the
video if you haven't seen it yet. (I like the German one better)
hahaha the voice is cooler. But all languages the message is the same.

Today we are helping a guy with a little service project and Elder
Mikulenka is sick so we are just going to hang out all day and hope he
is better tomorrow so that we can work! The Elders from Kreuzlingin
are going to come down too and play some games together! Should be
good! I hope you all have a wonderful week this week and I love you
all!! Bye!!

Liebe Grüße,
Elder Hunter




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