Frankfurt Germany Mission #4

Hallo lieblich Leute!

It is so incredibly crazy that I am coming up on my 5th week in the MTC, and will be leaving for Germany in just 2 weeks. It's been going by so fast, and my mom keeps saying how she hopes that the rest of the 2 years of my mission goes by that fast too haha. This week wasn't too crazy, but to be fair my standards for being busy have been raised by my MTC haha. My German has been going pretty well, but I am especially proud of how far my accent has come (you shouldn't have complimented me Elder Hoopes cause now it'll go to my head haha). For the past couple days we have been playing "Muttersprachler" which means "Native Speaker". Before each class our district chooses one of us to be the Native Speaker, and we aren't allowed to speak any english for the entire 3 hour class. However, the teachers have to guess who the native speaker was at the end of class, so in order to "protect" the native speaker, all of us only speak in German (so far we have only lost once, and it was cause our teacher randomly guessed and got it right haha). So I have essentially been speaking german for 6 hours a day straight for the past couple days and I already feel my skill with it progressing way faster.

This past week my district and I did a powerpoint night where we made powerpoints about whatever we wanted to convince everyone else, but most if not all the powerpoints involved assigning each person some sort of movie/tv show character or something of that nature. My powerpoint was assigning everyone Good Luck Charlie characters but I got really into it and took pictures of everyone and put their heads on the bodies of the characters haha. During that night I found out multiple things about myself: I remind people of Shrek, Fred from Scooby Doo, Vincent Crabbe from Harry Potter (that one hurt a little), and if we were all in the hunger games I would win (the most accurate one obviously). Me and one or two others in the district started making german memes using pictures we dug up from our teachers' facebooks, so attached is one of my personal favorites, but unfortunately only a couple of you on this email will understand it haha.

Today I had a pretty awesome experience. The person who normally plays piano for us in our YSA ward out here wasn't going to be there today, so my dad (who's the Bishop) asked me if I would pick the hymns and play the music for today (I said yes obviously). Before I picked the hymns I said a prayer with a hope that I would be guided to choose hymns that would help others feel the Holy Ghost. Well in addition to a great opening and sacrament hymn, I choose Joseph Smith's First Prayer as the intermediate hymn and We Thank Thee O God For a Prophet as the closing hymn because I just felt the need to focus the hymns around prophets. Well after we finished singing Joseph Smiths First Prayer (well I was playing, and I cannot sing and play at the same time for the life of me haha), the next speaker (Eric) got up and was really emotional. He said that Joseph Smith's First Prayer was the last hymn that was sung in church before he left on his mission, and how he has such a strong testimony as Joseph Smith as a prophet because he truly does not know where he would be in life if Joseph Smith hadn't helped restore Jesus Christ's Gospel to this earth. Once I got home, I found out that today was the 177th anniversary of Joseph Smith's martyrdom. I did not know about the significance of Joseph Smiths First Prayer to Eric or that today was the 177th anniversary of Joseph Smith's death when I was choosing the hymns, I just had a strong feeling that I should focus the hymns on prophets after having prayed to know which hymns to choose. I know that the Lord truly answers all of our prayers and loves all of you, and through my life as I have shared my burden with Him through prayer, I have been able to feel His immense love and have felt at peace. 

Love you all and have a great week :)
(Oh and enjoy the picture of me and my missionary control center...notice the translation website on the right monitor :0 )

--
Elder Allan
Germany Frankfurt Mission
Kirche Jesu Christi
Corneliusstraße 18
60325 Frankfurt a. Main
Germany/Deutschland

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