La Iglesia De Jesucristo, Yoga In India, And CHRISTMAS

Guten Tag alle!

I'm back baby!

This week was prettttyyy crazy.

This week we had another Austausch (exchange) with Elder Gillis which was a lot of fun. He is now companions with Elder Urban, who was my last companion, so that also made it a good time (I can't say anything bad about them because they are both on this email list). 

On Saturday both of our appointments unfortunately canceled, our schedule sorta got thrown into the fan. 

But the other day, on the way to the church, I met a lady who was having difficulty understanding me because she couldn't speak much german, just spanish. So with my very limited Spanish and being able to say "La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días", she understood who I was and said that she already recognized the church in the Dominican Republic. The moment I said the name of the church she said she wanted a Book of Mormon. So we exchanged numbers and we are meeting tomorrow to give her a Book of Mormon in Spanish! 

On Tuesday we started an exchange (8th one of the transfer) with the Dortmund elders, only to get a call that evening that an missionary in Essen was in the hospital, so we had to end our exchange early and race over to Essen. We spent the night there and luckily the missionary is doing alright now, but it was definitely a crazy day!

We met with our friend Jay who will be getting baptized, and he committed to following the word of wisdom, which was really exciting!

We got a call from the Unna Sisters this week asking us how fast we could get to the train station. Long story short, we ended up giving someone a blessing on top of a subway station. The moment we got up there, it seemed like everyone disappeared, no one walked by, and it got really quiet. It was a pretty cool experience.

We also stopped a guy on the street who lectured us for 45 minutes about how we are spreading a lie and how Jesus didn't get crucified and moved to India where he lived out the rest of His life doing yoga. Definitely an interesting perspective. 

Today we went to the christmas market in Essen, which was a lot of fun. My companion has been making fun of me for how excited I have been about Christmas, but what can I say, Christmas in Germany on a mission is a whole different experience. It's awesome! 

Anyways something I have really learned this week is how powerful change can be. The Atonement of Christ is all about change, and if you even just take the first step towards trying to be better, Jesus Christ will help lift you the rest of the way. There were a couple things I have been working on and wanting to improve, but I had become a bit complacent and had sorta given up. But as I tried to take that first step towards change, even though it was pretty hard, I was filled with spiritual momentum that President Nelson had talked about. Its pretty incredible!

Anyways thats all for this week! Love you all and talk to you next week!

Elder Allan (Landon)

The picture with all the Muesli - my favorite aisle in Kaufland