Elder Monroe: June 2017

Thursday, June 22, 2017

This week was filled with really interesting people. Everyday is like that here in Duisburg since it is refugee haven. For example we knocked on someones door and the door opened. We went in the apartment building and it was a nasty fat guy with really tight whity tighties and no clothes on but that. He saw us and was like

Ah. Auf Wiedersehen!

Auf wiedersehen.

Äh

So we left and went to knock on other doorbells outside the apartment. Then this guy with no clothes on opened his window and all his body was practically outside of the window and yelled.

Auf wiedersehen.

No one lives there.

And he stared into our souls. Right as he said that the door ringed open to say that someone was there. In your face underwear man.

We get to the next door and the guy that opens it is his twin. Needless to say we had no success there. 😐

Then I met 3 Romanians this week at different times. One was a lady with almost no clothes on and she asked me about my book. Okay why not. Said it was the book of Mormon. She lost interest and asked about me and where I came from.

I will never say anything about America again. She started flirting, I started bearing my testimony about the book of Mormon. She saw I had no interest so she simply left. But the funny part was behind me was a bunch of immodest mannequins which had a really old grandma who was hunched over with a cane looking at these things.

She looked up and down and kinda "hmm! Hehe".

She sketched me out really bad.

Then another Romanian I contacted looked at my book of Mormon and said

"I'm too superior to read that book. My religion is too complex for you."

Said a guy in a muscle shirt with nasty blonde hair, a cigarette, and 3$sunglasses . Then he asked

Do you speak Greek?

No.

I do, So do you speak Latin?

No.

I do. Do you speak Aramaic?

... Me neither. But I am working on it. Only when you know these languages you are worthy to speak to me.

No problem! I guess his church is too good for me. 👌

Not to many lessons this week. Just a lot of finding and dinner appointments. It was actually really fun. German is a really hard language and is notorious for being hard. Still making slow progress, but it is progress. It is sometimes fun being able to speak another language.

Dad, your fish looks great. That looks about 42 pounds, I mean grams. Glad you guys are having fun. I know that I am. Here are some fun pictures this time.

1Just our Rathaus that got bombed in world War 2

2 Elder Fisher knocking on hells door.

3 Just the Rhine river.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

May 25 2017

So today we went to Xanten for pay and watched some epic battles in a coliseum. So awesome.

Still with some of the same investigators. Dudi is great, but my trainer makes me make the calls to drop investigators. Really tough when they don't have interest even though they are great friends. I am going to miss Mohammad Darwish.

My German only gets better. Now I am having real conversations with others and giving directions. Still don't understand people a lot, but at least they understand me.

We are doing a mini Mission with a great man called David Kilgore! Last mini Mission I think ever actually. He is a wonderful man who is 18 and only speaks German. Great practice for me. He reminds me a lot of Elder Calhoun. Lots of potential and works hard. For some reason his parents think he isn't ready, but that man has no fear. Heart of a lion! Haha! He is a little different but would not hurt a fly. We have him for 2 weeks.

The members are always supportive. Wonderful in every way. One is a soccer sports show guy on Facebook. His name is Piet! He is hilarious and yea. I got a picture of him for you. But anyways they are supporting everyone to come and always make sweet spielabbends where everyone gets together and get to know each other. So friendly.

The Persian families are wonderful. They are amazing. Thean on the far right is called Pooyan. He goes to church every week and will be baptized in 2 weeks I think.

All is well! I love it here! More and more to see and do.

Much love

Elder Monroe

May 18 2017

Hey! It's good to see you guys. That was great. Not much has happened since. We didn't have very many investigators so we I came up with an idea. The 100 contact March. We had to contact 100 people in a day. The first 15 were great. We received 3 investigators just like that, but the rest of the day was a drag. My idea did not go so well. We got 5 new potentials but so far none of them have returned a call. There is a lot of angry people in the world. Some only to call us to say why they never have the time and why we just aren't worth anything. Or while we are walking a grumpy old guy with his window open on the third floor shouts at us that we are beggars and trying to steal money, or even better. Some people drive by and simply yell that God is dead and we are useless. It really is humbling and sometimes makes me sad how miserable some people are in the world today. It just reminds me that without God or his presence I would be just as miserable as the people are. Haha! Yea I sometimes sound pessimistic but for me that is the truth.

On a higher note we have a Catholic friend who always goes up to us and shakes our hands. He is an older gentleman with his stereotypical old man Catholic bishop clothes. His nice gray overcoat, black fedora, and his cane of black marble. He is always so friendly and always compliments us for our labors. Then ends with a friendly bye and a warm smile. Sometimes I think the Lord sends people like him to simply make our day.

And our last 100th contact was a man called Stephen from Ghana. He is a professor and was stopped on his bike. We talked with him, already talked with Mormons in Romania I think, and was actually interested and asked us for a book of Mormon. We then learned the Ghana handshake, which is a sign of great friendship and he bought us ice cream and chips to end the day. He said next year he will research the church more, so yea he probably won't, but people like him as I said before, we're probably sent to us so we could have a little more joy in hard times. It was a perfect way to end the day. That March was 8 hours of constant walking.

As I see these tender mercies in our lives, this just reminds me again why I am here. I want other people to see these tender mercies in life and how God really is a loving father.

Love

Elder Monroe

Oh yea that is our pal bruder Suhl. He came to Sacrament meeting like this.

May 25

So today we went to Xanten for pay and watched some epic battles in a coliseum. So awesome.

Anyways dad I need your help. We have a 17 year old kid with a heroine problem. He comes from London and he really wants our help. His name is Alex. 6 weeks he goes to counseling. We already have a baptismal date. Me and Elder Davis were on an exchange and BTW we were both new. I just felt inspired to ask him that and he said he would love to and wants to change. So if you can tell us what the effects are, substitute for such, we don't know what to do since our church doesn't really have a great program for drugs. Only for tobacco, alcohol, and cigarettes. If you can be fast in reply, thanks. We already talked to the mission president about it. All he told us was to stay in touch with him and his family. I just want to know what it is.

My German only gets better. Now I am having real conversations with others and giving directions. Still don't understand people a lot, but at least they understand me.

The Persian families are wonderful. They are amazing. Thean on the far right is called Pooyan. He goes to church every week and will be baptized in 2 weeks I think.

All is well! I love it here! More and more to see and do.

Much love

Elder Monroe

June 8

And so I write about another rough week. We lost a couple investigators and honestly I think we are down to none again. Our boy Alex was on his way to our lesson, overdosed and was sent to the hospital. He literally went unconscious. His body was in an extreme withdrawal and took all he could and overdosed horribly. I truly wish we could help him, but when his mother doesn't support him it is just as hard to break a habit.

Dudi has an internship and we must wait 3 more months. He is way too busy.

Naeem our pal who got thrown off a building actually is a recent convert. He lives in a thing called a camp where a large building holds many refugees. Most are Arabic which makes it harder to go to church. So this man totally blackmailed his entire camp with photos of how horrible and nasty it is. The employees that work there and many who live there don't clean up after themselves. For example the cooking stoves is so covered with rotten food and grease you can't see the cooking pallets. The floor of the showers are mud, and the fridge is covered with rotten food as well as the sinks. He is working with red Cross America and this older rough American came over and totally whipped them all. Naeem now has the opportunity to live with his Australian friend and will be coming to church. No neighbors to worry about anymore.

We just got bikes for our area, but one seat is broken. It either leans up or down . Really uncomfortable.

There are now literally more sister missionaries than elders lol. The mtc just got a new load of missionaries. I email my teacher brother penfold. He is so cool and told me he is teaching 28 sister missionaries and 9 elders who are going to Germany. I noticed that there as well, but this is quite different before. I must say the sister missionaries have more of an effect than we do, but it only makes us elders try harder. It is really awesome to have them here.

I think we met 3 more Muhammad's today. They are the type that only want to learn about it but not convert. It is so unusual for them to hear of a religion other than Muslim so they are really interested, but they are too afraid to change their ideas and most of them are in the same situation I am in kinda. They were born in the Muslim faith and they don't want to hurt their parents, but they also want to meet with us as friends. Unfortunately that is not our job so we can't really do that. Many of them are wonderful people, but there are always the ones that threaten to kill the ones that convert. As I said in the last email before, their goal is to convert the whole world and when someone falls away that totally destroys their goal.

We are going to see Pooyan get baptized this Saturday. So exciting to see him. He always makes my day.

Rough week but working hard. I love our President here and is always giving me good advice. We are getting a really young mission president and he is bringing his whole family there. His kids are 6 12 and 14. Extremely young and I am excited to see him.

Love you guys. You are the best. No pictures this week.

Elder Monroe

June 15. Bit more success

Bit more success and such. We have been having lessons with this guy called Hothifa who walked a long way to church just to come and such. He shows lots of commitment and and really wants to learn more. We are so excited for him, but as usual he is busy and must wait 2 weeks because of a wonderful one month party called "Ramadan". Where Arabic people party hard, don't eat all day till the night time, ( which is hard for them because it is bright at about 5:30 in the morning here and is dark at about 11:00 P.M here). Then when it is night they eat drink and be merry most the time. Other than that, he is a really close friend to us and we have had much success with him. He doesn't fight our ideas as the other has, and even better he invites his friends to these lessons. His friends name is Ali. We met him and at first I thought,"oh no we are going to have a bible bashing. He wants to convert us." I was totally wrong and his friend had wonderful questions and is eager to know more. My German was good and I could understand what was going on (gift of tongues is great and the fact that they are Arabic so they mostly speak German really slow.) We gave the first lesson again in a wonderful library. Let's hope we can keep in touch with him.

Haven't really been in contact with Naeem. He is hard at work with Red Cross America and is trying to make things better for other Arabics and refugees living in Germany. I have so much respect for our new member. He is truly converted to the church and has nothing to worry about from Arabic extremists throwing him off a building actually. So wonderful to meet him once a week.

Met with a great returned Missionary. His name is Ben. A really cool man to be with and had the opportunity to do a service project with him. He speaks english better than German. He served his mission in England and it is kind of funny how he sometimes doesnt understand other people speaking German. There is an older investigator called Sasha Pflicht. He is residing in the hospital and he is more of a "ward investigator". What a wonderful ward we have and they are always willing to accept new investigators. Like Pouyan for example. He is our brand new member and was baptized the day before my birthday. He was so excited and Mustabar (the man who is our Persian member. So cool) he had the opportunity to baptize him. He was in tears, and this next Monday a few members invited us over to dinner with Pouyan and gave a wonderful spiritual thought and had great dinner as well. They welcomed him perfectly and he comes to church every week still.

Super cool. There are always hard moments. Germany is always rough. They have lots of "potentials" but when you call them to make a meeting, they totally deny giving your number and don't want to hear from you again. But sometimes that will have to happen. I should be with Elder Fisher for 3 more weeks. 2 transfers are 12 weeks, so till the end of July most likely.

Love you Guys.

Elder Monroe