February 24, 2024: I guess you either watch the show

 Or you show and prove 

Another week! Only 2 left in the transfer already! Not a whole lot happened, but here is the week!

We started out with a two hour train ride to Heidelberg for exchanges with our Zone Leaders! I was with Elder Deivelbiss, and we had a good time. It turns out that both of our ZL's are twins, and they both have girlfriends still waiting on them back home. That's impressive because they both went to BYU and only have a couple transfers left. Heidelberg is a really nice city, and it's a university town so there's tons of young adults which is the best for missionary work (because we are also young adults). I always find it a miracle when older people listen to us, because we're two 19 year olds with no adult life experience in a foreign country where they speak another language trying to tell you, a stranger on the street with things to do, how to live a better life. 

I tried a 5 Guys shake for the first time. Wondrous.

The sisters in our district had a baptism on Saturday! It was a little crazy, because I had to play the piano and I hadn't had the chance to practice in a while. I took a few minutes beforehand to practice the chosen songs, and then I get news that the baptismal font's drain doesn't plug, and then the water stopped running! We found a plunger that had good enough suction to stop the drain, and then we used those giant orange igloo water buckets to pour water from the kitchen sink into the font. after about 30 minutes of that, the water somehow kicked back on, and eventually filled up the font with very cold water! A little worrying, but all went well, we just started about an hour late. 

We did our studies and then some fun district drama happened. I won't go further on that but everything is better now and that's what's important!

On Sunday I had the chance to participate in the gift of the holy ghost for the newly baptized member from the Sisters, which was cool! We also had a Ward Council meeting that we participated in, but it turned out just to be a lecture from the stake presidency. Not much else happened on Sunday, but we had a really good companionship council!

We had an exchange with the American Elders from Tuesday to Wednesday. I was with Elder Larsen, and it was really nice! We visited an inactive family, and had German Burger King, which actually turned out to be pretty good (despite popular belief). 

I decided to buy a large kinder Egg the other day. Like they have the normal size ones and then they have big ones for 4.5 euro. Maybe not a worthy investment every time, but you have to try it at least once right? It tasted great and had a bigger toy- a baby chick shredding an electric guitar. Also, there's an even bigger kinder Egg, bigger than my head that I will have to try sometime, but it's about 10 euro so we will see.

We were door knocking in a little village and met some Americans! That was random and they didn't have interest but they were very cool. 

We just had a great P-Day: we met as a Zone, played volleyball, magic, basketball, and just had fun! After that we had an incredible lesson (it's been a long time since we had a lesson) and this guy was like "can I bring a friend along? I want them all to know about the Book of Mormon" and we said "of course!". They both speak Arabic but can communicate enough in German to make it work, and they both seem really interested. One of them plays tennis too so that would be amazing if we could organize something! A little miracle lesson. 

I've been learning a lot this week about what it means to be accountable and responsible. About being a solution finder rather than an excuse or complaint maker. I've realized that I don't think there's a single time that the Savior ever gave an excuse NOT to do something. This is too big of a discussion for an email, but there's an incredible talk on the byu talks website called "100% Responsible" that lays it all out. Would recommend!

That was this week! 

Much love and till next time!

Elder Tage Rex