May 23, 2024

 I failed to write an email last week, it was a bit of a crazy Pday! We had two elders stay the night at our place in order to drive together to an all Elders Pday activity: Paintball! I'd never been paintballing before but it was pretty fun! To me it's like next level laser tag with consequences. 


Other things last week: Mothers day, we made mini golf courses for a youth activity, and we visited a friend at McDonalds which was kinda funny (he works there). My companion had a happy meal for the FIRST TIME in his life.

Anyways, this week has been a good one! There were a few sad things, but also a lot of great things and it's amazing to be able to recognize the little manifestations of God's love. 

We had a plan to improve our Saturday game night with our friends, because usually only one or two people show up. We planned how to make it more structured, include a spiritual thought, and get members to be there as well to support our friends. Unfortunately, nobody at all showed up so it was a little sad. Hopefully we can find a way to make it successful! The same day though we met a cool greek dude with very broken english on the street and invited him to church. He called us 5 hours later and said "I'm coming to the church right now", and so we gave him a little tour. Despite his word he didn't make it on Sunday, but we are praying he will next week! 

We had interviews on Monday! It was really good. Some of you might already know, but our mission is splitting next transfer. About 65 missionaries are getting sent to the Hamburg mission, while the rest will stay in the Frankfurt mission and the missionaries from Stuttgart will be coming here. During the interview, President Cropper told each of us if we were going to Hamburg or not. Luckily I am staying! Unfortunately my companion is leaving though, so Elder Evans will be made a Hamburger. He will be missed 🫡. Sister Cropper was talking to me and she said they want to serve Hamburgers and Frankfurters at the next zone conference for lunch haha. 

Right after interviews we went to work on the Phillips house, and hauled up massive bricks and concrete bags. It's crazy how my perspective has changed on service since being on a mission. I would always drag my feet when my dad had me come with him to do service, but now I look forward to it as one of my favorite missionary activities! 

We had an exchange on Tuesday, I was with Elder Thompson and we were talking about how life is going, and I told him about something that's been on my mind a lot recently, which is if I'm really growing or making progress on the mission and as a person. It's so hard to measure progress from day to day. Every day contains different failures, successes, sorrows, and joys. It often feels like taking a step forward, and then a step backward, and then forward again. At least that is how I feel. I realized through it all though, that I am learning to love others. I have always cared about people, but it was often hard to manifest that. During my high school years it was often difficult to tell my mom "I love you" back- even though I felt that I did. But I realized that telling my mom "I love you" at the end of the call is one of the things I look forward to the most in my conversations with her. It's the most important part of the call to me. I realized that with all of the habits I'm building, all of the experience I'm gaining, if I came home with none of that, it would still have been a worthwhile mission because I learned to love others. And that is what I want to base the "success" of my mission on. I invite you to think about how you can show love to someone who needs it this week :)

On Wednesday we did more service for the American soldiers here. We grilled hundreds of hot dogs and Bratwurst (For some reason they used American sausage and not German... they are in the sausage capital of the world!) It was really fun, they even gave us some cool American shirts afterwards! 

That's most of what happened this week! Finding teaching and serving :)

Ich hab euch lieb!
Elder Tage Rex









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