November 28, 2024: I need something more than only me

 First- Happy Thanksgiving!! 

Second- I did not write last week. There may be some lost content but it's been a great couple weeks since my last email!

We've been teaching a crazy amount of lessons and it is awesome. We have a very nice variety of languages, backgrounds, and people we're teaching. It's probably about 33% German, 33% English (often from Nigeria) and then 33% other where we have to involve translation, wether Turkish, French, or Arabic. It's super cool.

We have a few people making a lot of progress:

Alex: I was calling up old contacts a couple weeks ago and a Turkish lady named Alex picked up the phone and we made an appointment. We ended up meeting with her but she couldn't speak much German at all. We set up another appointment and got some translation there, and then God worked some insane miracle! We learned that she used to be Muslim but she had been reading the bible and known something was special about Jesus that she couldn't deny. She became Christian and was almost baptized and another church a couple years ago but something got in the way and she couldn't make it. We asked her if she would like to work towards baptism and she said yes and was super excited. My companion turns to me and asks if we should set a date. I said no because it was basically the first lesson, but then I thought about it and thought it wouldn't hurt to ask, and so we did and she is going to be baptized on the 21st of December. She also agreed to meet with us 3 times a week in order to work towards that. It was the most insane lesson and it feels like God has just prepared this lady beyond anything I could imagine. Pray for Alex!

Okwuudili- he is going off coffee this week! If he does it we will set him a baptismal date as well, probably also for the 21st. 

Andrés- has decided that he wants to be baptized, just wants to explore a little more into the church before settling it.

Ashlee and Cindy- have the desire to be baptized and we are working with them towards that. They have a little bit of a process to work towards though as far as worthiness goes. They are excited though!

Those are our main progressing people currently. Please pray for them!

Other fun stuff from the past couple weeks:

-Thanksgiving today! We went and played some turkey bowl football with the Zone as well as had a delicious feast with the young adults from the Stake! Was a party.

- lots of exchanges, but we decided to cancel some in the future because we need to focus on the work in our area.

- we to council with President Cropper on how we can help our zone improve, that was really cool and we got to hear a lot of wisdom specifically for our zone. We are now doing 48 hour exchanges with a few specific elders to help them fulfill their missionary purpose and see an ideal missionary day.

- had stake conference and convinced one of our friends to ride with us for about 2 hours there and back. That was pretty crazy.

- just goofing around with Elder Stubbs has been fun. He's an awesome companion! We are already almost halfway through the transfer and we hope we stay another.

That's all I can remember in a timely manner. 

A couple years before he became the president of the church, our prophet Russel M Nelson said the following: 

"My dear brothers and sisters, the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives."

Why is it important to be grateful? It shifts our focus from that which is going wrong and onto that which is going right- or even the for which we have hope through Jesus Christ. Having gratitude allows us to have joy despite any circumstances we may be against. I know that to be true! 

Happy Thanksgiving!  

Elder Tage Rex

Still improving my picture game:

Headgear is essential

Biking

The zone at the temple for pday last week