Elder Tage Rex: Germany Frankfurt Mission

It's crazy to say, but this is the last email from me as a full time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.   Not a lot has happened since my last update, we've just found a few friends and went on exchanges with our ZL's. Today we spent our PDay in Frankfurt with Harry, a new member from Trier, and visited an art museum. It was awesome. Because I probably won't send another email next week, here is what the next few days is going to look like for me: Friday- Leavers temple trip. All of the people ending their mission are visiting the temple together with our mission president and his wife.  Saturday- Elder Gong Missionary Conference. Elder Gong is an apostle visiting our mission and this is a super rare and unique opportunity to hear a modern apostle of the lord speak to us. Sunday- Elder Gong Stake Conference. Thousands of members from the surrounding area will be gathering to listen to Elder Gong.  After that, I have my final interview wit...

  Time's a scootin' This was an extra long week because our pday was moved from Thursday to Saturday, but we've gotten a lot done and it's been awesome! Last week we had a lot of time on our hands, and with some faith we were able to find 21 new people to teach which was crazy! It's definitely a filtering process to find out which of these 21 are willing to meet consistently and keep commitments, but it was way cool. This week we've had a lot more appointments which is super nice.  We also had a great Sunday with 6 friends at church. We held a little class on our own with all the new people. We said goodbye to our Dutch friend who moved back to the Netherlands this week   way sad. We met with our boy Wassim from Tunisia and he is one if the coolest guys I've ever met. He's just a true friend and has been feeling the spirit a lot recently, especially in our last lesson with him. He is praying about the Book of Mormon right now    A Syrian lady we met last...

  This week was great! Here is the rundown: On Friday and Saturday it was basically just finding days. We found quite a few really cool people! One of them is named Roulof, he's from the Netherlands. Another is named Roman, who ran into some missionaries in Colorado a while back but didn't have time to meet with them. Now he has more time and is super interested in meeting with us! He's also German, which is pretty rare.  On Sunday we had Stake Conference, and our new member Joel traveled 3 hours to get there with us. He was in tears by the end of the conference, it was really sweet. Monday was a lot more finding. Tuesday was a wild ride, we had a district council, except every companionship had things come up at different times for different reasons, so one companionship showed up 1 hour late, another got sick and attended through videocall. Then 3 random people showed up at the church and the other companionship had to go help them out. Needless to say it was a little all...

 This was a pretty good week! Elder Mattern and I are doing great and having fun. I actually started the week sick, so we stayed in on Friday, but we went back to work on Saturday. We taught a new friend from turkey who is super cool and had our new member Joel at the lesson too! He bore some awesome testimony. We also got to so some service for a member where we dismantled and transported a big swing set.  Unfortunately the mission nurse advised us to stay home on Sunday because of my sickness. Probably for the best but a little unfortunate. Monday was Zone Conference! My last one. It was pretty great, always a good spirit and great to see everyone. My previous companion Elder Stubbs was there too because now he is an Assistant to the President and it's awesome to hang out with him.  Other than that we've mostly been finding new people to teach. We spend a lot of time on the street and we've been visiting members as well, encouraging them in their missionary efforts. It...

  This week was quite bittersweet. Transfers happened, and unfortunately me and Elder McCann had to part ways. It was super sad, but nothing gold can stay. He's off in the distant land of Bayern (a German province) in the town of Ansbach.  I'm still in Wiesbaden though, my new companion is Elder Mattern, and he's way chill.  This transfer is only 5 weeks and one of them is practically completely filled with stuff preparing to go home so that is pretty crazy. This last week we've just been up to the same old, but on Saturday I got to visit a baptism from somebody who I taught almost a year ago in Trier! That was super cool. My friend Harry who had also been baptised as I was in Trier also showed up! It was a great reunion. We met a really cool Brazilian guy today on a bus who is super excited to come to church so we are looking forward to meeting with him more.  We also participated in a service project with our new member Joel where we went to a cool wilderness area ...

  We had quite an exciting week! On Saturday Joel was baptized!! He was super nervous but he was so happy. A lot of people from the Ward came to support him as well and it was so awesome. He is being integrated into the Ward very well and we are very excited for him to continue to progress in the Gospel. On Monday our mission president and his wife came down to have lunch and ice cream with us! We did something a couple months ago that made them happy and they rewarded us. We went to a place that's basically as close as you can get to taco bell in Germany called Chidoba. It was delicious. On Tuesday we had an exchange and I was with our zone leader Elder Kirk. He's super chill and we had a lot of hobbies in common so it was fun to talk about nerdy things. We found a cool Egyptian guy together too! We started a scripture study night on Wednesdays where we read in the Bible and the book of mormon with our friends and it's been super awesome. The Spirit is always strong in the...

  Happy Easter!  This week was good, Elder McCann is feeling a lot better so we've been able to get outside more.  We celebrate Easter on Sunday and heard some awesome church talks. After that we went to a members house and ate lunch. It was with 2 iconic 50 year old dude from the Ward who are best friends named Bruder Jetter and Bruder Balico.  Two member families also showed up and dropped us off a bunch of food and sweets for us! It was super thoughtful of them, and home cooked food tastes way nice. They also gave my companion some nice Crocs! Our friend Joel is doing great, he had his interview and is ready to be baptized this Saturday! We are super excited for him, and he is even more excited. He's been really great making relationships in our congregation and has so much enthusiasm for the gospel. In Germany they also celebrate the day after Easter, so on Monday we went on a ward hike/picnic. We took a mountain train to a cool recreational outdoors area and it ...

  This week did not go as planned, Elder McCann got really sick on S unday and has been basically out of commission since then. He has finally been able to start eating a little yesterday so he is on the up trend but it was pretty brutal.  Luckily, we were still able to get some things done because we have 4 elders here in Wiesbaden. We would schedule lessons and I would just go on exchanges so we could teach our friends. We actually had some amazing spirit filled lessons so that was awesome!  Joel is doing awesome. We taught him the plan of salvation this week and it blew his mind. "Everything makes sense now. It all has its place" is what he kept saying. We've decided to simply teach him through the scriptures, because he has an amazing understanding of it.  We've also been meeting with our friend Wassim and helping him understand the Plan of Salvation as well and that's been super cool as well. He has some pretty difficult circumstances and to see him slowly pi...

  Another week in the city of Wiesbaden! Here are some highlights: Our friend Joel continues to progress towards his baptism! We told him about General Conference snd that he would be able to listen to apostles and prophets speak and he said "you mean I get to hear an apostle speak?" We answered "Yes" and he replied "I've been waiting for this my whole life!" The plan is for him to be baptized on the 26th of April. We had general conference on Saturday and Sunday, which is a worldwide broadcast in our church where we hear from the apostles and prophets and they share inspiring messages focused on Jesus Christ. It's always super uplifting and spiritual! On Sunday our mission president let us stay up till midnight so we could hear the prophet, Russel M. Nelson speak. It was awesome! We had an awesome miracle yesterday. We had a referral that hadn't gotten back to us through text or call yet, so we decided to visit them. This happens quite often, ...

  We had an decent week! Other than than the normal finding and teaching of everyday missionary work, we actually had the opportunity to do some service this week! We visited a Persian family that a member has been helping out, and we painted a room for them! I had never painted a wall before but we got to learn how to use paint rollers and everything, it was awesome! We completed a large room in a about an hour and a half. We had interviews with President Cropper this week! He told me I'm finishing my mission in Wiesbaden. I also might be getting a trainee next transfer (don't leak this information, I'm not supposed to know yet). Anyways it was good to talk with him! Our new friend Joel has been making a ton of progress. He is a man on a mission to get baptized. He came to church last week and said "i am right here. I have found my church. The lord has lead me to be baptized here". He then asked us what he needed to do in order to get baptized and so a few days l...

  This week has been crazy!  So we started working in our new area of Wiesbaden. The city is awesome, huge compared to almost anywhere else I've served, so we've been able to do a lot of exploring.  On Friday we reached out to all the leaders in our congregation and asked if we could meet them and share a spiritual thought, and some people responded and we got an appointment that same night with a family from Chile! They were awesome. We also were able to find a lot and explore a lot of the new city. We found a sick guy named Wassim! He's from Tunisia and is super interested. We were able to give him a church tour and he came to church on sunday. He came to a board game activity we held on tuesday as well. He said he's been in Germany for 9 months and never felt welcome anywhere until he came to church, and that there's something telling him he needs to learn more about what we know. He's also just a super fun guy! On Saturday we texted and called probably 200 p...