Elder Tage Rex: Germany Frankfurt Mission

  Life has been crazy! My son Elder Haws us crushing it. I hope that I can raise him in the ways of truth and righteousness.  We've been suuper busy. There's a lot of meetings we have to attend as well as extra studies we do in order to support the new missionaries, so it definitely has been harder to find time to get out there and go. The time that we do have to go is great! From the git-go Elder Haws has been confident enough to talk to people and invite them to church, something I would dread every day at the start of the mission. He's also already grasping the language really well. It's so fun to see the world through his eyes because everything is so new and cool and every little thing is significant.  On Friday we were able to do a little mini mission with an American boy named Eli. He's a 300lb offensive linebacker and is super chill. We brought him to our district council, it was fun to have him there. We were also able to make a new friend named Amjad that ...

 (This is last weeks email. I didn't forget to write- I just forgot to Send ) Grüß euch! We got news this week! Last Saturday I got the call from President Cropper that I would be staying in Trier and that I'm training! From missionary conception to birth, its only 4 days so i I picked up my brand new baby missionary yesterday evening. They grow up so fast!  His name is Elder Haws and he's from North Augden, Utah. He's super cool, very tall, and already has pretty good German. He's gonna be an incredible missionary and I'm excited to watch him and guide him towards his potential. In other news, we were able to pick up our friend Adisa back! He didn't want to meet with us for a while and we were able to discuss his concerns and it was amazing. He should be coming to Harry's baptism on Saturday! Speaking of, isn't that awesome how my baby missionary gets to experience a baptism on his 3rd day in field? We're super excited! We got to meet some youth...

  Another week! We get transfer news this Saturday! It'll happen next Wednesday so I will let you all know what's going down next week.  First off, Friday! We went to District council which was wonderful, and followed it up with some district lunch at a big food truck festival! It was a bunch of burger joints from around Germany, and they were traveling around the country selling exclusively their signature burger. Everyone then has the chance to vote on what was the best, and each truck wins prizes based on each city's votes. It was super cool! I picked out the one voted as the #1 burger joint, because they had like 8 plaques in front of them claiming to have won in all the other cities. It wasn't actually a burger, it was a patty melt but it was absolutely delicious! And presented quite eloquently.  Later that day Harry had his baptismal interview! He traveled 2 hours to Heidelberg just for it. He is so committed.  Saturday we did a bunch of contacting in public an...

  Another week accomplished  Friday was a crazy day. It was the day for our District council, and we were going to drive over an hour there. Unfortunately, as we were heading our I realized I didn't have the car keys! (I think my weakness is keys). We couldn't find them in the apartment so we decided they could only be in the car. We said a prayer and went down to the car, which we had parked and not touched for 2 whole days. Well, we found the keys, while also finding another problem. They were still in the ignition. Before anybody face-palms, I just want to say that it was a miracle that the car and its keys and everything in it were still there! The Lord really does have our back when we need it. OK, now you can face-palm. The battery was completely dead after running over 2 nights, so we called the driving coordinator in the mission and they said to call a car service shop (your average joe doesn't usually have jumper cables around here),  Unfortunately), so we called...

  Hallo zusammen! First, I took more pictures this week! We will see if I keep it up. I'm setting a goal to take at least one every day. We start with Friday, where we were having a Zone competition, Elders vs Sisters to see who could get the most lessons. It was a little unfair, because there are 8 Sister companionships and only 5 Elder companionships in our Zone, but it was only 34-38 so in my books it's a win. We were able to get 6 lessons that day! We also met with a sweet old inactive lady who's husband is very against our church, and she is going to start reading her scriptures again which we are excited about. On Saturday we had our missionary coordination meeting and we went and saw the Maria Säule, which is a super old tall pillar with Mary the mother of Jesus on it that looks over the valley that Trier is in. We then went to a Konditorei (kinda like a pastry shop, lots of cool cakes and sweets). That was cool!  On Sunday we met with Harry to plan out hid baptism. ...

  Another week gone by! We had a lot going on so it went by super fast, and I don't have much time so here are the highlights! I got my drivers license! We've been cruising through the german countryside and it is so beautiful! We were able to get 7 people to sacrament meeting, which is super cool in such a small branch. I met our friend Harry who is on baptismal date! He's amazing, German, and wears a suit every day. We got to drive to Heidelberg for Zone Conference, Interviews, and an exchange with our ZL's! It's about a 2.5 hour drive so that was exciting. We also spent the night in Kaiserslautern, one of my past areas so it was a cool throwback! On the exchange with the ZL's we tossed in some of our online lessons, and one was with our friend Senke who we found on the street a couple weeks ago. This was our first real lesson with her, but she'd already been reading in the Book of Mormon on her own and basically testified that it helps her feel closer to ...

  On a cold dark winter's night We got a lot done this week! There's so much work to be done here, and it's incredible.  I'll start with Friday. I had my District leader training meeting, and then we basically spent the rest of the day studying and going retro: knocking on doors. We actually had success knocking for the first time in my life! One of the first doors we knocked on was a middle aged lady who said she was busy, but actually gave us a time to come back. Later that day we were visiting some people who had been dropped months or even years ago, and we went to this one apartment, only knowing that the man we were searching for was named Peter. Most of the names on the building are just last names, but we found one that said Peter and went for it. He was a grumpy old man in a wheel chair who had no clue who we were. We were going to leave, but we decided to go and knock the rest of the doors in the apartment, and it turns out that was inspired because there was ...