Missions Tour

 Elder Smith and Elder Spangenberg enjoying ice cream!

Wow, summer is already over and it's back to school in Utah!  Oh dang, that stinks about no German teacher in Jr. High, Logan.  Yeah, I am excited for summer to end, I am sweating like a dog over here.  I am getting sick a lot lately.  I am eating healthy now so it's not that.  Like yesterday we had vegetable spaghetti, no meat or anything, it was like salsa on spaghetti noodles and it actually tasted really good.  Before I came to this apartment, I wasn't sick on my mission, so I don't know.

This week was a pretty good week.  We had Missions Tour this week and that was great.  We had 8 Elders in our apartment so no one got any sleep that night, haha!  The choir went actually better than we thought it would.  I haven't sung for forever, but somehow we all pulled it together after only 1 practice session.

Elder Paul V. Johnson of the first presidency of the 70 came to speak to us at Missions Tour.  He spoke to us about the spirit.  He spoke of how we need it as missionaries, but also the investigators need to feel it as well.  He helped us to understand how we can better help our investigators to feel the spirit.  I really like what Sister Fingerle said too.   She talked about Captain America, and what he went through to become strong and compared that to us and spoke of things we need to do to become what Elder Oakes says," Epistles of the Lord".

We found 2 new investigators this week!  They are a family from Albania.  Thankfully the wife speaks German.  We are really excited to meet with them, they are so nice.  We had some great conversations with people on the street too #seedsplanted.

The Memetovich family's phone broke.  So we literally have no way to contact them unless we take a train or bike to their house.  I have biked more in this area, than I have in my life, haha!

We had a great weekly planning session this week and now that we have some investigators to work with we are going to start seeing some success!

Elder Spangenberg

Just a week, not a great one!

Well this week wasn't the best!  I was again sick for 2 days but now I am  all better.  A plumber is finally fixing our shower.  We haven't been able to shower for 5 days!  One of the days we went to a member's house and one day to the Lubeck Elders house.  For the past 2 days, we have showered in the sink, it was most unusual!

The Memetovich family were not able to come to church this week because the mom got sick.  We are planning to meet with them 2 times a week from now on so that we have good contact with them.  This week for our member appointment we went to a really nice family.  They have a son that just got back from Utah.  He stayed for a year with a missionaries family that was here. He is so spiritual it is awesome, and he even gave us a referral(one of his friends).  He is a great member missionary.  All of the young men in this ward are; it is so cool, they all tell their friends about the church and some of them come to play soccer every week.

I played the piano for sacrament and priesthood.  Well, it was a little bit rusty and I play again next week also, so I asked the mission president if I could practice at the church for 2 hours this week.  He thought that was a great idea!

They are having 2 choirs in our mission, one for the west side and one for the east side.  They only want people that have high school choir experience so it's pretty exclusive! haha  There are only 33 missionaries on the east side, which actually isn't that many.  There are only 15 elders and me and my companion are both doing it because we were in high school choir.

We went by this older lady this week and she needs a lot of help, her house was so filled with everything.  So this week we will probably help her with that.

This week we have a big meeting with the west side of the mission.  Elder Paul V. Johnson is coming so that will be exciting and I am so excited to learn.
 Tell  Elder Harris that the man he baptized is now in the Lubeck Bishopric, I thought he would want to know that.
This week will be a great week, I can already feel it.  We are going to work really hard, most of our week is out finding investigators.

Love you all!!
Elder Spangenberg

1st week of a new transfer!

 He re is one of the best member missionaries I know!   
  His name is Hadi and he's from Iran. 

Hello!

Things are going better this week and we spent a lot of the week traveling to meetings so that was fun.  I was sick for part of it, but we still got some work done.

The Memetoviches are doing good.  His wife tried to have family prayer this week so that's great.  He was the only one to come to church this week for our investigators.  We also met with a less active and she ended up coming to church as well!  This week was filled with member appointments.  I don't think I have ever been more full than after all those member appointments!

Church was special, because someone got back from their mission .  He went to the England Manchester Mission.  He's really nice and talked in his homecoming talk about following the keys, specifically the priesthood keys.  That means we should always follow our leaders (mission presidents, bishops, and especially the prophets).  He said his mission president would always talk about it and it was part of their slogan.

Our mission slogan has been changed to: Faithfully we baptize, focused on the blessings of the temple.  Speaking of the temple, a lot of changes have happened in our mission surrounding it!  Now there are temple visitor center missionaries in our mission!  It's kind of odd because the temple is closed but it's going to be awesome once it is open again in May.  Also we can go to the temple once a month no matter where you are in the mission!  The catch is that you have to pay for it with personal money or have a member take you but that's still a great opportunity to go visit it!  You asked how to pronounce it.. It's "Fryberg".

I am getting a lot better at soccer, especially goalie.  It's really fun  to play with the members every week.  You get to know the young men really well.

I was reading about pride today and especially about pride and satan.  Pride was satan's biggest weakness!  I am really trying to serve other people.  You are right Mom, Joye Boman is so great at that!  Well that was my week.  We finally have planners on the Ipads so we can plan out the week  really well.

Elder Spangenberg

No Changes!

District Photo: Sister Sorensen, Sister Brim, Elder Casperson,
 Elder Jensen, Elder Smith, and  me

Sorry we couldn't email yesterday, so we are doing it today.  Well this week, we received  transfer calls and my companion and I are staying together for another transfer.  That makes 3 together, we both couldn't believe it.  Also our whole district is staying the same!  Sister Brim will have been in Lubeck for 5 transfers!  Apparently our mission president was in an area in his mission for 8 transfers, which is a year!  So he likes to keep missionaries in an area for a long time.

We went on an exchange this week and I was in Lubeck.  Elder Casperson and I had a great exchange.  We found a new investigator over the phone!  We talked to him for about 50 minutes, it was great.  We also met with this one guy who talked to us for about an hour straight without us saying anything!  Oh some of the things that happen while you're a missionary, haha!

Our investigators, the Memetovich family are doing pretty good.  This week they are going to the immigrant building and hopefully they will be able to stay for another month or so.  We have been focusing on teaching his wife.  So that means that he has to translate from German to Serbian.  We found out this week that a lot is getting lost in the translation so it's going to take a little longer.  A cool experience is that she asked our ward mission leader to give her a blessing.  After he gave her it she said she saw the dove that Jesus saw after he got baptized.  That was so powerful it was just awesome!
We had a couple of other investigators tell us they don't want to keep taking the discussions, which is sad.  But it just means we have to get back on the grind and work harder.  My German is coming along really well now.  Me and my companion are finally speaking German from 9 to 9!

I hope everyone had a good week! I invite you to read 2nd Nephi 9, it is a great chapter about the fall.  During personal study this week, I found it really powerful!

Love,
Elder Spangenberg