Colter's Address in Coburg

Elder Colter Anderson

Kleine Rosengasse 1

96450 Coburg

Germany

Excerpt from Colter's email April 19, 2010

Sometimes it just sinks in that I am a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and i get this WHOOSH! feeling...It's weird. But most of the time it's really awesome. my Testimony is awesome. The most important thing is to have a testimony of Jesus Christ and his Atonement. Which i do. Period. I have felt the power of it in my life many times and there are a couple choice experiences where i can't really deny the power of it. The next is to have a testimony of the Restoration. Which means a testimony of Joesph Smith the Prophet and the Book of Mormon. What I don't really get, is that some investigators say that they believe the Book of Mormon is the word of God, but that Joesph Smith was just an awesome guy. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE! haha. Anyway. The Book is true and blue!

From March 29 email: Transfer!

Its gotten to the point, that if someone rejects us but in a polite way, i enjoy it. haha. Enjoying rejection. haha. Germany is definitely hard. But so awesome at the same time.

Well, i am being transfered. Im going to Coburg. Which is the furthest north area in the mission. That also means im in the DANGER ZONE!!! I could be annexed into Frankfurt! I actually would kinda like that. I`ve already been to bayern on the mission, and to Salzburg and Wien on vacation. But never middle Germany. Ill be working with Elder Jensen! He was in Erlangen with me! hes so awesome. Im really stoked. Hes the shorter one. Elder Andersen is taller and thinner. I cant even believe that 6 months ago i was in Erlangen watching conference...GAH! Die Zeit geht so schnell!!! I`ll probably watch it in English. A lot of the Germans who can speak english watch it in English because of the expression of the speakers, and not through a translator. Even if their English is just ok. Well, have a great week! I love you guys a lot!

excerpt from Colter's email March 15. 2010

My German is coming along. Elder B. and i probably speak more English than we should...but Its still coming along. I can hold a conversation pretty well and don't have to rely on My comp ever. Sometimes for words, but that's really all. Also, I just finished the Book of Mormon in German all the way through! I didn't understand everything of course, But i got what was going on so that was fun. This week was pretty good. A. and A. came to church again, which is a huge measure of faith. Cause A. is the one with the car, and so they drove 45 min in order to come to church. That's pretty expensive too. its about 1,30 Euro per Liter. I have no idea how much that is in dollars. to fill our tank (we have a car again) it takes 55 €. So that's awesome that they come. Also, this last week i went on an exchange with the zone leaders in München and so i got to go to München with an amazing missionary and a amazing guy. He is from Utah, and went to BYU for a year originally to play football. But he didn't like the coach, so he quit before the season. But he was still at BYU and hated it there too. He was also pretty much inactive as he was there. Which is a HUGE surprise, cause he is just amazing. I learned a lot in my 20ish hours with him. Besides that... the week was pretty normal. A couple fallen out appointments, a lot of rejection, but that's normal haha. I don't mean to sound pecimistic, but it is the sad truth. We had an appointment this week, and it went pretty well (even though our Joint Teach didn't stick to the plan and went a little too deep than was necessary), but then at the end the woman said that she was going to read the book of Mormon and that we could come back...but we should come back in a year...so that was annoying. But oh well. A joke here is that the biggest enemy of missionary work is free agency...but its all right. We still found a new investigator this week...Have a great week!

Quote from Feb 22 email:

Yesterday was really cool. There was a combined stake conference with ALL of the German speaking stakes in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where a viedo transmission from Berlin was sent. In the conference, President Uchtdorf and his wife spoke. It was really cool and fun hear him and hearing him in GERMAN. Haha. also, because of the setting, he really brought out the German in him. I can't really explain what that is...but it's definitely different than General Conference Pres. Uchtdorf. And definitely in a good way. There were a few other talks from the area Presidency and all of the talks were geared to Member Missionary work. Much to the joy of all the missionaries in Germany. Well, I'm going to wrap it up! Ich wünsche euch eine gute Woche!

The Elders go to Neuschwanstein!

After a wonderful weekend with a baptism and confirmation (which Colter did in German!) his district went to Neuschwanstein Castle in their new lederhosen on Feb 15th!

Quote:

"Neuschwanstein was awesome. It was all snowy and we were in Lederhosen, and it was sehr schön. haha. We even bought alcohol free weiss Bier. I felt so Bayarisch! Then on Tuesday, we were at Bru. Rotter's house and we wore our Lederhosen again, and had Bretzeln(Pretzels, the big kind), Senf (Mustard), Weiss Bier, and Weiss Wurst (literally:white sausage). It was so cool. The work is going pretty well.... we are teaching A's friend, so that's really cool."