Lots of Service...using his Height as a conversation piece

Well this week has been another crazy week here in Ahlen. I got to finally meet my new ward yesterday at church. The bishop asked me to bear my testimony right after him since we had fast Sunday yesterday. I got up in front of the congregation and started laughing because the pulpit wasn't big enough and I had to stoop a little to speak into the microphone. But I gave my testimony on the beauty of the sacrament and told the ward how excited I was to serve them. After about everyone and there sister asked me how tall I was, I just started to laugh again because it was a good chance to meet the members of the Gemeinde. So I don't mind it! ( This used to be his biggest pet peeve.  He always said that he felt like a freak show.  I guess he is realizing that he can use that to his advantage) I also met a lady from Kansas City in the Gemeinde and she was super excited to have someone else from the Midwest in Hamm.

The ward here is super awesome, they come and teach with us and we go on splitz with the elders quorum every other week. It has been awesome, they are really proactive about the missionary work here in Hamm.

I went on a split this week with a fellow southerner Elder Windhorst. He is such a cowboy, he only wears his cowboy boots and buckles and he has a mini lasso that he carries with him. He also brought his roping dummy with him to practice. If you aren't careful he will randomly rope you hahah. We had a great split together and he is a pretty awesome missionary. I'm excited to working with him in the ward.

We found a new investigator this week she randomly was just pounding on the church door. For some reason no one else in the meeting heard (we were have a ward mission meeting). We opened the door and she told us she wants to come to church and that she tried last week but no one was here because of stake conference. It was pretty funny, and awesome. We met with her the next day and talked about how she was an old investigator and that she was ready to met again with the missionaries because of dreams she has been having. Crazy stuff, she ended up not making it to church this Sunday, but hopefully we can meet again this week.

We do a ton of service here in Aheln. We work at a soup kitchen on Tuesdays and they give us tons of free food, so our cupboards are always full of random food! Then we bring groceries to a investigator who is a widow and work in her garden. She needs it relandscaped (what a coincidence, I know how to do that for sure!) It has been fun serving so many people and do so much service.

Well this week the coolest thing that happened was pretty small, but we were teaching the lady that is a widow and we teach her on her porch since we can't go inside. She always makes us dinner and we teach the lessons. We challenged her twice to read from the scriptures and she won't. I kept thinking about what to say and wasn't listening, when all of the sudden I thought. "Stop worrying about it and just listen, the Lord will give you what we need". I started listening and then the thought popped into my head "call her and for 10 minutes a day read the scriptures together". I told her that and she stopped making excuses and was excited for it. Then 2 minutes later and she made an excuse why it wouldn't work, but then said "You know, how about you come by tomorrow and we will just read together". We went back by yesterday and read and ate together and challenged her to read with us and she said "You know I can do it on my own, I'm going to read the scriptures and we will talk about it on Wednesday.

So cool how the Lord really does give us what we need when we need it. All we have to do is put our faith in him. Sometimes I want to contact someone and don't know what to say, I start to worry and then I say "It doesn't matter! the Lord will give me what I need!" then I just start talking to them and the words flow out! That is all the Lords asks is that we just trust and him and give everything to him and he will make sure it works out for the best!

Love yall a ton. I want to challenge anyone that reads this email, this evening to give a simple prayer of gratitude. Pray like tomorrow all the things that you are gratiful for and then thank the lord for wont be there. It crazy how being grateful changes everything!!

Love ya

Elder Ryan White