Some Great News and Some Sad News

so this last week was as normal (or crazy) as a week is on a mission. We got to meet with a few less actives I had never met before. We met a man whos family is against the church and cannot come on sundays because of it, but does meet with us after work. He is planning on meeting with us weekly from now on so hope that goes well. Elder Mallor and Persicke left on Wednesday and we became officially the only two missionaries here in Tübingen. We got all their food which is nice since we are officially both out of money. It has been difficult with the new mission and the getting a third less of our monthly allowance for food and travel especially since we already were usuing about 80% of our money for travel and now we have Reutlingens area to travel around in too to visit their investigators and less actives.... But oh well I guess hopefully they will realize the problem or maybe even give us a car.... I do have some great news and some sad news. Sister Boger in the Heilbronn area was able to get baptized last week. She got permission from her children and the baptism happened a few days later lol. I am really happy for her and for her children for opening their minds and allowing their mom to do what she wants and knows is right.
The sad news is that Frau Loske, a lady I met in my first area who was a Jehovah Witness and converted, died last week. Her heart had some problems and she died. It was really a shock since she was in her mid fifties and not that old. All the missionaries that met her were way sad. They all knew her and loved her, she was one of the nicest investigators and members in the Ellwangen area (the other members are also great people). But yeah. I felt kind of bad because I loved Sister Loske and was just thinking about how she had told a missionary that she wanted a picture of elder middleton and me becuase we were the ones who found her and commited her to baptism. I had even written in my planner to call the Ellwangen elders and get both her and Sonyas (a 25 year old woman me and middleton also found and commited to baptism) information so I could call them and email them. I feel really bad that I didnt keep in conntact with her but it just helped push me to get the contact info for all the other people I have met and loved working with and make sure I stay in contact with all of them.
We got a hold of a couple people in the Reutlingen area and set up appointments for this week so I really hope this time all of them are there and will talk with us lol. We had stake conference as well. I got extremely sick Friday and was out of it for both friday and saturday and was affraid that I would miss stake conference. That did not happen luckily and instead I got to go and see our investigators and less actives who showed up for it. It is good to see so many less actives and investigators go to such lengths to attend a conference about and hour and a half away from them. There was also all of our members we are working with, which is also just as good because we decided that the members, investigators, and less actives all hold equal value and we want to try our hardest to help everyone, which does include members. We realized that less actives used to be members at some point and we thought about how many of them could instead be bishops, or relief society presidenty, or home teachers, or primary teachers. If only the people around them, and the missionaries, had put the effort into them that we put into investigators. I thought about that a lot this week. About how much we focus on the NEEDS of our investigators, yet sometimes we push member appointments to the back of our minds as if they are some fun thing to go do and we just have to sneak a spiritual thought in to make it count. But instead about all the things we could do to help those who are strong get stronger (kind of like rich getting richer) and helping those who are not strong become strong.
I dont know why I have these random weeks where I decide to change some of my goals or plans for the area but this was one of them. Also with the missionary count going from 4 to 2 and about half the ward not knowing us as well as the other two we will probably be focusing on the members and less actives. Our investigators will still be there and are not being pushed away, but now we want to get the members to help us with the investigator and less actives. And even have the less actives help us with other less actives and investigators. We will just do as much service as we can for the members and people here in Tübingen and I have no doubt success will come easily.
I went on an exchange with Anderson from the MTC, it was actually pretty interesting cause a member in Elder Andersons ward asked us about how many baptisms we were involved in (like found, taught, baptized) and I realized there are six that i know of and seven if jacky peterson in the reservation did get baptized. Wish I knew but i got no idea who to get in contact with to find out. Mom, maybe you can ask one of the missionaries back there to ask around for me. Yeah the six would be loske, sonya, (maybe jackie) Tim, Ibrahim, and Boger (since I was the one that convinced aeschbacher that we should ask if she should come to church and to start calling her children regularly to tell them what we taught her about and ask if it was ok if we could baptize her).oh yeah i totally forgot. I know what i want for my birthday. A new camera. The old one broke. Sorry i dont know how i took it out to take a piture and the screen is all messed up and it looks totally broken.  Still no packages either.  After stake conference we had a missionary meeting that me and my companion did not even know happened lol. Apparently nobody noticed we werent there either so we heard nothing of it till late sunday night. President Condie sat all the missionaries down and kind of told them that he was letting us do things we had done before with president matern for a while but he was stopping it now and we were going to do things different. So we had a few new rules given to us such as; no member appointments longer than 20 minutes even if it is a meal, no contact with other missionaries in the zone except your district leaders, and no going out of your area for pday.... so I got no idea what is going to happen for the elders with no internet cafes in their areas cause it is also against the rules to use members computers. Guess they write snail mail. Oh well guess change is good. Or different. But yeah that is about all the updates from this week. Love you all and hope for the best for all of you.



Elder Hargett