So this week was...gorgeous. Not in the numbers. Not in the success. But in the air. The flowers, the temperature, the impact that it FELT like we had on some peoples lives...yeah. It was a pretty good week.
Best experience? first, I have to say that nothing came of it. No new investigator, no lesson taught, no key indicator or reportable statistic to give to our mission leaders. But it was good.
We'd been walking around talking to people all over the city for like 5 hours. North south east and west, we'd gone by on like 20 different contacts we had, we'd tried everything, no one really wanted to talk to us. We are walking toward the tram stop, actually, to take a quick ride to the church for our appointment with an investigator, but we have an extra15 minutes--if you can say extra, seeing as we'd just used up 5 hours. So we stopped one more guy--because we are, indeed, trying to talk to everyone we can. We ask him a question we ask a lot of people: ''Glauben Sie, daß Familien für ewigkeit zusammen bleiben können?'' ''Do you believe that families can be together forever?''
He stops dead in his tracks. I am actually a little surprised, a lot of people just shake their head and walk away when they hear this question. But he looks at us, obviously a little surprised, and says simply, 'Yes.'' I ask the natural follow up question: ''Wie sind Sie zu diesem Glauben gekommen?'' ''How did you come to believe that?''
This is where the amazing part happens. He starts crying. Crying. On the street. We are like: ''Wow.'' He starts telling us his story, that his mother died of cancer a little less then 2 weeks ago, that he was on his way home from her funeral in Leipzig, and that he has been estranged from his father and siblings for years, no real connection to them. But he said, that through the trial and hardship of his mothers ordeal and death, he had learned something. He had felt something from God. He knew that God was there. He knew that he would see his mother again.
Though in the end, we did not actually set up an appointment to meet this man again, we did have a fabulous conversation about the Plan of Salvation, about God, about faith and trials, and best of all, about Families. The spirit was just awesome. I wish I could talk to this man again...but in a way, I am perfectly at peace with what happened. I know that we, after wandering around for 5 hours in a city of more then 500,000 people, stopped just the right man in just the right place at just the right time, to testify to him that God loved him, and to confirm his faith to him, to tell him that those feelings that he had already had, were true.
And that pretty much sums up what it means to be a missionary. We still had a couple blisters on our feet, my back still hurt, and we were still super tired, but...it was worth it. And no record, no number or call in report will ever tell this man's story. And That is perfectly ok.
