Elder Austin Fullmer – God is Faithful

Hallo Family & Friends!
So we had transfer call this past Saturday. Turns out that Elder Redd and I will be spending another transfer here in Annaberg together. I am pretty excited about it. Elder Redd is a good companion and the ward really likes us here. & I really like them. We have a lot of really strong families in our congregation. Usually we sort of just invited ourselves over for Family Night on Mondays to different families in the congregation, but this Sunday two families came up to use and asked if we could come over to give a lesson for Family Night. Super Excited.
The other crazy thing about transfer calls is that our whole district stayed. So the Elders in Schwarzenberg are staying too. That means Elder Stovall will have been with his current companion for three transfers. That is pretty crazy long for our mission. Although I have heard that in other missions people can stay in the same city for upwards of 9 transfers and with the same companion for 5. The maxes for our mission seem to be around 5 per city and 3 per companion, but usually you stay 3 transfers in a city and only 1 or 2 transfers with a companion.
This week we also had a exchange. I stayed here in Annaberg and Elder Goliasch came here from Schwarzenberg. He is a pretty cool kid and our district leader. He is from Germany near the Swiss boarder. He told me that he was tired of speaking English, I told him I was too, so we spoke German the entire day. It is sort of surprising how many Elders don’t like to speak German with each other.
My cool Aunt Sarah, sent me an email this week & I would like to quote something from it reall quick. It really struck me. She said: “I’ve learned that basically everyone that is trying to follow Christ is having the greatest trial in their life to date … right now! It makes sense because the trial before the current trial prepared you for the current trial – with success it made you a stronger person; so if we but persevere, we will be made stronger for the next and next and next. So in the end … yup – super hero like strength!”
I thought that was so interesting. I totally see that in my own life. The challenges of High School were harder than those before. The challenges of the Academy were harder than those of High School. & now the the challenges of a Mission are much harder than the Academy. It is sort of a blessing that Heavenly Father gives us. He knows when we can do harder things.
It reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures in 1 Corin 10: 13: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
Your challenges right now are preparing you for the ones to come. Das weiß ich. Go team go.
peace,
tschüß,
love,
Elder Austin Fullmer

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2012
02/06
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Elder Austin Fullmer – Should I be my brother’s keeper?

Family & Friends,
I hope this week was a good one for you. It was pretty good here in Annaberg. We were sort of all over are area again. I really like being able to get out of Annaberg itself. It feel like every single one of the 22,000 citizens in Annaberg have already been spoken to by other missionaries. We were able to finally find some new people to teach. We met with Frau Küchler and her friend Jürgen. They both live in Cranzal which is a smaller town three stops down the train line from us. It was a cool lesson. We are trying to set up another appointment, so I hope that works out.
We are trying to meet with a lot of the older members in the ward too. We meet every week with two older members that both live in different types of assisted living. The woman can’t read anymore and can’t come to church so we read from the Book of Mormon out loud with her. The man comes to church, but really likes the missionaries. We go over to his apartment and play chess with him. This man has a brilliant mind even though he sort of had a mental break down a couple of years ago. I would have loved to see him at his prime. He speaks German, Russian, and English and translated for both Elder Oaks and Elder Nelson when they visted the DDR (Deutcher Demokratik Rebulik). He taught me how to say ‘I am a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ’ in Russian. I figured there were so many Russian speakers when I was in Bergedorf, that I should try to get that basic sentence down.
We had Zone Conference this week. It was pretty fantastic. I got to see Elder Stovall (which I guess is not that big of a deal because we see each other like twice a week), Sis Schaerr, and Elder Wride (Elder Wride was in my district in Bergedorf). We had a lot of good workshops, and President’s talk was way awesome!
I gave my second talk in German yesterday. The topic was ‘Soll ich meines Burder Hüter sein’ or ‘should I be my brother’s keeper’. It was pretty sweet. Way Way better then the talk I had to give my first Sunday in Germany. The funny thing was I got up there got two minutes into my talk before realizing that I had forgot my Bible, since all but one of my scripture references came from the Bible, I just laughed, told the congregations what was up and went back down to my seat and got my bible. All in all a success.
Good luck this week.
Peace,
tschüß,
Love,
Elder Austin Fullmer
2012
01/30
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Elder Austin Fullmer – Iron Mountains

Familie und Freunde,
This week was an interesting one in the Iron Mountains of Germany. We were sort of all over the place in our area. On Monday we taught an American. It was really weird to teach some one that is not only speaking English, but has an American accent. He is from Virginia, but works here in Germany. Tuesday was up to the Temple in Freiberg, Germany. I love being able to serve in a city that is close enough to be able to go. Freiberg is a very beautiful city. It is bigger than Annaberg, but small enough that its city infrastructure did not really get to messed up by the DDR. One Wednesday we taught a woman who has been investigating the church on and off for about 20 years. That is sort of crazy. She is really fun to meet with and is about 85. Her stories about the war and DDR time are pretty cool too. We also teach a old man about the same age. The other day he told us how he not only fought in the 2nd world war, but served three years in a prison of war camp in France. CRAZY.
The weather in Annaberg and the other parts of our area have been really crazy. This past week we have had a storm just sitting on Annaberg, but funny thing is that the temperature kept dancing around 0 degree C. So one day it would be freezing temps and snowing, but the next day it would be warm enough to rain. I got pretty wet this week. Lets just leave it at that.
We had another appointment with a member of our ward that is from the Philippines. Her husband is not a member and is not super interested in learning about the gospel right now, but they still let us come by. Sis Hänel made us some awesome Filipino food and then we taught them a short lesson about the Restoration. We watched a movie in German with English subtitles. The subtitles because Sis. Hähel can’t speak German.
The past couple of weeks I have been trying to finish reading the New Testament. This morning I read 1st John. So, not the gospel of John, but rather the 1st epistle that he sent out. It is towards the end of the Bible. I really liked it a lot. He has some cool thoughts about the Lord, and love.
God is love.
I hope that you have success this week.
peace,
tschüß,
love,
Elder Austin Fullmer
2012
01/23
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Elder Tyler Fullmer – Families are forever

Hey how are you guys doing?

I am doing ok this week has been a good week. Not the best but better than others. My new comp for 6 weeks is going to be Elder Rappleye. He’s way sick and I am getting to train him to be the next financial secretary. I really think he is going to be really good. He is learning a lot faster…..though I think I am training him a lot faster than Elder Egito did with me. By the way it’s been 6 months that I have been here and I know have 10 months in the mission. Isn’t that crazy? I wonder where I am going to go next. I really want to go out and baptize the world. One last year to bring it out strong. I have a feeling president might have me train a new missionary when I get out and i guess that would be cool.

We taught this old man the other day…well no I went on a division with a kid in the ward and the other two went to the diamond ladies house. I taught the guy about how families can be forever. The problem is that he has studied a lot in his life and knows a lot of church doctrine. He keeps talking to me about all of the things he knows and what I just did was straight up asked him If he thought that the church was right or not and he said that he thinks families can be forever and that all churches are different but he wouldn’t judge any one way or the other. So I asked him to read just Moroni 10:4-5 and pray about the church. So well see if he does that. I know he is going to get baptized one of these days I just hope I can be here to see it happen. The member that I was teaching walk out with me looking like I was crazy and said “how did you know?” i said “how did I know what” he then began to tell me that the two questions I asked him were the ones that he himself was going to ask but he felt to shy or out of place to do it. Just little miracles happen all the day peeps. All we can do is try to look for them in our lives.

That’s sick you guys are getting snow there. There is no sign of that here it’s so flipping hot that I am dyeing. I am going to get out of the office when the heat is going away though. It won’t be gone but it will be much less of a problem. I really hope I don’t get sent to Lages or Chapeco because right now is when it starts to get down to freezing temperatures and that is never any fun for missionaries. I do have that crazy huge coat though. Right now is when I really do need to get a package off to you guys. My comp just showed me pictures from his house and I guess they are having the worst Ice storm on record up there. Pretty crazy stuff, I don’t know what’s going on, I mean it’s hot here but were sitting pretty. Good thing you know that our house is not going to flood.

I really don’t have a whole lot to write today. I love you guys though. I want you to know I am praying for you guys and i am always happy when I get your letters and all of you emails.

 

Abração,

Elder Fullmer

 

2012
01/21
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Elder Tyler Fullmer – The Future

Hello,

First the card, well I am not sure I don’t think I will ever need it. I would only need it if I need glasses or dental work and I don’t know if the plan would either work in Brazil. So send it if you want to but I am not sure If I can use it here.

17 miracles, bad? Are you kidding me I loved that movie. Maybe that is just because I am serving a mission and they are the only movies that we can watch. As well they are not just about the boys who held them cross. Actually i believe that technically it doesn’t show those three. It shows another crossing but I don’t think that it is that one. Anyways enough of the technicalities of 17 miracles, although it was very well done.

That’s way cool that he found a Thai Bible in his house. I have been emailing him more regularly now. I can’t wait to get back and to be able to talk with him. It’s been really good here but it rains so much here. I really have decided that I do not want to live in a place that does not quite rain as much but I know that is not very possible. Brynn please don’t go to France hehe. The US is honestly the best country. I love Brazil and the people here but I could never live here. It’s just not the place that I want to stay. How’s our friendly neighborhood Mormon presidential candidate? Every member here keeps asking us if Mitt Romney has a chance, if he’s a good member, if he was a good governor, and things like that. It’s honestly one of the funniest things. Even the lady that works in the office was trying to get information out of us.

That sounds way sick that you’re working on sustainability. it’s a good goal and it needs people to work on it. That’s cool that you found a way in through your current job to start working with it. I am really not sure what I am going to do after the mission. I have gotten kind of muddled here in the office. Too much time to think but maybe it was a good thing. Get all of my worrying out of the way. This is something I have been thinking about a lot. It started out by thinking about where I will apply after the mission. I started out thinking about the air force academy, now don’t worry I don’t think I’ll be applying there anytime soon. I emailed uncle Shane and Austin just to see what they thought. Austin as always was very optimistic, as he always is, but uncle Shane was a little more down to earth. He said the applications for the Academies (Air Force, Army, Navy) would be and I quote “painful”. Yet something he said hit me.he said the Coast guard academy he thought would be much more doable. The weird thing is I had been looking into that as well. I just wanted to keep you guys in the loop. I won’t have to worry about any applications until way later but just want to have a plan while I am here and can plan.

We weren’t able to teach so much this week. We had a lot of things to do in the office and with English class going on it didn’t leave to much time to do anything else which I felt really bad about. We went house, to house to house, and not one of them let us in. You can’t climb the hills to get to people and everyone else is too rich to listen to want to listen to you. It makes me very aggravated but you can’t force it on anyone. Anyways I love you guys and I want you to know that I am always thinking about you guys.

Abração,

Elder Fullmer

P.S – Looks like I am turning into mom now I am getting myself Christmas and birthday presents.

Oh by the way you should be proud i have lost 3 kilos since I started to run. I have been getting up at 6:15 and running with my comp every day.

 

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2012
01/14
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Elder Austin Fullmer – Return of the Rubik

Hallo!
This week went by pretty fast. It started last P-day with a trip to Chemnitz. Chemnitz is the biggest city around us. I guess I really have no idea how big it actually is, but coming from Annaberg, which has 22,000, Chemnitz felt like New York City. Apparently back during the communist times of the German Democratic Republic Chemnitz was called Karl-Marx-Stadt. I thought that was pretty funny. There is supposed to be a giant statue of his head in the city somewhere, but we didn’t have time to visit it. I bought a Rubik’s Cube while we were there. My new Miterbeiter is really good at solving them and he has a really cool spiritual thought that we have shared a couple time that uses the Rubik’s Cube, so I am practicing, so I can get them solved in three or so minutes for the member lesson. Pretty Sweet. Elder Redd is a pretty cool guy.
On Tuesday we had an appointment in Jöhstadt planned. It is pretty far away and there are not a lot of bus connections there, so we were planning on spending most of the day there. Unfortunately the appointment fell out, luckily I guess, she called us before we left to get there. So we went back to the apartment to have a mid-day-crises planning session. It was a really pretty day and we were wondering how to find out where our bikes were. My last companion and not gotten the pass down as to where our storage unit was. Elder Redd’s MTC companion served here in Annaberg too, so we called him, got the number of the storage unit and 30 minutes later we were riding our bikes to a city south of us. Out plan was to look up two less active members. I didn’t bring our Harry Potter Book of a Map with us, because it weighs so much. I just assumed that like every little German city, there would be a town map board thing. There wasn’t, so we continued an to the next city to look up a prior investigator. Luckily, that city did have a town map so we found her and set up an appointment for tomorrow. The funny thing about the bikes was that the gears didn’t work for the first half of the day, or rather we couldn’t figure out how to get them to work. The bikes seemed to want to be in the 7th gear up the hills and then in the 1st gear down the hills. Cori, imagine that hill on the way back from Bluff Point in Groton, but in 7th gear. Tuesday was beautiful, but now we tons of snow everywhere. The past two month has had almost zero snow, but now we’ve got tons.
I am grateful for my opportunity to serve here in Germany. This morning I read in the Bible Dictionary that is the LDS edition of the King James Bible. It was crazy to read about all the history that lead to the translation of the KJB during the early 1600s. I am currently reading through the Pauline Epistles. They are way interesting. I really like Paul a lot (although he can say some pretty crazy stuff sometimes). He has a ton of great insights and must have been a huge blessing to the Saints after the death of Christ. Paul said “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Me too.
love,
tschüß,
peace,
Elder Austin Fullmer
2012
01/12
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Elder Tyler Fullmer – Mediums

How are you doing? I am doing well here; this week has been a lot better. We taught a lot more. We actually got a reference from some other missionaries for this woman who has diamonds implanted in her teeth. They look like the brackets from braces without the wire but they are actually “diamonds”. I didn’t have the heart to ask her if they were real or not or take a picture with her for that matter. She seems way cool but that seemed a bit odd for a first visit. We also went to visit another reference that was a lady who works for the cleaning company who cleans the chapels. Let’s just say she’s been to ever chapel known to man. She was with her sister and her husband. She and the diamond lady both said that they already know that the Book of Mormon is true but we’ll see what happens when we go back. I really hope they read it because I think that they could be really strong members of the church. I’m scared about Rosa´s, (diamond lady) family, they seem like their kind of sketchy so I am hoping that they are a lot like her. The same thing about the other ladies’ husband. He was….well let’s just say he was pretty strongly against the baptismal invite. Oh well, we are going to work with them.

 

Me and my comp have been working on a different way to teach the first lesson. For the last few times we’ve been using more examples of Joseph Smith. Using his search as a way to teach people about how he learned the things he did while still teaching the parts. Like talking about the scriptures as he would have most likely read and thought about them. It still needs some work but the one thing I believe we as a companionship were lacking as we taught was really showing people who Joseph Smith was and after the first lesson in my mind if people don’t go away thinking about him than you didn’t teach what was important. I however think this will reinforce his story and will give them the desire to read the Book of Mormon. Which is what they really need. Well last night we had a huge thunderstorm. It was right above us and you could feel the shakes every once and awhile. It was really nice. I love thunder storms here. The thing about them is that it means that it’s going to be really humid and that’s the only bad part about them.

 

Well not much more is going on here. We are just working, working, working! We have this other investigator that says she is a medium and meaning she can see and talk to spirits. Frankly the crazy thing is that after the mission I don’t quite doubt that. The sad thing was that she asked us told us something kind of sad in our last lesson. I quote “I feel like God has left me alone. I have decided to do something about it because I don’t want to feel so alone. What I am going to do is call forth a guardian spirit. This means that I’ll always have it with me and I’ll give him offerings so that good things will happen to me.” I must admit I’ve never seen Elder Batemans jaw drop so fast. She then asked “Do you think that would be alright?” Elder Bateman said he didn’t know and I tried to explain to her that the only spirit that is from our Heavenly Father that could stay with her is the Holy Ghost which we receive only after baptism. Oh well i hope you guys are doing good.

 

Abração,

Elder fullmer

 

2012
01/07
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2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,700 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 28 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

2012
01/01
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Elder Tyler Fullmer – Movies

This week has been really weird after Christmas. With all that’s led up to new years and we just get to sit at home. It’s a rule that we can’t go out for New Year’s. That does mean however that we get to stop working at 6. For us here in the office that means a full day pday again. We’re going to watch Rango and the Blind Side tonight…..probably in Portuguese which is less fun than one would think. Movies just aren’t as cool when you are seeing them dubbed over. Because you expecting to hear one voice and another comes out. It’s weird but It nice to know that when I can get back I can bore you guys by asking you guys to put on Portuguese subtitles. So start practicing hehe. Once again it’s raining and what can you do. Its weird how missionaries just get to the point where rain and other things just go unnoticed.

Yes mother’s day is around the corner and before you know it we’ll be talking again. At that point however I’ll have over a year and to make things even crazier did you know that we only have 2 more phone calls left. Mother’s day and the Next Christmas. It’s odd to see how far I’ve come in such a short time. President has given me the go ahead to start thinking of names to give him for the next financial secretary. When the time comes I’ll give him three names and hell pray about them and then the lord will let us know who I am supposed to train.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how little time we get to serve missions and how fast that small amount of time seems to be going. At times it seems too fast but it just means that we have to be harder workers so that none of that time gets lost. I’ve been trying to make what I call mini lessons. Messages that would last 2-5 minutes and then we could give them to people who say they don’t have too much time to listen to us so that maybe we can get into more houses and have the chance to get more people excited to hear the others. I want to have ones ready about prophets and important differences like that. Things that really set us apart and show people why the Restoration is so important. Sadly the hardest part is selling my comp on the idea. We got into a fight this last week when I brought the idea up. I must admit that I think the idea is golden and you know me with that in mind I got a little locked up. He then made the defense that we could teach a full lesson in 5 minutes. So I asked him to give me one. He then rushed through the first lesson in a little under 2 minutes and gave me what I thought was an answer just to say “told you so”. So then I made the wrong choice and said “well you missed this, that , you just said this, didn’t say that…’ Well as you can probably tell that didn’t go over too well.

I haven’t brought it up since. I’ve been trying to find a nicer way to do it next time because I will admit we were both being idiots that day. I’m not saying that I don’t like me comp but there have been many ties where we have just clashed. Anyways don’t worry about me your son is asking friends everywhere he goes. We did so many contacts this week it is unbelievable. We met some really crazy Seventh Day Adventists though. We started to go this area that is full of them it blows my mind. We met a crazy lady who has about 50 stray dogs and one lady who will not get baptized for the following reasons. 1. She wears make up (which is of course a sin), 2 She can’t bear to be saved without her son, 3 She wants to stay perfect after baptism and she knows she won’t do that. So her wish is that when Christ comes again he will tell her that although she wasn’t baptized “her sins are forgiven her” just like the woman Christ didn’t stone for fornication. We then asked her what happens if it can’t be like that and she simply said the then she fine with that. So there was not much to do with her seeing as she felt up said she does and will not believe in our church. Oh well I’ll let you guy go.

Abração,

Elder fullmer

2011
12/31
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Elder Austin Fullmer – Merry Christmas

Dear All,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We want to let you know that the Fullmer family email has changed to slmacmt@gmail.com.

26 December 2011

Merry Christmas!

I hope your Christmas was really good. I had an amazing time here in Annaberg. Actually, Christmas is still technically going here in Germany. There are three Christmas holidays in Germany; Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the today, the 26th of December. Christmas Eve is the biggest of the three holidays. For lunch, we went to a younger couple’s home. We ate this soup that is called “Lenz” (I think). Anyway,  it is this delicious soup that is very traditional in Erzgebirge (the mountain region where I am serving). Way good.  For Heiligeabend (Christmas Eve, or Holy Evening), we went to our Bishop’s house for dinner. Their family is really young and way cool; they have three kids. Everything is very traditional in this part of Germany. Sis. Sacher, the Bishop’s wife  put half of a loaf of bread, that we didn’t eat, and some salt, that we didn’t use, on the table. They were supposed to be for good luck. Then she lit a candle and placed some coins underneath, also for good luck, I think. German children get to open all of their presents on Christmas Eve too, so we got to watch all of the Sacher children open up their gifts. It was a really enjoyable evening.

We had transfer calls this week. I am staying in Annaberg. I am pretty excited about that. I like Annaberg a lot. My companion Elder Van Miltenburg got transfered to Delingsdorf which is a part of the city of Hamburg, so he is going up close to my last area. We also got to go to the Temple this week. That seems like forever ago, but I guess it was just about six days ago. It was awesome. The Temple is in my Zone, and so that is why we are allowed to go. It took us about an hour and a half by train to get there. We went as a district, so four Elders. The cool thing was that another district in our Zone ended up going on the same day as us. So I got to see my friend and MTC Companion, Elder Burnett.  We have been able to see each other three times this transfer which has been pretty sweet. We all talk for a while afterwards, took a lot of pictures, and then went and got lunch. While were buying lunch this man came into the tiny little Turkish restaurant dressed like Santa Claus, ordered food, and then gave us some sketchy candy. The crazy thing was that I actually ate the sketchy candy he gave me. I have not died yet, so I suppose that I’ll make it through.

I am really grateful for the Christmas season. It is a really awesome opportunity for us not only to reflect on the Savior’s birth, but also his atonement and death, for that is the reason that he was born in Bethlehem. I know Christ died and suffered for us.

I also got to talk to my family yesterday. It has got to be the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. Honestly, it sort of felt like I was back at the Academy, just calling my parents on a normal Sunday evening. Can’t wait for mother’s day when we get to call again.

We you guys are awesome. Thanks for your support, emails, and prayers. I am thinking and praying for you. Enjoy the rest of Christmas Break.

peace,

tschüß,

love,

Elder Austin Fullmer

2011
12/26
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