Liebe Familie,
(before you read anything, spelling will be horrible because the computer thinks all my words are wrong because its in english and the computer is german, so i cant actually tell which word is spelled wrong because my whole screen is red. LOL, oh and the spelling is also bad because the keyboard is out of wak and my hands are freezing!!!! so sorry for the misplcaed letters and such in words.)
Ok so my first week!!! its insane!!! luckily i have tons of time on the computer, well as much as im willing to pay for. there are two computers at the church but the zone leaders get priority over those and so its about 3 euro or so for 2 hours at the internet place im at. Oldenburg is so cool!!! im going crazy here though lol. so much to take in and so little time to adjust. my trainer though elder popp is so cool. oh its not the elder popp from georgia. thats his brother. this elder popp is from las vegas :) he goes home in march or so. maybe february...idk. he raced motocross and was about to go pro but he went on his mission. he was way good. maybe uncle dennis might know him possibly since he is into that. his number was 565 i think and we raced in las vegas. john popp is his name. he is way cool. He has taught me so much and i like how he is doing it was well. he is not just throwing me into the work and seeing how i do. but he is not taking baby steps with me and holding my hand the entire time. we are moving wuickly but not to quickly. i like it. He is super cool and like sto have fun. we live with the zone leaders so that makes things interesting. you would think with leaders living with you things would be a bore and we have to follow all the rules to the T. nope. well ya we do and we should but they are the most fun and craziest zone leaders ever. yes they are my first zone leaders but still. lol. they are awesome. Living with 4 people is also crazy especially with how small our apartment is. i will send pictures now if i can figure out the picture thing or possibly next week. im not sure. oh so really bad news i broke my camera. smashed it in the door while i was trying to close it. i learned i am a large man in a small car world. i dont fit well into the cars here and so when i got in and not all the way i closed the door on my suit and my camera was in my pocket and now its kaput. luckily my pictures are still good and i got a lot of pictures before it broke but until i buy another no pictures. but its ok, lots of pictures in the next two years.
so thats one thing i was wondering about. my camera since it broke. i know i have about 500 or so in my account i think of my own money and thats why i have it, so i can buy things for my personal self. i will use that money to by it and i will use the credit card dad so you can keep track of expenses. just use my money from my account to pay for it. i think it will be about 60 to 150 euro depending on how nice of a camera i want, but knowing my luck as well as julies luck with cameras it will be near the 60 euro range. so thats less that 100 bucks.
For the refund of the baggae for my flight they gave mke an extra 75 euro on my card here in the field. so i have about 100 bucks of my own money on my cardhere. so if its less that 75 i will just use that and it will all be good. So aparently there are suits in this one store that all missionaries get that look way sweet and are like only 50 euro. lol. idk but both zone leaders wore theres and the one ahs had his for a year and its still good. so i might go get me a european suit. let me know about that and what you think. i wont buy that for a while so you cna respond and yell at me to not buy it if i shoudlnt, lol.
um, so much to talk about. Oh there are so many traditions here between the missionaries. first i have my dad, (elder popp), then there is my god father. i cant remember his name but he is my fathers best friend on the mission. then elder pop has a god son who is his best friends son when he was a trainer. and then, specifically between me and elder popp there is a tie that is past down from elder to elder only between fathers and sons that is now mine. its a sweet blue paislet tie. it has my name on the back along with all the others. there are about 7 name son the back. so 7 generations. so cool. there is also a board game called "ghost stories" that we played last night that gets past down and which is now mine. lol. im sure there are others but we shall see. i have my own gold tie that my companions signed as well as all the germna missionaries in the mtc and my teachers. so i have about 45 signatures on it right now. it looks so cool. i will get about 10 or so more depending on how many more companions i have.
Ok um, so recap of the last few days. i will start from getting off the phone in seattle. so the plane was quite large. i sat next to this guy going to africa on his own church/charity mission. he was way cool it was his 5th time going to africa for it and its like ten weeks long. he is a cool guy. the flight was crazy and i didnt sleep at all really. so i was wiped out when we landed in amsterdam. in amsterdam we had to walk through the passport people becasue well ya different country. the line was HORRIBLE!!! and they werent mobing except for one line so we get in that one and other missionaries stay in the other line that isnt moving. we finally get through and get our PP stamped and we are sitting there at our gate and about to board and the other missionaries are nowhere to be found.!!! so crazy. so we freak out and two go and try to find them. as wel are walking onto the plane to berlin they show up. close call. the flight to berlin was packed!!!! insane and tons of germans, dutch, and others. the inflight safety thing took twice as long because it was in dutch and then english lol. so we land and we get off the plane and its raining. we get our luggage and meet up with the pres and his wife and the AP's and the senior couple. all of which are so excited we are there and so happy. they helped us out a bunch with all of our luggage and we were off after we packed up and got all of our american money switched over to euros. wow that day is a total blur now that im thinking of it. So we go to the church drop off our bags, grab our overnight bags and go to the mission home for lunch. really good lunch, it was some curry rice thing. then we sit around for about 4 hours waiting for all the paperwork to be figured out and inteviews done. I learned a lot from the senior couple ther.e there are actually two senior couples in the mission home that take care of everything, they are all so sweet and awesome. Finally we get done and we go to the hotel. we drop off our stuff and then go downstairs to have dinner. totally awesome!!! i ahd these huge meatballs with this gravy that was to die for then these sliced potatoes that were also amazing. the bread was really good as well and i put some meat and cheese on that. i also had some of this chocolate pudding and that was so good. then we were off to the mission home again to meet up with some other missionaries to do our first street contacting that night. so we go out and we all grab a random older missionary and go off in different directions in downtown berlin. totally crazy. i was with an elder that was in the group right before me so he was only six weeks old but he knew his stuff and it was awesome. so that was fun. i talked to like 4 people. i figured out i can speak german but not understand it. i can say stuff but because of the speed at which they speak and the accents they have i cant understand. its fuinny. so i start out and then my comp takes over because i didnt understand what they said back to me lol.
finally we went back and fell asleep. the beds are so comfy but i wont get into detail on that lol. just super comfy bed. So next morning we eat, so awesome breakfast, and we went to the church to get trained ad meet our trainers and see where we were going. that was so cool. i had no clue who mine would be or where i would be going when i met them all and such. but i got called up and was so excited. it was so cool. we had to leave literally right after the conference because we had to catch a train. we talked to some crazy greek guy on the train but we was cool. we traveled with two other elders. elder lloyd and hunt. elder hunt is in my mtc group. it was fun to travel with them. so crazy thing is that the train we were on out of berlin was delayed two hours!!!! insane. and our train ride was already 6 hours long and it was delayed so it took forever for us to get home and it was just an insane day. we got to olderburg and finally we met the zoneleaders and they drove us home. we basically got in the door and crashed. Next day was district meeting at the church. that took a while. we walked around the city a little and did a little bit of finding. no luck there and it was raining. it bsically rains everyday and is startig to get really cold here. so then we went back had lunch, studied for a while and unpacked, then it was time for bowling!!!! i know right...bowling? lol. well the ZL's had planned it for the members and gators to meet each other and so we went bowling. it was like 8 euro for two hours of bowling and shoes. so like 10 or 11 bucks. it was so cool. i destroyed everyone!!! including the other elders. elder popp beat me the firs time but second round i won. my highest in the two games was 142. the closest german behind me was like 80. well actually no, one guy in the ward got up to 131 his second game. first game he sucked. there were about 30 people there including us the members and investigators. they were all amazed at my bowling skill, truth is i totally suck lol. the thrid game we didn tget to finish but the third frame one of the oinvestigators "martin' was beating me by three points and so he was totally excited lol.
After that it was go home and plan/study and fall asleep. next day was travelign to hamburg and seeing the prophet. it was so cool!! seeing all the germans getting so excited was way cool to. it was a large building we were in and we sat really close. the prophet is so funny. when we first walked on stage we clapped and then he looked pissed as he walked up to the mic, we all thought 'oh dang is he already going to start talking?' but then he smilled and clapped into the mic. LOL. he sat down and we started. then other people spoke adn then when it was his turn he acted like he was way cool and was checking his hair and fixing himself lol. he stood up and someone tried to help him but he shrugged it off and kind of pushed him away, jokingly though. it was so funny. the mesage he told us was to 1. listen, 2.learn. 3. labor. 4. love. it was a really good message and he talked about how the members need to help in missionary work and its all our jobs to be missionaries. it was way cool, but we were all expecting him to come out with some crazy words of advice or some crazy announcement. but no go. so we travel home and that was saturday. yesterday church was way cool. i got up and introduced myself and bore ym simple ger,man testimony in broken german lol. the mombers were so cool and way nice. there are about 55 or so, or thats about what i counted when i was there. all of them are mostly old and way cool. barely any youth, but its germany and a smaller city so what do you expect right? then we ate at a memebrs house. we get fed every sunday. they are a couple from italy and we were fed a three course italian meal which was amazing. rest of sunday was ok. we walked around a bunch to get to know the city adn such. nothing exciting. today we are here. already went grocery shopping. its crazy to see the different prices for things here than in america. its really cool.
man there is so much to say!! dangit. lol. so its hard to open a new area and my trainer is a little overwhelmed with it all but he is a total pro and is taking it one step at a time. we are slowly moving forward and its also hard because our first few days and i have told you about have been jam packed with stuff already planned for us. we need to walk around and get to know the city and such. it will take a while to set up gators and contacts but we are working on it. this week is when the real work statrs because we dont ahve anything already planned for us.
There is tons more but way to much to type even if i ahd all day. my journal has a bit more detail but not much. my head is crazy and i cant remember anything. and my father is dristracting me on the other computer so i lose my spot as i type lol. ok so i wrote down some things to ask.
dad- any new rumors of new iphone coming out soon or anything new on the apple front? some elders wanted to know if they should buy stuff now or later. oh and would you be willing to give one of my DL's who is going home in a month a discount? he wanted me to ask.
anyone-how big is the harbor in hamburg. when we drove through all i saw was massive cranes...craines...idk. massive cranes all over the place. how big is it. is it larger than the the one just south of LA?
dad-we live on bürgerstaße. dont remember where but its just north of the inner downtown of the city. we live in an apartment. the ward building is about a 5 minute drive to the west. not sure what street its on but you might be able to find it. its really small. its across the street from the police station. so that might be easier to find it. its a HUGE police station.
dad- I have a personal dvd player if you wish to send videos on a dvd. well each companionship has a dvd player. so ya feel free. or send it to me on a flash drive and i can watch on a computer.
dad- a calendar would be sweet. i got a two year missionary calendar as a gift from another missionary, but the balloon one is way cool so ya send it pls.
anyone- send me letters if you want. i get to email every week for about two hours so ya send emails, but i still love letters and i would like to fill my binder with them.
julie- I love you sister!!! dont cry please. it makes me sad when i hear you cry. dont worry i will probably skype call christmas and two years will be up before you know it. im so rpoud of your grades and all that your doing with ffa, your pictures and all of school. your awesome. i am also really proud of the decision to go on a mission. it is so sweet and you will love it. well last i heard you had decided that but idk now lol.
Ok i love you all. i love to get letters. tell me more about all that is going on. sorry this email is crazy, i had a lot to write and well ya its hard to get it all down.
Elder Ustach
