Letter #33

hey family,

so this week was god and bad. monday aftewr i broke my face LOL. we had zone sport. we played hockey and dodgeball. not just any dodge ball but "warball" yes its as serious as it sounds LOL. people fight and try and kill each other for the ball because there is only one of them. such a fun game. i nearly threw out my arm. should not have been throwing that fast especially not being warmed up and stretched and practiced. funny thought because after the second or third time i got the ball the zone leader came up to me and told me to tone it down a bit. everyone was freaked out by how fast i threw the ball. i didnt think it was so bad and i wasnt thrwoing that fast. and for not throwing a ball in i dont know how long, im not practiced at all so it was actually horrible. elder gochnour (my comp) came up to me afterwards and asked "how did you not make varsity baseball with an arm like that?" loads of fun and it was fun to see every one run from he in fear as i grabbed the ball. i think my nickname that fits well for all situations here out on the mission is "the hulk" given to me by elder santiago, but keeps coming back everywhere i go and fits well LOL. hockey was also interesting. with hard plastic sticks i tried not to play hard and hurt others and myself. some other elder high sticked me and hit my hand. that sucked. but still loads of fun. The two sisters who were there were complaining that we were treating them like "sisters" and not equally. we were "sparing " them in dodgeball. so the next time i got the ball...goodbye sisters. LOL. so funny. i drilled one right in the butt as she was running away from me. made everyone just bust up laughing. monday was good.

tuesday was a lot of planning for our lesson we had to give at zone conference the next day. a lot of finding. wednesday was our lesson and zone conference for most of the day. it all went well and we learned a lot from one another. then we had a good lesson with an "ewig" gator. we call them that because they are eternally investigating the church and never make progress. yes we are supposed to drop those people but for some reason we dont LOL. this guy is way to nice to say goodbye to anyway. he feeds us cookies everytime we come. he has a kind of journal/yearbook thing that every missionary he has ever met has written in it along with a picture of walter (the gator) and the elder. so funny. now i have the priviladge of writting in it and getting my picture in his book. i will attach that picture on this weeks pics. such a cool guy.  thursday was tons of finding and then an innactive who is way cool and has a strong testimons so we are confused as to why he doesnt come to church. confusing situation.

firday i got sick. went to the doctor and sat inside all day. had two lessons with people where all i did was try not to cough to much and try not to talk. saturday same thing. inside and one lesson. sunday was a little better. our eating appointment was interesting but good. so our gator, sam, now has work everyday for 2-3 hours 3 times a day. including sundays. well he is getting baptised on march 9th and we cant afford to have him miss church if he wants to still get baptised. so we have to work out a ride for him everyweek anyway, but not with his work he missed the first hour (priesthood) and comes the second adn third and if sacrament meeting runs long he ahs to leave early to get back to work. hard situation. especially since we cant give him a ride and we have to rely on members. sucks but the lord helped us out yeterday and it all worked out.

thats my week. loads of fun and its jsut been full of snow and cold. elder gochnour and i are super excited and motivated to get out and work when we finally get the opportunity to.

love you all loads and i will talk to you next week.

elder ustach

Letter #32

hey family,

so not a lot of time right now. heres the crazy stuff for this week.

monday was full of packing and fun witht he sisters in cottbus. tuesday i moved to lauenburg. it went well traveling alone. i met some elders in berlin. so cool. I MET ELDER AHRDY!!!! he is that big elder. i saw him a mile away in the bahnhof and just gave him a big hug LOL. i was so happy to meet him. he is HUGE!!! lol. tuesaday when i got there we went shopping and elder gochnour and i got hit on by two girls.....really awkward. like...really awkward. it was wierd. lol. wednesday was district meeting and loads of stuff. thrusday we had more appointments and lessons and fun. friday the same. saturday as well. we are doing tons of doors and tons of talking to everyone!!! we ahve a car here in lauenburg so we get aLOT done. its crazy. i love it but definetly not used to it because forst was so slow. sunday was good. we had sam come to church. we is our main focus right now. he is an african from ghana and he speaks only english. he is way cool. he learns a lot and asks a lot of questions. he will be baptizes on march 9th i think. way cool. he is super cool. i love teaching him. thats really it for now and i dont have a lot of time. i wrote a couple of you personal emails back so they have more info.

oh big news this morning...my face. lol. ask mom about that one. i will be sending pictures of it shortly. so funny and actually freaked me out ebcause i have never had that happen to me before.

ok love you all loads and i will talk to you next week.

elder ustach

Letter # 31

well nobody wrote me this week so nobody responded to my ideas of going to other countires on our trip to germany. maybe you didnt have the chance to discuss it or something. but i dont know because you didnt email me....lol i love pestering you about it :)

anyway. there is a member here in forst.  he is so cool. he is basically the german version of dad. very large man and loves models. not just trains but model cars and everything. first eating appointment i ahd with him i told him i liked mode trains andhe about flipped and then started babling really fast german to be about what size i run and what my layout looks like and everything else so funny. he has a wall in his office of model cars. all about HO size. but its his entire wall!!!!  anyway. the reason i tell you about him is because i told him i was coming back with my family and one of the things we will be visiting is the trian place in haburg. he was so excited and said he would totally come with. well now that i got transferred i have less time with himand his family and he was really sad i was leaving. this isnt an assumption on my part. he actually told me and made sure i understood. that he was "sehr traurig" very sad that i was leaving. funny guy. but he told me he would be more than happy to mkake a trip with us to hamburg and show us the trains. he told me i NEED to visit forst and come back, bu forst is really really out of the way. i dont know maybe. but if not forst then atleast i will call him and tell him im back in germany and we need to meet up. so if your wondering about our trip. there is one "fest" german word for...well there is no translation. look it up. but we have a fest plan for our model train day with 

just thought i would share a little about members in forst and discuss our plans for travel :)

elder ustach

Letter #30

dear family,

 i got transferred!!! trust me im as amazed as you are. probably more. i was only here in forst for 1 transfer (6 weeks) and then i got moved. it makes no sense at all, but most of the time we dont see things as the lord does so we just have to trust in him and go with it. and thats what im doing right now. just going with it and doing my best. im sad about the transfer but actually very excited.

dangit i alway forget to say where im going....LAUENBURG. its a little east from hamburg. my companion is elder gochner who is only 1 transfer older than me. so that should be loads of fun. he is also the district leader. which is way cool.elder gochner was in the MTC with me and was my zone leader. so way cool guy and i already know him a little. we have a car!!!! stoked about that. hopefully i dont get fat with a car and not walking everywhere. i have heard absolutley nothing about the city other than the ward has about 60 active members. so about the same size as oldenburg in the size of the ward. maybe even a little bit bigger. only other thing i have heard is its beautiful and that they already have an investigator on baptisimal date and another one who will soon be on baptisimal date. so my goal whne i get there...dont mess it up. haha. im super excited though. should be laods of fun with him in lauenburg.

well this week was just a normal week. we went on exchanges with a youth and a man from the elders quorem. some appointments fell out but thats normal. but we are really making some progress with innactives. this one innactive is an alcoholic and he relapsed last saturday. so we didnt see him at church last week and we tried going by him but he wouldnt answer. no phone either becuase it would just go to voice mail. so we were really worried he was in the hospitol or something. finally we go by saturday and he is there!! he was really sick but he was there and he was sober. and then he came to church the next day eventhough he couldnt speak because he lost his voice and was still sick. but he came to church. so cool. other news this week was really just getting transferred and thats really it. oh the cold came back :( it got cold on like tuesday and then snowed and then continued on and off for 3 days or so. so now we have snow again and really cold. kind of a bummer but oh well. thats really it.

  i love you all :)

elder ustach

Letter #29

family,
well this week not much to report. i told you about monday last week
already. tuesday was normal day. exept it was candice's birthday which
i sang happy birthday for her LOL. wednesday district meeting and
eating appointment with an american family. so cool. thursday nothing
speical. friday we went to the temple which was the highlight of the
week. loads of fun. the freiberg temple is TINY!!!!! so tiny. but they
have a distribution center there as well as a bunch of other buildings
like a chapel and i think possibly places for people to stay when they
visit. not sure. cool stuff though. it would be so cool to go to
church on the temple grounds. saturday was normal. nothing special.
sunday we had a good eating appintment and church was good. we are
really getting excited about enlgish class and printed ads out for it
so hopefully people come. today jsut shopping and emails. sorry this
week was boring lol.
notes from this week, the american family has a daughter and son (4
and 2) so we need really entertaining and fun spiritual thoughts. they
also told us that the elder before us have the award for "best
spiritual thought" so far becuase he used a disney movie in his
spiritual thought. so i need some help. we need that award but we dont
know how to keep a 2 and 4 yar old entertained while with a spiritual
side and also teach the parents something. the mom said if we need the
daughter to watch a certain movie before we come over to have it fresh
in the daughters mind she would do that so our thought really makes
sense to her. so please!!!! send me ideas for disney or pixar realted
spiritual thoughts!!!! LOL.
i cant believe that this trasnfer is already over...wel almost.
trasnfer calls are on saturday. crazy.
 well this makes me super excited for
our trip to germany becuase im getting great ideas. but as far as i
know we plan to stay in germany...but going to london would be way
cool. paris is cool and all but i can skip it. but london sounds way
cool especially with all the olympic stuff this past year. so
basically, my message is, consider going to other countries while we
are here un europe becuase its way cool and way more fun. something to
think about and talk about with the family. i really like the idea and
would love to go to other countires.

anyway thats all for now this week. love you all loads. until next week.

elder ustach

M&M Letter #28

dear family,

wow so this week was interesting. two days in a row elder popp and i are about to go to bed and think"where did today go? and where has the last 3 weeks gone?" dang!!!! crazy how time flies when your having fun. haha. but seriously im almost 6 months old and i cant believe it. i will be home before i can even imagine. time flies when your on the lords errand.

ok so monday was good. we prepared for our English class the next day....tuesday, nobody came to english class...  :( sad day. lol. we tried to go by some people who werent home and we met with a crazy old guy...who we are not meeting with anymore lol. then English class that evening was a dud. oh well. Wednesday was district meeting which was cool as always. did i send you the info for their blog. it will have pics and activities of what we do in gorlitz with them. thursday nothing exciting. but we got a new investigator that day. cool stuff. friday also not much.weekly planning. yay. lol. saturday we had a good eating appointment with an old lady in the ward and since she is alone we need another priesthood holder to come with us so a young man came (priest) and it went well. then on sunday that same young man come up to us and is talking adn in the middle of our conversation he stops and asks his dad (standing near) if he had anything going on next saturday. he said no, so he turns back to us and asks if he can come work with us on saturday...LOL. this ward is amazing. we dont even have to ask or push this young man to missionary work. he is volunteering and basically signing himself up. so cool. then today we went to the zoo!!! so cool.

so quick update on weather and then back to zoo. it was sunny on saturday and then the sun has kind of been out the last few days and today it was out for a while. so today was a little warmer which made the zoo bearable and the animals happier but the ground was still covered in three inches or more of snow. LOL. ok so zoo. ya it was still cold and stuff but way fun. we went to the elephants to see them getting fed and as we were looking at them the elephant trainer came up and asked if we wanted to feed them. so she let us through a back door and we had a bucket of bannanas and apples and bread and we fed them throuh the fence. actually really scary. lol. so cool though. like elephants are way cool and a lot bigger than you think. then their trunks are really strong. one elephant kept sniffing and grabbing the trainers hand and pulling her into the cage. the trainer was totally unphased by it and just talked to the elephant as if it were her child and told her to let go...the elephant let go. so cool. but like two minutes before that the elephant was breaking huge branches with its trunk. so cool to see and a little scary. then the trainer was talking about how one of the elephants were fat and she just walked through the abrs of the fence and started showing us. totally cool, usually you dont grab animals, especially dangerous and larger animals in palces she did but she jsutwent for it adn started to show us her fat and stuff. it was sooooo funny. she told us they have her on a diet and try to get them out more. but tis hard with it being so cold.

then we went to a ton of other animals. there were some monkeys where their cage is super close to where you stand and yu can touch the cage with your hand. so we would stick out our hand the the monkeys would give us high fives and shake our hands. so cool. funny little guys to. the leopards were way cool. you could tell they didnt like the snow but they had to deal with it. then we fed some goats and saw the rest of the zoo. way cool zoo actually. i would totally want to go back when its warmer if i get to stay here in forst. 

but before the zoo there is a park across the street that is HUGE!!!! the guy who owned it built three pyramids and one is a water pyramid a land pyramid and a forest pyramid and they are each about 60 feet tall or so. way cool. we climed to the top of thew ater pyramid. normally its surrounded by a lake so you cant get to it unles by boat. but the lake was frozen so we walked across and climbed to the top. so cool. lots of pictures from that. the guy who built these things was so rich that he decided to build a castle for his house and this castle is also in this part. by the way this park is HUGE!!!! lol. way cool. only sad part was i lost my ctr ring by throwing snow balls at the sisters. haha. its not the new one. my older on from before my mission. really sad acutally. i liked that ring and it was my birthday present from last year. oh well. you guys sent me another.

ok so notes. got my football on wednesday. so coo.. just need to blow it up now. the lady beneath us gets all our packages because she is always home. haha. she is nice though. the ward is awesome. hopefully it will warm up here soon. last week was our coldest and our warmest week in the last month. but to around -10 or lower one night and then today was about 6 or so. way cool.

love you all loads. thank you for everything.

elder ustach