Monday, July 29, 2013

TODAYS LETTER

well hello :)

This week has been a little crazy and extremely slow. but i am still whiped out which makes no sense. we did do doors everyday and all day, but still. somonday we had a normal day. we played soem darts in the absement of the church and some guy just walked in randomly to fill his water bottle. but he was nice enough to ask before he did it. we then had a going away appointment with the glücks witht he sisters. it was fun. We had some great spiritual thoughts and then br glüc gave a 20 minute talk on faith. it was great. We then picked some cherries for them. elder scholes and i hacked our way through 4 foot tall stinging neddle to get to the part of the tree we need to pick them at. i had shorts on. my legs were destroyed!!! tuesday we got to hamburg bright and early to send elder scholes away. i then was at hauptbahnhof until 1 when elder amrshall came. half of our entire zone was there ebcause half of them were getting transferred so we were all there and ahd a great time waiting for all of our new companions. elder marshall came and we then drove home.  we did some doors and unpacked and that was our day. i am having elder marshall drive this transfer because he needs to get to know the area just incase i get transferred this time. wednesday we had district meeting which was my first as district leader. it went well. the zone leaders were there which was fun. we set district goals and my lesson went well. i was happy with it. we then did doors the rest of the day until our appointment with a herr buhrmeister. he is cool. we basically did doors the entire day but then at the end of the day we were in one small town in the middle of nowhere and i see on our gps a skull and corssbones (our signal for innactive) and i was totally amazed because i had never heard of anyone living here. so i look and tis a family that i had been looking for for the past 2 transfers. so we decide to go by randomly. their son is outside and he invites us in. he is way cool . so he lets us in and lets his mom know. right then though his mom yells at her son to tell us to leave because she ahs no time. so he comes and tells us but we leave a card for him. we go and do some more doors and 5 doors in or so i get a call from a random number. it was the mother. her son wants us to come back and talk to them. so we come back and we have a great appointment with them. it was truly a blessing that we saw the family on our gps and another blessing that gandorin wanted to talk to us. it was great.friday we went to a district leader meeting in hamburg and that went well. we then did weekly planning. nothing special. more doors. saturday we did more doors. still not finding a single person who would tlak to us. we did have a spur of themoment meeting with carol though. it was great. bishop came along as a joint teach and it was a great lesson. we also met with the grabberts that night for what was supposed to eb a 15 minute quick lesson, that turned into br grabbert talking for over an hour. haha. sunday we had a great church. and a great eating appointment. i got a compliment from br warncke that i had really improved and that he had really recognized how much i ahd changed in the 5 transfers i have been ehre. that made me feel good :)

the entire week we have been listening tot he interviews on my ipod that dad put on them. they are so cool. we listened to an interview from a german and his story. it was so cool. really spiritual stuff listening to it in the car as we go. i love them thanks dad for that by the way. also the mormon messages. i watch them every night on my ipod. and the german book of mormon. everything on my ipod is awesome!!! i love it. thank you

ok thats it for this week. love you all and have a great week. no pictures because i didnt take any. explanation next week.

elder ustach

Thursday, July 11, 2013

July 8,2013


well sorry but this will be short. no time to write. so this week was great. two things that stand out above the rest. we met one man on saturday morning that came to church on sudnay and is meeting with us later int he week. we prayed for him toc ome and he rode the 15 kilometers from the city of boizenburg to lauenburg to visit our church taht he had only heard about the other day fromt wo young men who were strangers. it was so cool. and the most amazing thing is...he is 84 years old!!!! an 84 year old man did that! amazing. we also did service for an innactive here ion the area who i dont really know.s he is way cool though. sch breckwoldt. she really loves us now and we will be meeting with her more often for sure. and her son is on a mission so that is cool. no clue why she is innactive but she also came to church which was awesome!!!


so today was great. the reason i ahve no time was because we were in hamburg the entire day touring around. we took a boat (approved by our mission pres) around the harbor. it was totally sweet. it was free to, well with our day card, ebcause technically its funded by the same people who do the buses and u-bahns. cools tuff. the sun was shining and it was great. we then went shopping and with my new info of getting to spend more money i realized i still had 150 euro to spend. i had no clue what to do with it. amybe a new suit? maybe a new fancy watch? a few knives would be cool...nope. we walk into a C&A to look at new suits for both of us. and then the sisters inform us that on the top floor (this place has 6 floors) they were selling german clothing so like lederhosen and dirndl (the classic german dress for women) so we went upstairs to check it out just for fun and we decide to try them on for a good picture together. well we liked them so much we both bought a pair of lederhosen!!! 100 euro. which is actually really cheap for that kind of stuff. it was so cool. the sisters got dressed in the dirndls and we got our lederhosen on and it was jsut awesome. we got someone to take a pic of us but no time right now to download and send it. it was so cool. so now i ahve a pair of lederhosen!!! woot!!!

well sorry for the messy writing and short email. no time. love you all and until next weel.

elder ustach

July 1 , 2013


Dear Family,

well this week has been interesting. not a whole lot has happened with investigators but we will soon be changing that. The weather has been nice to us lately and we have had clouds and rain. very nice. we just watched the broadcast from last week this morning for our study and we are so excited for it all. it makes me mad though that our bishop didnt decide to show the whole ward the broadcast and barely let us know about it, when its probably our ward and ward mission leader who need to watch it the most. haha. oh well. 

so this week on monday we had a suuuper chil p-day with naps and music and just chilling. tuesday we went finding in the morning and found a super cool young guy who talked to us at the door for over an hour!!! he came out and at first didnt like us and pulled out his phone and went to wikipedia to look at our church. i was thinking " oh great wikipedia...anyone can write stuff on there. it wont have the truth" but i was wrong. everything he read was true and he even surprised himself with what he read lol. he would take a BoM but we are meeting again this week.so cool. we then had lunch and went dooring again in bleckede and found another woman who we gave a BoM to and we will go back this week to check up on her. it was a great day. that night it just started pouring!!! and we went to the rodriguez familie for an eating appointment. we were expecting the kids to be there but they werent and so it was the two rodriguezs and also the branns. so only one member (sis rodriguez) and three non members. it was awesome. i think her br finally got to see that we are normal and not just robot missionaries becuase we had a great time there. it was great. then we also realized that sis rodriguez is the best joint teach on earth!!! we gave a spiritual thought at the end and she just went off at the end and expounded on it and related it to her husband and also the branns. it was so cool. wednesday we had district meeting and then we did service at the liebicks. we sheared more sheep!!!! it was so cool. we also cut off part of the horns of one of the sheep because he was poking himself in the chin with his own horn. it was cool. we jsut grabbed a saw and cut it off. fun stuff. i sheared a whole sheep, almost by myself. br liebick did the neck and head and let me go at it. i think mine turned out the best out of all of us. the sisters did a good job but wouldnt follow the body of the animal with the clippers so it was very mis shappen at the end. also with elder scholes. br liebick kept yelling at him...in german "follow the body!!! dont cut into the wool!!!" it was so funny. i was also the man to grab all the sheep. their son from america toldme i was the man in charge of grabbing them and just let me go at it. the sisters said it was funny because they gave me a pole with a hook on it to grab their back legs, i tried to use it once and then asked if i had to us it or if i could just grab the sheep with my hands. so i put the tool aside and just grabbed them. it was funny. the sisters thought it was so funny to see me there with this skinny little pole with my facial expression of " this is so stupid" and then i just didnt use it. it was a great service appointment and we had a blast. we also got to drive a tractor!!! so cool. i love farms haha. the rest of the day was finding and then ward mission meeting. thursday we had more service at the baumgartls and then we had a super long meeting with the sisters.

so on wednesday i was so bored and so frustrated with how slow the work was and our ward. so i was frustrated with myself and the ward. we asked our mission leader in the ward for the ward mission plan...he said "i dont know what it is or how to get it, talk to bishop"...are you kidding me!?!?!?! your the guy who is supposed to be our middle man witht he ward and be doing these things and you have no clue!!! i was pissed. so i decided to change it. so after our meeting with our ward mission leader, i talked to elder scholes about it and we talked well into the night about ideas and such and then we called the sisters for a sit down appointent at the church to further discuss it all. so on wednesday we did that and for 3 hours we sat there discussing the ward and how we can change the ward, area, ourselves, members, investigators, the whole shibang. it was great. then right then and there instead of just talking about it we did something. we called the bishop asap and set up an appointment with him to discuss it all with him and see how we can get the ball rolling. and thats what we did. it was great. 

friday i went on exchange in hamburg with the zone leaders. it was great. elder h and i were waiting for an investigator who was late and we decided to walk down the street to find him and talk to people. so we do that and no more than a quarter of a mile down the street we find two guys and gave out two BoM and then right after giving the second one out we find our investigator. it was so cool. that day was full of appointments and the spirit and it was just great. we switched back and elder scholes and i went home. saturday we had our meeting with the bishop. we were there for tow hours discussing our plans. and how we could make them a reality, how he could help us and what we could do. he was so happy to see us talking to him about it. bishop really supports us but he is bascally the only one in the ward and thats why we met. to get everyone else excited. we shall see how it all goes. he goes on vacation for 3 weeks this week so right after our meeting and excitement he leaves...bummer, but we will not keep moving forward. we will change this area slowly. also on saturday we helped a couple people move that were friend sof br bubolz as well as moving his apartment around and such. it was a good day. sunday we had church which was great, then ward lunch afterwards. it was awesome!!! then weekly planning because we forgot to do it earlier and then a few doors in boizenburg where we found a super cool athiest lady who took a book of mormon. great day.

so all is good here. still no package. the weather is good. we are healthy and happy. the lord is with us and we will keep moving forward and changing germany slowly. i love you all and have a great week :)

Elder Ustach

oh a quick thought for my family. you should go to the temple soon with a few more families. make it a big thing and grab like 4 families and prepare to have names and then all go together and do them. with more families you should have enough priesthood to fill all the positions and it would be a great thing to do. i really recomend it. 

June 24,2013


Moin Moin,
Well this week was interesting. to be honest i cant even remember what we did. it was a long and yet fast week. monday we went to lüneburg and went shopping and just chilled. tuesday we did a lot of doors and got back in contact with one of our investigators and he is doing great. micheal from guatemala. he is cool. . 
 that was fun. i love the ap's, they are cool elders. wednesday we went to hamburg for zo-co and it was HOT!!!! we brought our suits jsut incase but thank goodness presdient is not a crazy man and let us take them off. it must have been over 30 degrees C in the church and then it was 33 °C outside. that is over 90°F!!!! the zoco was great!!! we learned so much and had a lot of fun seeing all the other missionaries. as we went home i was literally drenched in sweat! i could ring my shirt and have water come out. crazy. we didnt get relief from the ehat until we got in our car and turned the A\C on. even then it was still bad. the car said 34°C as we drove home and it must have been over 70 or 80% humidity. wednesday way HORRIBLE. after zo-co we went by some investigators and then hadm our ward missioanry meeting. it went well and then we tried to fall asleep as we had our fan going full blast and trying to survive. stupid germans have no A\C in their homes!!! crazy. thursday wehave a good day of doors and we visit carol. oh...i forgot. wednesday night we had at around 1 am or so a crazy thunderstorm roll through. it was INSANE!!! there was a flash of lightning atleast once a second, maybe more. the rain was pouring down. we opened the window to feel the rain and look outside, well for ten seconds of having it open, our floor was flooded with water!!! stupid crazy hard rain. we couldnt sleep so we just sat and watched the rain and lightning for 30 minutes, it settled down a little and we decided to go back tobed, then we both woke up again because it got worse and our room of as if the light was on because of the lightning and the thunder was crazy. that was a crazy night. thursday was ya, doors and carol and then fam schöne for an eating appointment. friday we had another appointment with micheal and we answered his faith questions and a lot more. a really good lesson. we also did service at the familie glück, where we chopped up a mountian of a tree. lol. they had already cut the tree down and the brnches off so they could use the trunk for fire wood, but now we had all the branches to deal with. so they gave us little hand clippers and larger tree clipper things and said go at it. three hours later and ahving 8 people working on it for the three hours we were down. it was a monster of a tree. loads of fun. saturday we did a lot of doors and then had a couple member appointments.sunday was normal and we ahd a good eating appointment. last week we didnt even get one so that was good to have one. we also went by an investigator named jörn. well his dad answered the door last week on tuesday and said he was asleep after he ahd gotten back from a 12 hour shift working the volunteer fire department fighting the flood. so we go back on sudnay and he answers the door again and he says, literal translation from german "the boy is dead" thats all he says. he were stunned i asked "really?" because i thought he was messing with us. but he said yes really and the burial in friday and we should not return and not visit the burial. so taht was a shocker and a totally new experience for both elder scholes and i. we didnt know how to react. we dont know how to react in german, and to be honest i would know how to react even in english to that. it was ou of the blue and totally just blew us away. makes me sad to because jörn was a really cool guy. but now he is in a better place and probably already accepted the gospel so that makes me happy. and now we are here. 
no notes from this week. nothing spectacular or specific to anyone that i can remember. so ya that was my week.

love you all,

elder ustach




Flood


well hello everyone :)

this week was great. really slow but we broke our streak of no new
investigators!!! so cool. and elder scholes is awesome. here is my low
down on him.

so elder s is awesome. yes he is super tiny. well he doesnt look
it but he is really small and i have had bigger elders as companions
my entire mission and so when we hug its normal, but now with him
being smaller his chin runs into my shoulder. its funny. he is way
cool though. he is really quiet like i had already heard. he is super
strong for being on the smaller side. he is super funny but in his
little side comments. we were dooring and someone really quickly loked
through the door and saw us and walked away. i asked why they ran away
he said " because they were scared of the guns" i asked " what guns
are you talking about? there are no guns and we are carying none" he
lifts his sleeve and points at his arm and says " these guns" i
started busting up laughing. so funny! but most of the time he doesnt
say much. very quiet. i will learn from him the art of silent power.
because he is very "slow" is what he does but very powerful. its
interesting. i finally have a companion that is different than me.
elder popp and gochnour were really similiar to me in personality but
now i have someone different. i like it.

we have some really good plans for this area. our first meeting with
the ward mission leader he just had a ton of ideas on how to improve
and everything. it was great. i just hope we can get these ideas
moving and really get the ward and the area excited for missionary
work.

well the river finally hit its high point back on like thursday and
stayed there for an entire day!! and now its finally going back down.
its really unbelievable. he finally got to help with the flood as
well. we talked to a member who just goes and helps the volunteer
fireman and he said we could come to. so we did. lots of work but fun.

alright well the week. monday we went and played sport. loads of fun.
i went a little to ahrd because at one point i rammed my zone leader
so hard we hit heads and he went flying across the floor. he said he
was fine and all was good but i do need to hold back a little in
sports. also because i hurt my foot again. not sure how or what it is
but ya. no biggy. tuesday we took elder gochnour to hamburg HBF and he
left. then i chilled in the bahnhof for like 3 hours with some other
elders waiting for all of our companions to come in. elder scholes was
the first to show up!!! we go home and do some doors and then have an
eating appointment which went well and then went back to hamburg for a
district leader meeting. wednesday we had district meeting. oh so on
monday they closed the bridge...suck!!! so the next closest place to
cross the river is like 30 minutes down the river. crazy. so that made
it not possible to have district meeting in lauenburg so we had it in
bergedorf and pres is really cracking down on rules and we have sooooo
many new  missionaries taht are being disobediant only becuase they
dont know the rules. ignorance is bliss. so he had every district in
the mission read the entire white handbook cover to cover and discuss
an rules that we didnt understand. booring but good. now we all know
the rules so that we can follow them haha. after our meeting we got
dressed into our service clothes and we got permission from pres to
drive the sisters to the service project. the sisters are crazy.
espcially with sis sykes and her music. so funny. so after a crazy 30
minute drive we found where we were supposed to help and started to
fill sand bags and fill pallets. with just 5 of us we filled probably
7 or so pallets full of sand bags each having 60 bags pilled on the,.
so we did over 420 bags or so. it was awesome! the sun was so hot and
it was crazy. i got a super awesome tan from that day. the firemen
were making fun of us which really pissed me off.

alright well after service we had a great meeting with familie brann
and had a great discussion about recieving answers to your prayers. it
was great. thursday we just doored and then had carol with bishop
dabeil. she goes on vacation soon for 3 weeks so we lose our most
solid and progressive investigator for a while. then we did service at
our mission leaders house. we pulled out bushes and trees from an area
in his yard. well come to find out an old massive tree trunk is hiding
in the middle of all these bushes. so we spend the next 2 hours
pulling it out with a winch and everything. it was awesome. the young
men were there to help but it was basically the missionary and brother
jensen show. bro jensen is a stronger man, elder scholes is small but
super strong and im big and strong so all three of us are just working
away at this tree stump for 2 hours and then it starts to rain so now
we are doing it all in the mud. it was awesome!!!! but we eventually
got it out. cool stuff. friday we did doors and thats when we found
our 1 new gator for the week. woohoo. then we had a meeting with br
bubolz and nothing speical for friday.saturday we did more doors all
day and had a good meeting with herr neumann.sunday was good. we had
carol there at church but it sucked because we didnt have an eating
appointment...ya wierd. that is usually our day of our one eating
appointment in the week and we didnt have one....schade. so we went
home and made a very interesting meal from what we had in our pantry
and fridge. we had fussilli noodles, tuna (3 cans), onions, peas, and
seasoning. so we put them all together and had kind of like a tuna
caserole thing, but no caserole dish. he found a sauce that we put on
it and it was really good. i loved it and would make it again. im sure
it was an accident that it turned out alright thiough so im not sure
we can make it again. lol. the bridge opened back up again!!!! so we
crossed the river to visit people sunday night.

well thats enough for this email. fun weeka nd elder s and i are
doing great. he served with elder popp back in the day so we have had
the same comp. thats cool.

bis nächste Woche

elder ustach :)