August 19, 2013

Well this week just blew by. i cant believe im already writing you again.

This week was good and just...idk really. haha. well monday we just chilled. elder m got a hiar cut and we met this super cool lady at the hair cut place. we were talking in english...its ok it was p day, and this lady was talking to her daughter about how we were americans. well i stopped and listened in on their conversation and smiled at the mom. she then asked where we were from and that lead to a like 40 minute conversation about america and who we were and everything. it made the time go by while we waited for elder marshalls turn for a hiar cut. german hair places are so funny and very bizarre. tuesday we did doors in the morning and i saw some clouds coming. i asked elder marshall if they were coming our way. he said, no no, they are going away. well 40 minutes later we get the most intense thunderstorm ever. normally no water hits our one window because it has a blacony over it. but it looked like someone had a fire hose and was just shooting it at our window. it was crazy. it lasted about 30 minutes and was gone. crazy stuff. after luncha dn this storm we went down to uelzen!!! super far away...yes elder gochnour we made it down to uelzen finally!! we met an innactive. cool guy. he is old and crazy. he is currently trying to build\streat his own political party. lol. there is a really tall tower in the city as well. well guess what, he owns it. and he has a printing press inside where he prints all of his political stuff. very cool. we made it home and then did some more doors. thursday we did some more doors. we also went to a city called bahlen!!!! lol. we went and talked to the bahlers of bahlen. rofl. we saw this city on our map and just had to go and door it out. well unfortunatly this dorf had nobody who would listen to us, so the bahlers of bahlen arent so bahler after all. haha. we then visited a family in boizenburg and it went well. good day. thursday we had just normal doors and a really boring day until we went to bergedorf where we had our district meeting and interviews with president. i love president and all that he teaches. he is so funny and just awesome. his wife is also great and she gave a lesson on repentantce which was really good. i love the german work "umkehr" it means to turn around. thats what you do when you repent you realize the wrong and turn around and turn away from the bad awesome! friday we just did more doors and then had a fallen out appointment but then we had an appointment with br bubolz. it went well. that night we also had a stake priesthood meeting. that went well and it was fun to go to hamburg for a little while. saturday was probably our best day. we had a good lesson with walter that day. we also met a new woman who wants a book of mormon in russian. cool stuff. sunday was also great. we had a man come to church randomly after meeting him for 5 minutes the week before. that was cool we also had a great meeting with nils. he is so cool and has so much potential. cool stuff.

sorry this email is short. not much to say and my mind is not focused at all lol.

love you all loads. until next week.

elder ustach

August 12, 2013

Dear Family,

well this week has been interesting. extremely slow and when you looka t our numbers we didnt do much, but we actually accomplished a lot. We were also blessed on sunday with a wonderful day after a week of fallen out appointments an no success. the weather has finally cooled off and that really amkes me happy because now i can sleep instead of lieing in my bed just sticking to my sheets because its so humid and hot. The ward this week also helped us a lot, or atleast we had more contact during the week than normal which was good.

Monday was cool. we visited neuegamme. this time was much less exciting. last time was really an adventure! this time was a lot of reading and learning.I liked both though. I learned a lot about what this place really is and what the specifics of it all were. like we have an idea of what a concentration camp is in our heads because of the war and stuff, but this time i learned a lot more about who came here, why, what did they do, why...etc. it was great. Tuesday we had a good day. we went to geestacht for doors, no luck, then we did doors in grünhof and that was so cool! we met an african lady who took a book of mormon and unfortunatly she has no time for a while, but we will met later. Then we did more doors and met the wife of the neu apostolic pastor. she says her husband would love to talk to us. haha. later than evenig we had an appointment fall out. so we went back to grünhof for more doors. well it was a mircale that the appointment fell out because we met the coolest lady. we approached her  as she was watering her garden. she was totally confused with us and waht we were doing, so we jsut gave her a card and expected to walk about, but then she read "mormon" on our card and came closer to us and told us she had a question for us. she was kind of hiding from her husband or something, idk, but she was very quiet and then asked what we were, what kind of a church we were. well we explained that we were missionaries and about the church a little. quickly what we beleived. she then told us that the reasons he asks is because she has a mother in our church in berlin. well she goes on to explain that she doesnt know her mother at all and that she was born in our church as a baby, but since then no contact with us. She got very emotional, im sure because she doesnt think about her mother at alla nd then we show up and bring back memories and or thoughts about her. When we were talking though the spirit was so strong, i just wanted to tell her all about eternal families and the plan of salvation, and just tell her everything right then adn there so she would beleive adn get to know her mom...ya, but she had no time. she asked for something to read or look at from our church. so we gave her a brochure and told her to visit our website to get more info. she wasnt really "excited" only because she was so shocked that she came in contact with our church again. it was cool to see. we will try going by today and see how her reading went.

Wednesday we had zone training meeting in hamburg. it went well. the lessons were really good. Getting to see our amazing zone adn all the new missionaries was very cool. i always enjoy hamburg as well so thats fun. later that day we visited a member in geestacht. it went well. also as we did doors that day we found a dog school that someone runes out of thair garage. well we only breeds and trains these "große schweizer sennenHunde" these mssive dogs that look like over sized beagels. they have the same markins and colors of a beagel anyway. so cool. the largest one was as big as elder marshall and he was ahead of me as we walked to the front door. well this dog came up to his belly button or higher on him so he was a little frightened. i just wanted to give them big hugs and wrestle with them or something. it reminded me so much of gus adn ebar. those big brutes. there were three of them when we walked to the doors and the owner was not happy that we walked onto his property, eventhough the gate was unlocked, there were no signs, or anything. dang germans. they need to get over themselves.

Thursday we traveled t bleckede for doors, as well as darsenow and brahlstorf. brahsltorf is way out there. we had time and just the desire to have an adventure se we picked a town was far away on our map that just looked tiny and we drove to it. well we found a couple who we sat down and talked to for about 45 minutes and have interest. so it was inspired to go out there. also this town, dad this is for you, has a train pass by about every 3-5 minutes or less. its so busy!!! we walked to the bahnhof just to look at it and bout every 2 minutes or so the speakers turn on and say "caution a train is coming on platform 1!" and then 20 seconds later a freight or passenger train just goes zooming by. 2 minutes later...repeat. so cool.

friday we did doors in geestacht and then did our weekly planning.  that night we got fed by the jägers. a very cool family and we had a very good discussion about the ward and the problems that it has and how we can work together to change it. she is the releif society pres and he is the second councelor in the bishopbric. so ya. good discussion. saturday we celebrated the birthday of a member in the morning and then did service at another members house. we then went to shwarzenbek to do doors and we then taught denis and her family. it went well. we figured out directly from her the reasons why she is not baptised and her story, instead of rather hearing it through the grapevine or from others. so that was good. we are just wating for her to get married so she can get baptised and they said they are planning on it within the next 6 months or so. cool stuff.

Sunday was our best day. church went well. we taught the gospel principles class which went well. i had a member yell at me because i corrected him on how he prays. he is a new member and i nicely mentioned that when we pray together we say "we" and "our" not "i" and "mine". well he didnt appreciate that and was real böse with me for no reason. i wasnt even the one to recognize the mistake. another member mentioned it and told me to be the one to correct him because i was the missionary...whatever. well during sacrament meeting we had a gator call and cancel on us...suck. so we went home, without an eating appointment and made a lunch that wasnt half bas, but we had no food....so a lunch with no food was hard to do. but i made it happen. getting creative and made pancakes with out eggs or milk. they tasted really good actually and were not super dense or anything. they could have been fluffier, but na ya. we then did doors in lauenburg where we met a really cool guy. an old white guy who is muslim....that makes no sense, so i asked why he was muslim, usually you dont ask that question because the only muslim people are arabic or from that part of the world so its clear why. but an old white guy...made ne sense. he said he liked in indonesia for a while and they "convinced" him that it was the truth. well i kind of laughed at that in my head (of course not out loud) and then taught him about prayer and how we can find the truth for ourselves. we gave him a brochure and he said he would come to church. we then met with sonja, a gator of ours and for the first 45 minutes we met with ehr husband as she cooked waffles in the kitchen. it was a really good lesson on the restoration and getting to know him better. we then ate and after we ate, he left and we taught her about the gospel of jesus christ. it was a double lesson eating appointment. cool stuff. haha.

that was my week really. not much else. this weke we have interviews with president which i am totally stoked about. i love talking with him. oh also a note from this week...i miss my dogs. i ran into those big beasts in grünhof and then we found a rotweiler puppy. so cute. reminded me of gus. which then made me sad and want my dogs. na gut. less than a year. its funny, elder popp asked me waht the first thing i was going to do when i got home. well obviously hug my family, but he said other than family, what is the first thing your going to do as you walk in the door of your house. my answer was, i am going to drop all of my stuff, runinto the backyard and play with my dogs until they are sick of me. haha. I cant wait. :)

well i love you all loads. have a great week. until next time :)

Elder Ustach

August 5,2013

hello everyone :)

Well this week was HOT!!!! we had many people take pitty on us as we did doors this week and one woman rejected us but then gave us each a flavored water. thats a big thing ehre because the bottles each cost 25 cents, so she basically jsut gave us 50 cents! lol. Other than the heat this weekw as good. we broke our streak of yeros for new investigators. it was cool.monday was nothign special. teusday we had doors and then a great meeting with an investigator we met a long time ago taht i found with elder gochnour. cool stuff. then more doors. we then had an appointment fall out so we had more doors. and at the beggining we had 4 hours. so we go to a street and look at the number...102. ok so there are 102 on just this street alone. so we start. At the end, the very last house we meet a woman who is catholic. she ahd a super cute little daughter and we taught ehr about the restoration. she was interested in what we ahd to say so we gave her a pamphlet and have an appointment next week. after tackling that huge street we call some people and then go downt he other side of it back to our car. 3 and a half hours alter we finish and go home. we did 149 doors that day.wednesday was chaos! we had district meeting and the lüneburg sisters missed their train...no problem we will start alter when they get here. so we jsut study for a bit. then as they get there they tell me they have 20 minutes before they have to leave again because 5 minutes before they got here, elder beasley (the office couple) called them and said to come back to lüneburg asap because he is dropping off their bikes. so we have a super fast district meeting and then they leave. they call in and we have a conference call district meeting to finish off the alst 30 minutes of it. it went really fast actually. so we then have district finding in lüneburg. so we go to the bahnhof,  thanks dad for the ipod because we listened to one of the interviews on it for an hour. it was great. we finally get to lüneburg but as we arive, the train stops right before the platform and we cant get off becuase we are about 100 feet short of it. so the conductor gets on and tells us the state police are on the platform and we cant do anything until they leave.....great. so finally we get off and meet up with the lüneburg sisters. we eat some lunch and get our bearings and figure out waht we are doing and then go finding. to add to this the bergedorf sisters have to be in hamburg by a certain time so we only had about 50 mintues to do district finding. not so much success but thats ok. everything happens for a reason and we went finding at that time for a reason. i dont know why but we did. haha. finally we made it abck home to lauenburg and had a lesson with an investigator. then that was our day. thursday we did doors, doors, and more doors. we had one lesson with carol which went really well. sis jäger was our joint teach and that was awesome! she is the relief soceity pres and that helped carol a lot to have another frau there to talk to instead of 2 young men.  friday we had an interesting lesson with a herr gremmes in shwarzenbek. he is way into the history and stuff of the bible. he says abraham was a military leader and led armies around the area he was in. something like that. he was using voabulary that was was over my head and i didnt care either because it ahd nothing to do with what we were talking about so it wasnt such a great lesson. we then had an appointment fall out so we did weekly planning. saturday we helped a member move (in less than an hour) one of the most organized moves i have ever seen, and they had a young man who was ripped and me to move all the heavy stuff which went really well. i ahte it when your moving something heavy and the person is strong enough but not cordinated enough to move things around corners or stuff like that. well this man (eric) and i were perfect and thought the exact same on how we manuvered things. it was great.  we then had a bbq at a members house and that afternoon elder marshall met walter!!! haha. it was a good meeting. afterwards we did doors. sunday we had a great fast and testimony meeting. half the ward was gone but almost more than that showed up as visitors because a baby was being blessed. it was cool. no investigators this week at church but na ja. thats life. we then had a great eating appointment with our bishop and then a 2 hour discussion on missionary work and such. we went through the entire ward list and discussed every member. it was awesome. we did doors later than evening.

today we are going to the concentration camp again because 3 of the 6 in our district are new and they havent seen it yet. so we are going to have a fun day in the sun. should be a great time. i love you all. have a great week. trust in the lord and he will direct your paths. its hard, but do it :)

elder ustach