Pics

Sorry I have not posted in a while I have been sick the past 2 months.
Enjoy the letters, C. Ustach

Guten tag!!

Hello again :)

Another general conference come and gone. sad day. but an awesome conference. my favorite quote "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith!" elder uchtdorf laying down the german hammer!!!! haha. watching GC is special as a missionary. you really focus and pay attention. they all seem to talk to you personally or to a gator of yours. its wonderful. this GC was just really powerful and great. i love it.

Well this week was good. we had a decent number of lessons and just a solid good week. So last monday was hitting up all the berlin sites. in my head that was 2 weeks ago but i guess i have not sent them to you yet. wierd. so ya we went to alexander platz to see the tv tower, the church there, rathaus, fountain, berliner tor, jewish memorial, us embassy, berliner dom, some other big building and the victory tower!. we did a lot all in one day. it was awesome! that night i met a gator for the first time. frau fleischer. she is slightly mentally handicapped but she is so cool. we teach her with that HUGE member guy. those two together are funny. 

tuesday we had anormal day and we had 3 lessons in 3 hours planned...key word is planned. the first one fell out and then the second one was good.the third was was actually not a lesson but a meeting with the sisters and the bishop. that meeting was awesome!!! our bishop is great!!! hedoes  SO MUCH!!!! unfortunatly he has the idea that gators must be perfect before baptism, and does not like when we invite nonperfect people to baptism....that is a bit of a problem becuase...nobody is perfect!!!! lol. but he is great.

wednesday we had a great district meeting. and i gave a lesson on focusing on the restoration in finding and using scriptures on the street, total fun! we then had a good lesson later that day with a man who the sisters found. he is waycool. hejust loves his daughter so much and will do anything for her. he told us that about 10 times in his lesson. a great guy. that night we traveled to glienicke to start an exchange! that was fun. so that night i was in glienicke. 

thursday was glienicke day. we had fun. we had a great lesson with a member who is from another ward but justmoved there and had never been to church there. so we went to fellowship him. that was great. we also had fun traveling a bunch to find contacts and going by them.i was with elder ames and he is a great missionary. he is just unsure of finding and not sure what to say sometimes. he is super smart though. awesome guy. that night we went back to spandau and the craziest thing happened!!! we got off the bus and waited for a bit for elder wilde and gerberding to come back. then aman came up to us who was trying to cross the street. he wasso druck he was about to fall over. i have heard of a trick to start moving in circles to make them fall over...but he was like 80 and had crutches so we were there holding him up rather than trying to make him fall over. he was so wasted though it was bad. he loves god. he told us about 20 times HAHA. then another crazy thing happened. as the other elders got there and out of no wherecars came zooming down the street and boxed in another car right in themiddle of this 3 lane street in front of rathaus. honking their horns and going crazy. we thought it was something serious because the way they drove and boxed this car in was really pro.but then we realized what it was...a turkish wedding!!!!! lol. they all got out of their cars. grabbed the bride and groom and cranked up the stereo of one car with turkish music and just danced in the middle of all their cars as traffic was backing up behind them. LOL. it was so cool. they had nice cars to. a lambo and a nice porsche. also an audi r8. it was cool. they left assoon as they showed up though. like 5 minutes later the street looked normaland ifyou had come you wouldnt have known what happened 20 seconds earlier. 

friday we had weekly planning and then a wierd lesson with a man who had interest but then his friend showed up and just totally againt religion at all. telling us that men are crazy and just prideful trying to call ourselves the children of a god. and then he told us he can prove everything "logically" so we ask a couple questions that he cant prove. his big one was the creation. which was funny becuase his proof that its science not god...he said. this is so funny. im translatting of course. "the world was created through coincidence. just coincidence. so obviously that proves there is no god because he doesnt do that"....what?he talked the whole time about logic and how he can prove everything through logic and then he says his ogical proof is "coincidence". i could not stop laughing on the inside. it was so funny and really dissapointing that this man was just so closed mindedand shutoff to anything we hadto say. we then talked about prophets and such, he saked who and where our prophet was. we told him and he just blew up about "h hes in america....ohhhh. now i get it....america" this guy was so special in his opinion. but thankfully our gaotr defended us and god and religion as a whole it was great!!!! he basically told his own friend that he was stupidand to stop beliiving in only what he could see. we were stoked afterwards about the gator, the friend made us a little annoyed but na ja. it was good anyway. we then had a fallen out appointment and a good lesson with frau fleischer again and this time with a br heusig. he is so cool!!!! probably the best joint tech ever. 

saturday we had a normal day and tried some people but no go and then we had GC that night.

sunday wasGC day. 6 hours in one day. we watched preisthood sunday morning, then saturday afternoon at 2. then sunday morning live at 6 pm here. it was great. we also had a potluck outside with all the member there. about 30 missioanries and like 40 members all outside eating each others food from their trunks and cars. it was great. 

thats the week :) i hope you all have a great week,  oh liebe grüße from the crazy man on the dogs at home haha. long story there. maybe another time. 

elder ustach

Fall has begun in Germany

Moin Moin!

The air is cold and the streets are wet. fall has begun in spandau and we are super excited...well i am. i was getting tired of the hot humid work. my white shirt sticking to me and at the end of the day having my shirt be no longer white because of all the sweat. ugggg. not its suits and jackets and scarfs and just loads of fun. no scarfs yet, not cold enough. but we are getting loads of rain and a little cooler temperatures. it makes it easier to sleep as well because we have no A\C anywhere.

This week, wel monday we just worked early and had a fallen out appointment. we then shopped and went home to have a movie night. both elder w and i were wiped out and we only have an hour and a half so we wentz home and cooked a pizza and watched some doctrine and covenants videos. really cool. brigham young was such a baller!!! "cut the thread that binds you to the prophet of the church...and drag yourselves to HELL!!!!!" intense. " whoes kingdom are you trying to build? the lords? or lyman johnsons?" man so cool. 

wednesday wehad a nice day of going by contacts and then having a lesson with a man who approached us at the city center. he is way cool.  we then had an exchange that afternoon. my first one as the leader. it was loads of fun. that night we made cake for our exchange treat and talked a bunch.

saturday we had a normal day but then probably the best lesson i have had in a long time. it is with a man named solomon. he is so cool. black guy who speaks german and english. cool guy. he wants to change his life and build his faith in christ. he has many legitimate questions that we can answer and he is just so cool. we taught about the atonement and how through chrsit we can change and start a new life. he seemed confused at first becuase he understood " christ died for us" as, that how come we still die then if he "died" for us. that made no sense to him. but we explaiend and it was great. at the end he asked US if we could give him a list of chapters or scriptures that he could have and when he is having a bad day or needs to build his faith he can read. it was so cool. 

sunday we had a good sacrament meeting and eating appointment. we had two fallen out appointments but that was ok because we needed to do weekly planning. at the end of the day we had a lesson with a family from nagola. cool family. such the cuttest little kids. typical cute black babies and todlers running around. so funny. 

now we are here. today we will hopefully visit some sights in the city and see how that goes. wish us lucka nd hopefully it doenst rain.

i love you and and have a great week :)

elder ustach

moin moin

i cant say moin moin anymore because im in the east, so i will say it in my emails :)

well i hope everyones week went well. a lot of rain i hear and that is great unless its flodding and then no good. 

this week was great. we did a lot of work and we can see the blessings from that hard work. i love it here in berlin. just yesterday we had stake conference and it was just so cool to see the whole berlin stake come together and fill the stake center to capacity and listen to the speakers. everone so happy and loying. it was great.

so this week. monday- well we went to the castle here in spandau after we did emails. its really cool! its on an island! talk about protected. this castle has like 50 foot walls all the way around it and its on an island that doesnt have a beach. so basically just a castle in the middle of water. cool stuff. hopefully i can sned pics this week. :)

tuesday- we left really early to go to tiergarten to go to a district leader meeting. it was a great meeting. but before we got there early, so we played some soccer basketball, basketball without using your hands or arms. it was a blast. finally everyone is there so we go in and have our meeting., the  zone leaders (one of which is elder scholes my former companion) are really awesome. we have some great goals for the zone and we will change berlin. we had a lesson on using the "work of salvation" dvd broadcast as spiritual thoughts and it was great. i learned a lot. afterwards we had lunch together at burger king and it was just nice to talk to old friends on the mission who are also district leaders here and it was a nice time. we then went home and started work on our over 170 potential and former investiogator list! we went to an area nad went by people. not much success so we went to the church for a lesson, but it fell out. so we had comp study which we ahdnt had earlier and then home. 

wednesday we had district meeting.the entire week i was to busy or just didnt know what to teach to plan my lesson, so wednesday morning i cram one together but i feel really good about it. the zone leaders joined us and our district meeting went really well. afterwards i didnt even say anything and elder wilde says "that was a good meeting" i was happy. we went a little long because we talked forever about rules and the specifics on them. we also had a really good "district rat" (district councel, or a time where we can ask questions and all give answers for prolblems with investigators or whatever). my lesson went really well. i talk how to ask questions and it was awesome. after the meeting we tried to visit a gator who was home but had no time. so we join everyone for district lunch and then go home for comp sutdy. we then go out and try by more of our contact list. we then have a good lesson at the church with one of those contacts. it was great. unfortunatly he is suuuuper strong and "fest" muslim. the nicest people ver, but not willing to change because they are to happy with what they have. after him we left for another appointment and we get there but the man isnt home. so we cant go in because we cant visit women alone. so we ask when her man would return and she said 30 minutes. well its already 8 pm. so we say, alright we might come back in 30 minutes. so we go by some more contacts and then come back and it was super late. we were worried the kids would be asleep and everything. but they were all awake. the dad was home. we talk them and got to know them. it was great. a quick 25 minute lesson and we were out the door at 9. so we hurried home to plan and go to bed. 

thursday- we had a slow morning and we watch the broadcast for part of ourt study. we then just go by contacts the entire day and then havbe a fallen out appointment and that was it. thursday was a dud.

friday- an amazing day. not everyone is ready for the gospel but there are people out there that are prepared and ready. well there are so many in berlin that you jsut have to sift through all the unprepared to find the elite (as it says somewhere in D&C). well friday morning after about 2 hours of OYM'S we find a man. it was interesting to because he looks rough and tough. i didnt want to talk to him. not because i was scarred but because i assume dhe was either high, or drunk, or just a bum. well i ahve the impression that i should talk to him and i kid of chasticed myself for judging this man. by the time i finish my thoughts he is already on us and about to walk bye. thankfull elder wilde talks to him. he have a wonderful conversation about god and christ and the purpose of life. why we are here and what we need to do. we make out an appointment for the next day. so that was great! it showed me never to judge, which i try not to do, and to talk to everyone because we dont know who is ready and who is not.  that day we also went out to an area in the forest that has houses in it instead of in the city with just apartment buildings. we go do doors ther.e it was nice. it reminded me of lauenburg. a nice little town, doors, and nice people. well we didnt have success but we had loads of fun and met a very nice man who wanted to give us something to drink. also a man who knows our church for our geneaology and uses it a lot, but does not like our gospela dn what we teach. so we invited him to church to visit our geneaology center. i also broke out my harmonica!!! elder wilde and i walked through the forest ( the quickest path to this dorf was through the forest) playing my harmonica. it was great. im working on praise to the man right now. hopefully i can learn it quickly. also a few christmas songs. its loads of fun. 

saturday we had a ton of appointments. so we start with boateng who is was cool and met the elders in italy but didnt really understand anything they taught and then moved here. now we are teaching him. its truly a miracle we found him becuase the elders in italy didnt pass on his records. or even tell us he moved here. so the sisters actually found him on the street and passed him onto us. then we had an appointment fall out which sucked, but then another one with this man that we met on friday...also fell out. he diodnt show up. but then we had an appointment with an innactive and that went well. friday night i had a cough and all day saturday it got worse. just a lot of stuff in my throat and i was feeling warm. so i just push through it on saturday and suck it up. i make it through the day but i am wiped out. so the last hour of the day we go to a grocery store and get a treat and go home and do some area book work to keep us inside and rest a little. 

sunday we get out the door super early to get to stake conference which was awesome. sooooo many missionaries!!!! just in this stake we have like probably 70 missionaries or more. this mission has over 270!!!!! poor president kosak, no wonder he is stressed all the time. haha. stake conference was good. afterwards we go home with the sisters and two members. we eat at her house and as she is about to open the door she asks "angst für hunde?" i was appalled she even asked that question. i say no adns he opens the door. two medium sized dogs just popp out and attack us. it was awesome!!!! the on was a spaz and the other (his mother) was more calm. well i just flipped out and couldnt stop my self from playing with them and wrestling with them. before the food was ready and we sat down to eat i was covered in dog hair!!! my suit was covered in dog hair i should say. i loved it. i would sit calmly with the mom dog and then the boy would come over and want to play and so i would wrestle him and get him to calm down and such. then go back to his mom and sit calmly and this process was done like 10 times. awesome! they were exactly like gus and bear just a lot smaller. the owner was worried i would get bitten because of how i was playing with them. i was like " haha, a dog...bite me? never." so she said well i cant say i didnt warn you. well we jsut had a blast. it was great. no bitting. some growling both from the dogs and me. but it was great. the meal was great to and the spiritual thought also.  afterwards we had an appointment that fell out. then another one that only the wife was home so we couldnt visit her. so we went home and we totally forgot to do weekly planning so we barely got that in last night. 

well thats my week. today was just cleaning and organizing the appartment. its now clean!! yay!

i hope you all have a wonderful week. stay dry with the rain and until next week.

elder ustach

the BIG CITY!!!

:)

WOW!!! berlin is isane. the last week was me running around like a chicken with my head cut off. CRAZY. sooooo many people!!! new mexico has less than 2 million and berlin has like 3 million? im being swamped here. but i love it!!! there is sooooo much to do. i want another 4 hours to the day. i will keep praying for that but i dont think it will happen.

so spadau is so cool. my district is way cool to. there are two sisters in my ward and area. ! they are all so great. the sisters in spandau have so much faith its ridiculous! the plan baptizing all of german by themselves!!! i love it. the ward here is cool. we have about 50-60 active. we are working on more. Our ward building is smack dab in the center of city. thats so wierd for me. haha. but cool. people just walk by and dont even care. its kind of interesting. one lady we met has even met with the missionaries many years ago and liked us, but lost contact.....the funniest thing was, we were 100 meters dow the road from our church!!!! we told her that and she was all "OHHHH thats YOUR church? oh how wonderful!!!" she was so funny. and super excited to see us.

the apartment is cool i guess. i was expecting better because its berling, but then again its berin so it must be small. well it is. its only one room, a small bathroom and a small kitchen. most apartments here i this missio are two or three rooms, a bathroom and kitchen. so its wierd to sleep, dress, study, and eat all in the same room. but then i look back at college and i did all of that plus more in a room even smaller than what i am i now. i didnt even have my own shower or bathroom. so naja. i love it. it keeps you motivated because your study stuff is right there as you wake up. i ust love spandau.

so this week, well monday was good. just a normal p-day plus packing.  tuesday we went to hambug and i got on a fancy ICE train. basically the fastest and nicest trains they have i germany. it was nice to not have to stop so man times and have a drunk guy sitting next to you. haha. it was just a straight shot from hamburg to berlin-spandau. cool stuff. in berlin i found my comp and some other missionaries. from there we ate lunch and helped other elders and sisters coming into berlin. we then just went by contacts the rest of the day. we also planned and i prepped my district meeting wednesday we had our first district meeting. we set some really good goals for the district and im excited. the work goes so much faster here. its crazy. we had district lunch and then we went by contacts and oym'd. we had an appointment fall out on us but all is good. we came home early that night to organize the appartment and so i can get my head on straight. its funny. i made a goal to hit the ground running when i got here. well i kind of had to, or else i would have made the area blow up in my epic failure. haha. you have to move fast and work fast to stay alive here. i love it.

thursday we had a great lesson with a recent convert who found the church online, ordered a book of mormon online and read it, all before he even met the missionaries. as we met the elders, he was already part of many mormon facebook groups and just a normal mormon guy. so funny. he is way cool. he wants to go to byu idaho to stud here in the new future. he also brought a friend along. so now he is doing the same. he is reading the BoM super fast, meets and loves to learn he comes to church when he has time (super busy) and is just super solid.  we had an appointment with him on saturday and he told us, i am doing all of this so i can have a better life and also for my future family. he said, he doesnt want his family to be like the one he has now, or like the other ones he sees in the world so he is investigating and searching for the best for his future family. what a great guy!

sunday we went to church and well we didnt have any gators show up. so i was dissapointed. but then after preisthood one shows up. he is a man we called three das before hand who was simple a former contact of other missionaries and he came to church! then another oe showed up. it was great. oh i forgot. so saturda night we had to plan our lesson for preisthood. so we didnt get to bed on time becuase earlier in the week we had no time to plan or study the theme. suck. so we teach the priesthood lesson and it went well! woohoo. then we go to the second hour or gospel principles. and it turns out the sisters didt prepare anything, our ward mission leader was gone, and nobody knew what the lesson was or who had preparred it....oh and im the only one of us 4 missionaries who has a manual with him. so i jsut say screw it and scan the lesson i the book and teach a second hour to all of the investigators and other people. it went well. we had 4 investigators and 2 members and 4 missionaries in that class. one of the gators couldnt speak german so one of the sisters translatted so she couldnt participate. it was an interesting hour, but elder wilde and i totally nailed it. the sisters were impressed with the lesson and said it was really good. also yesterday we had an appointment with a woman who we went by earlier in the week and made the appt out for sunday. well its wasnt very fest (german word. look it up. to hard to exlain). so i wasnt expecting it to go through. so we go and she is there! and she is excited to see us! and she lets us in and we have a wonderful first lesson! she has the opinion that we all need to figure out for ourselves the truth and that there is only one truth. she doenst like all the other churches because she went on the search a while ago to find the right one and she couldnt find it. she loves the old teachings of christ and nobody teaches\lives that anymore...expect for us :) we taught about authority and a it was just a solid lesson. she agreed to read in the BoM and it was awesome! we then made an appointment out for today and we just got finished with that appointment, a really solid lesson as well on the gospel of christ and it was great. he didnt agree to baptism but he is reall motivated to find out the truth so we invited him to read and pray. awesome week.

so this entire week i have been playing catch up. this area is the most unorganized area ever!! and i understand why. its because you have no time to get organized, but it needs to be organized or else you end up with what im dealing with right now. our area book is a total mess. there are about 3 copies of the same person becuase elders have met the same person multiple times not realizing that the already met the elders and the previous ones already created a teaching record. its insane. the apartment was also a mess and so this last week, this coming week and probably the one after that i will take every extra second i have to organize and clean everything we have. wish me luck.

well i hope this email is long enough. i love you loads. have fun this week. thanks for everything :)

elder ustach

Well hello

good morning from lauenburg!

this week has been brutal. all day everyday was doors. no real need for a play by play of just knocking on doors everyday lol. nothing exciting even like a dog attack or anything. so heres the week. monday was just lüneburg and elder marshall bought a suit, which we found out later that day was to big in one way and to small in another. haha. tuesday we were supposed to ahve a joint teach, but it fell out. so we drove ou member all the way out there for nothing. we drove him back and did doors. w did 172 doors that day or a little over 7 hours of doors. wednesday we had our district meeting which went well. i came a lesson on using scriptures. then we had an eating appointment\lesson with the mengels. they are suuuuper old and love the missioanries and just feed us but dont let us talk or anything. so funny. the rest of the day was doors. we did 125 doors on wednesday which was about 5 1/2 hours of doors. thursday we did nothing but doors until the end of the day when i gave my first baptisimal interview!!! that was the highlight of the week and a really spiritual experience. so solomon is from spain and his family are members, but he isnt. he only speaks spanish. his family has lived here for 1 1/2 years. so none of them speak amazing german. so the interview was done through his daughter who translatted from german to spanish. it was really cool. i would ask a question and he would explain his beliefs with enthusiasim and hand jestures to try and help me understand eventhough i dont know spanish and then his daughter would translate with much less enthusiasm and less words. it was really cool though becuase at one point as he was speaking i could really almost understand what he was telling me. the spirit was so strong at that particular point. it was super cool. my first interview and it was a very unique one. thursday we did 130 doors which was about 6 hours of doors. friday we did weekly planning and more doors. 172 again! which was about 6 hours ( we did a lot of apartment buildings that day). saturday we had an awesome ward party!!!! we celebrated 20 years of the lauenburg ward. it was great. they showed some videos that a member made of each bishop for the last 20 years. it was very funny. the kids just love us. if i could just work with the children all day instead of their lazy, busy, and boring parents, misionary work would be super easy. we also did a few doors that day. sunday was a great ward conference that we had denise and stephan (her boyfriend) come to. it was cool. the talks that were given were awesome. we also had an innactive come to church. church was good. we then had a good eating appointment who afterwards gave us a bowl of food for todays lunch. score!!! afterwards we had doors. only 3 hours of it but it was tough. ask julie for the details on that afternoon. haha. no bueno.

so you can see that this last week was very slow. but this week should be a lot better. we already have some appointments and we are excited for all the progress we should make. we are also doing service twice this week which is always fun. our transfer calls are on friday morning so we shall see if i go or stay. probably and hopefully go, but anything is possible. 

something i realized this week, when i come home my suitcases will be full of nothing but books. haha. i look at my desk and its just full of books. on it and next to it. church literature is just awesome and as a missionary i just cant find the time to read them all. bummer. 

well i love you all and i wish you a wonderful week. bis nächste Woche.

elder ustach