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