Family and Freinds,
Well the week was awesome! The ward blew it out of the water with our christmas party this week! Elder Wilde and I were so surprised that it went so well and we were just so happy. if the ward here did an activity like that once a month, we would have so many more people getting baptised and getting to know the church. So cool! It was also much warmer this week which was good and bad :) but we enjoyed it. Our "hoho-zo-co" was this week and that was amazing! We watched "17 miracles", which if you have not seen, i would recommend it! We also had some very good lessons and an awesome testimony meeting at the end. But the best of all was the music. We had 3 or 4 musical numbers. My favorite though was sister nielson as she sang "like an angel passing through my room". Have you all heard that song? if not go and listen to it! You sent me an album last year from motab for christmas and it has sicily or whoever she is singing that song on it. Its a great song and sister nielson just destroyed it. she has some pipes and it awesome! then halfway through the big meeting, atfer we ate, president gets his ipad out and shows us a video of that same sister and her companion (who beep boxes) rapping the "standards of excellence" HAHA. awsome stuff. so the week.
Monday we had rain andwe visited the castle here ion spandau. i got some good pictures of that. We then visited the christmas market again. not much esle to do in spandau, because we are to lazy to go deep into berlin and visit a museum or something. But maybe next week we will visit the video game museum!!!!! im so stoked for that. I will be a little kid in a candy store in that place. HAHA. We then visited some investigators and it was a good p-day.
Tuesday we did service again like we normally do. the sisters were late. It was a blast though. elder wilde and i got to carve some trees...hard to explain but he basically gave us some chizels and hammer and said to carve all the abrk off of some trees. cool stuff. We were then supposed to have GMK, but that fell out as we were driving home to change. so we then visited a man...who wasnt home. But that was ok, because that gave us time to go by some other people. We then visited a member who we had never really talked to much before. He is sooooo cool. He is not like normal members and actually has a very interesting view on the gospel. Still a cool guy though. He is a little old and gave us a lot of "life advice". it was helpful. We then had a fallen out appointment (3rd of the day) and so we went to familie simon. they are the coolest family ever and they just make anyone they meet a happy person. we had a really good lesson and spiritual thought on the meaning of christmas, Hopefully we will watch the "joy to the world" dvd on another day with them and they will invite a friend to their house. it was will be great.
Wednesday we had a member inspect our apartment...we passed. he also gave us a new lamp, because ours was broken. We then got picked up by a member to go to br greb and teach him. well we show up and he sint there and is super busy when we call him. so he canceled. bummer. But we went by some other contatcs and innactives with br krause (our joint teach). none of them were home but we got a lot of really good information about the ward the people we were visiting. he is an older member and so he knows a lot of people and their "stories". very helpful. We then go to family smith. well sis smith was home but br smith was not. so we cant go in. so we talk to her at the door and she had watched the restoration film. she liked it. unfortunatly we couldnt have a lesson but she is doing well. just stressed out with the holiday season. we hope to meet this week and help them out some more and get them to come to church. We then met another member at the major bus station and took a bus to visit an investigator. that lesson went ok. the member took control and taught his own lesson which was ok. but we have a lot of work to do with both of them haha. that night we taught ali. this lesson was one of the best for the week,. he was late and he said that before he came he had been sick for the apst couple days. then as he was thinking of coming to our appointment he gets better and comes. then our lesson went really well and he prayed at the end. it was a powerful prayer and at the end he said " i feel sick...i am sorry" interesting that he said that. he was apologizing for his prayer. but his prayer was awesome! and he think he said he was "sick" only because he doesnt know how to describe the spirit. it was a powerful lesson.
thursday we ahd our zone conference. the elders from hohenstein spent the night the night before and we all went to tiergarten. it was so great to see all my old friend and to see new people there. mom, elder s didnt give me your huf, but i gave him his hug from his mom. HAHA. he was confused so i guess his mom didnt say anything. or he doenst read his moms emails. but the conference was great. i got my package. thanks btw :) i also got to meet the new sister!!! her name is sister harris. she is from wisconsin and she is so funny. fresh from the mtc and byu german classes. lol. but her german is good. she just needs confidence and the accent down. german and wisconsin dont mix well. its funny. but she is so cool. so now we have 5 sisters in the district and 4 elders. the spandau sisters are in a drit (triple). cool stuff. we came home that night with so many packages and post from all 5 of us it was crazy. but we made it home. something from the zo-co that was really good that elder wilde reminded me of later was that at the last zo.co or i should say "mission tour" with elder k. he told us that we ( the missionaries in that room) were as strong as the pioneers were and that he would have been proud and honored to push a hand cart with us...ok cool compliment right? i didnt think much of it when he said it. but then on thursday we watched the mpovie 17 miracles and that just changedmy whole perspective on the pioneers and the hadncart companies. it was really cool to ahve a 70 tell us that. and it just took my companion and a movie to help me realize how great of a compliment it was. Sistewr j asked me after the conference if i cried during the movie. she being the one who cries at the drop of a hat and i always have a comment about it. so she asked me kind of jokingly because i never cry and dont usually show emotion and she is the complete opposite. i said " well i got teary eyed at one point, but i didnt cry" that stopped her dead in her tracks LOL. she was all " are you serious?!?" it was funny to see her reaction to that. she said that she went through two packages of tissues during the entire film. what a girl haha :) jk. it was a good movie though.
friday we had weekly planning and then an eating appointment with br e. he didnt stuff us with food that day thankfully. he is such a cool member and we love visiting him. We then went by some contacts and we met some cool people on the street. something we noticed with one girl that we talked to, was that missionaries are so impersonal a lot of the time. with this girl, it was a very personal conversation. at the beginning elder we starts and stops her on the street. as he is talking she kind of boringly looks away and looks at me with a kind of "what the heck is he talking aobut?" look. i was thinking, oh dang we got to save this. so super awkward as elder wilde stops talking, and she is kind of "ok, cool" and then i start talking and try to get to know her personally. hard to explain, but it was . but you know better and it was just getting to know her personally. her religious background and such. she started blushing half was through which was funny. it was really funny. afterwards she accepted our card and we got her name. no number but she will remember us. afterwards elder wilde turns to me and goes "what was that all about?!?" haha. i was completely oblivious to anything. i asked "what?" "she was blushing and everything. what was that?" it was funny. i was just following the example of my zone leaders. as i was on an exchange with elder ashby, and we went finding, he gets to know his investigators and people on the street very well. instead of being a robot missionary he is very loose and it allows the people on the street to see us as normal people rather than robots in black suits and such. elders are just tos carred some times to let go of the structure of the "rules" and be a little more free and normal. well it worked for elder a and it worked for me. how many times do you tell people on the street your name and get to know them personally before giving them a 30 minute lesson on the book of mormon...let me tell you. a lot of missionaries dont. and so thats what i did. i was just a normal person with a purpose but i let her see who i was as a person before she got scarred away by the name tag and black suit. It was great. after our fidning we visited a member and his freind and had a good lesson. we then ahd some more fallen out appointments that day and that was it.
saturday we visited some gators in the mornning and then went to br greb again for a lesson. well this is where the week got even better. before the lesson we wanted to kind oteach a "hammer" lesson. that means that we wanted to kind of tell him "its this or that and you need to decide" rather than always being wishy washy and in the middle. but we ahd no clue how to do it without totally offending this man. so we go in having no clue whats going on and he starts talking. as he is talking i jsut get the feeling we need to teach the plan of salvation.br greb had for the past couple lessons showd interest in learning more about it, but we avoided it because it was a waste of time. well now came the point of, do i follow the spirit or our plan? well we followed the spirit and taught the second lesson. thank goodness elder wilde followed the flow of the conversation and we then taught the plan of salvation. and this time instead of a lesson where br greb talks the most, it was a two sided conversation and he had really god questions and really good comments. it was great! the spirit was so strong. it was a great time. After br g we went and picked up fr f to go to the christmas party. this is where the week gets even better.so many people were there!!! it was great!
sorry im running out of time. basically the week was great!" the party was a blast and everyone enjoyed themsevles. sorry for ending the email short. until next week.
elder ustach
