schwarzenberg!

Well this week has definetly been an intersting one. With an area that is basically nowhere. no investigators except for like a few wishy washy ones and then the area being just a mess, we have a lot of work to do. i will just explain the week.

So monday was the last p-day in berlin. it was great! we got burritos with the sisters and wichian. one of their gators. we then went to the zoo!!! i have been waiting 7 months to go to the berlin zoo and it was so cool. i love the zoo. we saw so many cool animals and had a lot of fun. we then had some fallen out appointments so we just went home to pack and elder jon could sleep because he was still a little sick.

tuesday we went to the bahnhof and met other missionaries there. took some pics and then elder jon and some other elders and sisters put me on a train. elder jon almost got stuck on it with me. haha. the sisters and elder jon all ran along the train waving as i was leaving. i got a compartment seat which was nice. the train was super empty. i just wrote letters the entire time. to anxious to sleep. I finally arrived in leipzig to find the zone leaders, one of them being my old friend from the mtc. elder whitehad. then sister jensen and i got on a train to zwickau. there we met our companions and then we all got on another train to shwarzenberg. a long day and it was only 3 in the afternoon. we got home and organized and shopped and then went to ward mission councel. It was really good. we have a super old ward mission leader, but he is supportive and an assistant who is an RM of 2 years. really cool guy. We have good chances to work with him. 

wednesday was district meeting. i met the district which was cool. its deffinetly a lot different than my last district. this one is very ...odd. jsut odd missionaries in it. haha. We had lunch together and then E homan and i went home to study and then went finding in AUE. that is where we live. very cool city. they have a soccer team there. im going to get some fan stuff from them. The stadium is right next to our house. We had no luck as we talked to people on the street but it was fun. i got to know the city really well. that night we had FHE at the church which was a blast. just a bunch of old people. lots of fun. 

thursday we had just a lot of time finding the entire day. we went out to a city called schneeberg. or "snowy mountain" in english. its a cool town up in the higher mountains. well, higher than aue. they have a huge church there. 

friday was good, we had weekly planning which went well and then we went to visit an innactive and also to go to english class. a member bought us döners because we helped him clean the church. that was nice. 

saturday was bockau day. we went to a small town called bockau and went dooring. after that we went to sosa. you should really look at a map and see all the towns we go to in a week and how small they are. haha. we had fun and got some good pictures of the hills and mountians. we had our first session of conference that night. it was great. we had to watch it in german though.

sunday was conference day! we were at the church the entire day and at a members house for food. it was a great day. 

well the area is like lauenburg becuase of all the tiny towns all over the plac. they are all spread out because they used to all be old mining towns. we are in the area of germany called "erzgeberge". This is where all the handmade wooden stuff comes from. its a very old and traditional part of germany. a lot of stories of dragons and knioghts and stuff here. the reason its called schwarzenberg is because back in the day a dragon would always come to the town and burn everything. all of the hills and  town. finally a mighty knight killed the dragon, but now the rocks are black...seriously. the rocks are black. hence "schwarzenberg" or in english "black mountain". cool stuff. they have some cool train stuff here as well so i am excited. just tons of hills and valleys here. i will definetly lose weight. we walk so much. just up and down HUGE hills all day. we run 3 days a week as well, also up and down hills. my calves will be huge after 18 weeks here. haha. 

love you all

The Week

Family and Freinds,

This will be short because i dont have any time. The week was good. One story for this week. A man came to the church on thursday. we were outside with the sisters waiting for people to show up. nobody came. but then at the end this man came and he is so cool. he is from italy and he has been here for 4 months. he was actually looking for the jehovahs witnesses, but then he found us (way better). well he said he would come to church and he did! so awesome! he is meeting with us this week!

to many things to write and absolutely no time. i will write my big email first next week so as to have enough time for it. i love you all. i am doing fine.great actually. i will let you know where i get transferred to next week.

Elder Ustach

Good Week

Hello :)

Well the week has been great. No, br greb did not accept a baptisimal date, but he fasted and prayed about it with us on saturday and he really enjoyed church on sunday. we are making real progress with him and we are not letting him be distracted or start talking himself in circles again. Elder Jo is really good with him to, even if he cannot understand all that he says. It is great. We will have an apointment tomorrow about baptism and hopefully make out a date for the 30th of march :)

Monday, well you heard all about taht already, 

tuesday we had some contact work and a fallen out appointmnet. 

wednesday we had zone training meeting. it went great! i learned a lot about how i need to improve my teaching skills and such. 

thursday we had some service where we carried 30 year old coal out of a basement into a trailer. crazy stuff. we were sneezing black stuff out of our nose for the res of the day LOL. we then had our gesprächskreis where we had br greb there. this is where we agreed on fasting together and he was really excited about it. 

friday we did planning and met with herr ferch. he is so cool. we talked a lot about the pan of salvation and he wants specific answers to questions like "whats happens to the women and children who are murdered in africa because they are christian?" stuff like that. he just needs to get it through his head that chirt is merciful and so is god and all will work out in the end and it does not matter what happens, the point is to find the truth and pray about it and stick to it and hope for the best and have faith taht god is there and will figure it all out. we tried to explain that to him, but it didnt go as well as planned. next time will be better.  we also ate with familie troeger. the are so cool. the husband is not a member, but he was a chef for the german navy and he was also a chef for the american armed forces while the were here in berlin. we ate well! LOL. it was great. we had frickadellin. (i spelt that wrong) and some good vegitables. we also met with br greschke and frau fleischer.

saturday we did service for br dein. that was a blast! we cut down a 30-40 foot tree. br dein got on a ladder and cut branches off and then wedug around the tree and ut the roots with the chain saw and then tugged and pulled and pushed and shoved until he finall fell over. It was stupid. the biggest root was diretly below the tree, the one we could not get to. after 3 ours we got it down. awesome! we also ate lunch with br eichelbaum. he is doing well. we then met with a  woman, frau bernu...but she did not let us in. so we taught her really quick at her door. we even had a joint teach so it was super awkward because the member couldnt do much. i just talked for ike 5 minutes and we left. super wierd. 

sunday was great. we had br geb at church, fabian, and frau fleischer. and good news with frau fleischer! she can be baptised. she is a little handicapped and so she has a person who is in charge of her, who has until now, not allowed her to be baptised. but she ahs cahnged her mind and she can now be baptised!we now have a lot of work to do to get her ready for baptism. 

the sisters have a baptism this sunday and it will be great. we are super excited to be there for it. so is the ward. 

the week was great. it was warm. spring is defiently here!

thank you for all that you do. unti next week.

Elder Ustach

A warmer Week

Hello everyone! :)

Wow has this week gone by so fast. It is amazing how time just flies by as the time of my mission gets shorter. weird. so to start this email here is a copied section that i wrote to president kosak telling him of the miracles and tender mercies this week.

The tender mercies of the lord are wonderful. This week has been great and i have truly seen the lords hand, not directly, but in small and simple ways through his tender mercies. i was on exchange twice this week, once with edler hansen, and once with elder Hein. elder h is such an example in all that he does and before we went finding, in the car he said such a wonderful prayer to ask the lord for help. and what happened...well we didnt find anyone but the conversations that we had and the spirit that we felt as we spoke to people on the street was amazing. we literaly (not literally) saw a womans heart softened as we spoke to her. she started out as an unreligious person, then a few minutes later she "kind of believed that there was a god" then at the end she accepted the commitment to pray and ask god about what we spoke about was true. she was so amazing. the spirit is so powerful, we just need to get out of his way to let him change these people. also with elder Hein, the day was not going so well. we were finding and talking and talking and talking to a lot of people. well one area had absolutely noone. the other area was also not working. i had the feeling that we were just in the wrong place. the lord intended us to be somewhere else. so we werent sure. i said a prayer on the bus in my head to have him lead us to the right place. as we walked we met a few people, but still not much. then our 1 appointment for the day fell out as we knocked on his door. now we only had 1 hour left before the end of the exchange. what to do...so we decide to go to the nearest largest street and talk to everyone. before we go, i suggest to elder Hein that we say a prayer, having the memory of elder Hansens prayer in my head and remembering how well it helped, and he said that it would be a good idea. i say a quick prayer and we go. Not to many people on the street, but as we go we meet a large man, very scarry man with tattoos and piercings with a pitbull dog. i talk to him about the purpose of life and he just stops and opens up to us. he is a very nice man and wants to meet with us. we had a very good and effective conversation on the street where we testified of christ and his sacrifice for us and why he died for us. it was great. then just 20 meters later Elder He stops to talk to a man at a bus stop (something i dont normally do) and this man is a christian from iran who just moved to berlin looking for a church! this was saturday night and he said he would come the next day . he was very excited! (unfortunatly he didnt come, but we have his number). we then had many more wonderful conversations on the street in that hour. it was wonderful.

So that is the awesomeness of wednesday and saturday. the spirit was so strong this week and i loved it.

Monday, we got elder jo a hair cut, that was an adventure, lol. We then did all the sites in berlin. we hit the brandenburg gate, jewish memorial, berliner dom, rechstag building (goverenment building of germany), alexander platz. we did it all! it was great! we also ran into some sisters that i knew. cool stuff.

tuesday we did service which was great, then an appointment with daniel. he is having issues with his family and testimony, so we are there to support him and help him as he needs it. we also helped him with his "invention" that he is working on. We then went to br eichelbaums...no food this time but we helped him move a bunch of furniture out of his apartment and throw it all away at the dump. that was fun. We then had an appointment fall out with a new gator, so we went out to a street and di oyms with no to much sucess.

wednesday we had all of our study and then district meeting. The AP´s came and participated. that was loads of fun. we then started an exchange with the AP´s. 

thursday we had diesnt by an innactive member. he is really old and sick and has two apartments...yes two, full of musical electronic equipment. and he is moving now to a placewhere people can take care of him. we helped clear out his basement which was full of coal...yes coal. his apartment is so old and he has lived there for so long that his apartment is still full of coal from back in the day that they needed it to heat their apartments. so we carried coal and stuff up stairs and into a trailer and that was fun.  we then ahd a great appointment with hans ferch...(elder wilde do you remember him?) it was such a great appointment on the plan of salvation. we then had our open door thing at the church. it went well with br greb there and wichian. 

Friday we had weekly planning and ward mission meeting. we planned for the baptism of elisha, a gator of the sisters. he is 9 years old. the ward dropped the ball on getting him baptised as he was 8 so the sisters had to teach him and stuff. we started our exchange that night with glienicke.

saturday i was with elder he. he is only 9 days on the mission but a beast of an elder. he has no fear. he is awesome. our day is basically usmmarized in the text above.

sunday we had church which was great. elder jonhston and i gave our testimonies. we then had a great eating appointment and then a day of studying and are book work. 

today we went to the funeral of a members mother. br tesla. he is so cool.we were there with the sisters and 3 other members. it was such a weird funeral, but it was good. we then tried to go to the zitadelle, but it costs money...i guess we just snuck in the last 2 times i have been there. LOL. 

thats the week i love you all and hope you all have a great week where ever you are :)

Elder Ustach

Family and Friends,

This week was very enjoyable and not so much at the same time. i woke up wednesday sick and its still not completely gone. But also great because we had district meeting with sister kosak and former elder F. the old AP.We also had interviews. The sun was shining nearly everyday and it was just a good week in that aspect. the work slowed down a lot but we dont focus on the bad. 

I am sorry about the pics. i guess they didnt send. i will send some more.

I forgot to tell you last email. last monday we went to a concentration camp. It was great! I learned a lot more than the one in Hamburg. This one was more of an execution camp rather than a work camp like in hamburg. Very different. It is just unimaginable how brutal and grousem they were to the prisoners. crazy stuff

Tuesday we had service which was great! we cleared out this plot of land covered in ivy and old wood. there was this one HUGE log that was so soaked in water that when i tried to move it with this axe thing i had, it just ripped right through it and didnt help at all. i then just grabbed a bunch of the wood from the inside of it and squeezed and water just came gushing out. this wood was soaked! it was more of a log of mush, rather than wood.  but we had a blast. we then had some fallen out appointments which was alright because we went to obstallee for some finding and it went ok. Nothing special. that night we had ward council. that was fun. there is one member of the bishopric who i think does not think that we should be there and always gives snarky comments back to what we...well i say. we were discussing some investigators and baptisms and such and he made a comment and i replied nicely and gave my opinion, then another member of the bishopric agreed with me directly after it and then like 3 others pof the ward councel did the same. it was great!!! HAHA.

wednesday we had our interviews and such. i got the mail. thankyou for my card BTW. My interview went well.president asked how long i had left and he then asked me where i wanted to go for the last three transfers. i didnt say anything. but i think he wrote down hannover. we shall see. but bottom line is that i am gone at the end of this month. president was also very pleased with my teaching and how i am as a district leader. so im not messing up to bad to have him notice me to much. this is good :) haha. But he did say he was proud of my leadership and was happy and such about my training elder j. i have figured out on my mission, my best strangth is to just get the job done and quietly. my leaders dont notice me, but its because they dont have to. earlier i was kind of sad that pres was not talking to me much or really noticing me, but then again that is a strength...he has 270 missionaries to worry about if i do my job and be quiet about it he has one less problem on his plate. i have enough trust from my leaders that they dont have to be talking to me daily and worrying about me. they can trust me enough to let me go off alone and get the job done and forget about it. i like that.

thursday we did doors and then we had a great lesson with serge. he is a cool gator from russia! he is orthodox and is such a cool guy.the entire lesson he would ask a question and then we would respond and then he would say..." so all i ahve to do is read this book and it will all make sense" lol. YES!!! he understood!!!

friday we had fallen out appointments and a good appointment with br greb. we also had an eating appointment with an american. we then went to tiergarten to pick up our "mini missionaries"!!! they are a bunch of youth out of northern germany who all came to berlin to tag alone with us for a day and see what missionary work is like. it was so cool. i got brother timm!!! he was so cool. elder jgot brother shchwarzkopf. they were both really cool. we got home way late.

saturday we went finding with our minis and then went back to tiergarten to drop them off and have lunch. we were not planning on eating anything but it was dominos pizza! not normal in germany. so we ate. that was a stupid idea, because an hour alter we went to br eichems house and he fed us icebein!!!  i could not finish it! i was so embarrassed.

sunday, we had a great day at church. it went super well. elisha got baptised. he is a gator of the sisters. 

sorry, i ran out of time. to many people emailing me as i wrote this one. until next week. :)

Elder Ustach

Week 5 of Training

Well i hope your week went well. The week here was pleasent. we had some training and some good meetings and some good lessons so i cant complain. the stress of training and missionary work is getting to me and elder p so we had a day where we blew up at each other, but it was good because we now understand one another a lot more and are working together on fixing the problems and making it more enjoyable for the both of us.

The week

monday was good. we did emails and then right afterwards we met with emmanuel! he is sooo cool. he is from ghana. such a cool guy. we ahd a great lesson and then invited him to baptism. well he didnt agree ebcause he is worried about having to be baptised twice. we invited him to pray about it and he accepted. he also accepted the invitation to read. so he is solid. we then had FHE with the dessin family which was so cool. we didnt have a gator there but the sisters did and it was a lot of fun. that night since we didnt do it earlier, we went shopping.

tuesday we did some service which is always fun. we also met with br g. we had a fallen out appt so we went by a lot of contacts and talked to a lot of people on the street. we then had an appointment with herr s. he is so cool. we figured out that he meets with the j-dubs as well once a week. thats a bummer.

wednesday we had zone training meeting. at the begginign it wasnt so great but then it got better and my mood improved so i wanted to learn more. it was good. we then helped br g move some stuff. and then talked to people on the street the rest of the day. nobody wanted to meet with us but we had some solid conversations and gave a young man a book of mormon.

thursday we did a lot of walking and talking to people. we also did some doors. then all of our appointments fell out...bummer eh? haha. but its all good. we had a great discussion with bishop at the end of the day and we really did try our best.

friday we met with fabian. such a cool kid. he has a testimony of the gospel and the church, he just has so much opposition that he cant join the church right now. if he did so much stuff will happen. for only being 19 and having to deal with all that he is dealing with, he is awesome! we also met with rene and that was great. we invited him to baptism, but he declined. he said that he is not yet ready. no problem. but now he knows what we expect and where we see all of this going.

we then met with br eichelbaum with the sisters and had a very pleasant eating appointment. we then met with rosa and br dessin. that went well. then some study.

sunday was good. br greb came on time! the lessons were good and after the first hour an older man walked in and said he wanted to look at our church. well he stayed for the next two hours and was really interested in it. i invited him to come on thursday. we shall see if he comes.  we then had a great eating appointment with fam richte and then met with fam lindenau to help them with their missioanry work.

thats realy it for the week. we are super busy and trying our best to help our gators to progress and really make a decision. haha.

thank you for all you do and we will talk next week

elder ustach

It's cold

ITS COLD!!!!

This week has been the first snow of the year and then it just decided to drop down to -18 or so with with and snow!!! -18 is 0°F (about)!!! with wind!!! stupid. look up 0°F with 15 mph wind. what is the wind chill factor there? how cold is that? thats what we were walking through at one point this week. i was tempted to wear two pairs of long johns it was so cold. i wore two jackets, and had my pair of wool socks and my other socks on to keep my feet dry and warm. luckily i have my earmuffs or else my ears would have fallen off. there was one point where it was just so windy and dark, and wet, and cold that neither of us wanted to even move. it was crazy. even the germany were complnaining about the cold. thankfull today warmed up a bit we are now back to 0°C. which is nice...but there is a huge storm hitting berlin right now so we are getting dumped on with snow. we shall see how much it brings.

The week was great. monday was great because we had a lesson with a man we found on the street a few days previous. his name is rene. he is so cool. he is like a professional pianist. cool guy. he now is super interested in the booik of mormon and just soaked up the entire 1st lesson when we gave it to him on monday. unfortunatly he works a lot teaching piano, so we cant meet to often, but we will meet again. we called him and he ahd already read in the BoM and more chapters than we had given him. totally cool. the rest of monda was kind of also shot. we had 3 appointments on monday at wierd times that cuased us to have no "free" time on p-day, just shopping, running ernads and running from appointment to appointmnet

tuesday we had service at the art school again. it was nice to see herr w again and help him out at the school. he is just so cool. at the end we got to help him clean out a plaster mold he was making of someones head and then watched him fill it and stuff. cool stuff. after service we had an appointment with br g. br k came and that was super helpful. we didnt really teach anything, but it helped br g soooo much. he just wants a mentor and someone to be there for him. and br k said he would be more than happy to do that.for him. br k is the man! we then went by a ton of contacts as it started to snow and talked to a bunch of people on the street. a good day.

wednesday we had district meeting which went well. at the begginning the doorbell of the church rang and i answered it. it was a young man, well like 19 or so, who was asking for more info on the church and was looking for a "church change". he wants a new church to go to. unfortunatly we were having district meeting, so we made out an appointment for the next day and i gave him my card. unfortunatly he didnt come bac the next day :( we had a solid lesson during district meeting and then we started our exchange. elder p first exchange. he was super worried about it and told me i was a bad father for leaving him with another elder for the day. he just needs to grwo up and get over it haha. he had fun and learned a lot from elder marshall. i was in spandau with elder o...man can this elder eat! he is tiny, but he out ate me!!! that never happens! i must either be eating less or this kid can really eat. he is a beast. the exchange was loads of fun and we had a lot of success on the street talking to people. unfortunatly some appointments fell out, but thats no problem. we met with rosa, a new investigator of ours and the lesson went super well.

thursday we taught a member some english. we had a breakfast appointment with him and helped him out with his accent for his work. he works at the airport. he is super cool. we then had a fallen out appointment from the kid from wednesday. we then switched back. i picked up elder p and we did some oyms on the street. we found one lady who accepted an appointment for tomorrow (tuesday) and who actually meets with the j-dubs every monday. so we shalls ee how that goes. we will intorduce her to the BoM and she will say goodbye to the j-dubs. we then had another fallen out appointmnet and then our "open door" at the church. nobody came but it was a good time to call people and make out other appointments. we then met with familie simon. they are so cool. we taught them about missionary work and how they can do their own work. we made some good progress.

friday we had some training on the computer for our comp study which got us suuuper excited about family history work. it was awesome. we then ahd weekly planning and went with a member to his home teacher family to give the wife a blessing. we had an appointment with frau fleischer nad br g that night which went well.

saturday we had a good talk with the family history advisor in our ward. he is a cool guy. hopefully we can work more with him and the ward and our investigators through family history. we then had some fun egtting to br eichelbaums. because of the cold, the u-bahns were not working. so we had to use some s-bahns and busses to get to him. we had a great eating appointment. kohl rouladden....man its sooo good. who new you could stuff cabbage with meat and it would taste like that? amazing. we had had it before, but that was the first time for elder p. we then went by contacts and talked to people on the street the rest of the day. we had an appt fall out which wa really sad, but all is good.

sunday was a great day. churhc went well. br greb didnt come, which is wierd, but it was because his car is broken and he cant drive his moped in the cold and he had to take care of his daughter. so hopefully next week it is better. our eating appointment went well and we also had a good time on the street talking to people. this one man we talked to didnt want to have anything to do with us after we told him we were talking about families and such. he told us " my family is broken and there is nothing after this life" or something along those lines. i was tired and didnt have the energy to think of anything spectacular to say.
thats the week i hope you all have a great one.

Elder Ustach

Meter pizza

Hello everyone :) i hope your week went well. sorry, i dont have much time so this will be a brief email.

monday, we ate a meter pizza!!!! man it was so easy this time with 8 people. it was loads of fun though.

tuesday, we had service which was fun and then we had to go to an appointment that fell out. we then had another fallen out appt with br greb which didnt make us happy, but it was because thepower and water shut off at the school so he was running around trying to fix it all. we then met with ahmet, which was wierd. we wont be meeting with him again. 

wednesday we had zo-co which was loads of fun to see my friends and stuff from further away, but the zo.co was kind of a bore. sorry to say. but everything we learned, we were already supposed to have learned from some training videos that they required us to watch theweek before. so it was just review. we also met with ali that night what was a good appointmnet.

thursday we met with br g which went well. we also went out to falkensee to give a man a book of mormon. long story. i need to copy th explanation from another email. 

there it is :)

so ya. emmanuel is awesome. that night we went to gesprächskreis which went suuuper well. the bishop came with br greb and the sisters brought wichian and two other gators. awesome stuff.

friday-we had gmk which went well. we also met with rosa who is super cool. the rest of the day kind of fell out and elder johnston got sick so he called sister kosak and the rest of the day was us sitting in the appt and studying and him sleeping and taking meds. i hope i dont get it.

saturday-we met with the geneaology advisor which went really well. we then met with br eichelbaum and we then had weekly planning. 

sunday- was great! church went great. then the eating appointment went well. we then went dooring in an area which also went well. just a good day yesterday. elder johnston got a migrane in the middle of it so we had to run home so he could take his prescription strength meds. 

thats the week. some pics also of the pizza and stuff. :)

Elder Ustach

meter pizza.

i photo bombed elder johnston. LOL

2014

Friends and family,

Wow was this week a whirlwind! im surprised i survived. im surprised my trainee survived.i had 3 companions this week! crazy stuff and just a lot to do in such a short amount of time. But the week was good. It is starting to get colder here. All the germans were wondering when winter would come, or if it ever would. It has been around 5-10 degrees for the past months and so its just like we are stuck in fall forever. But we are finally getting a bit colder. lots of rain :)

Monday, was a good p-day with elder w. we organized and packed and then we went to the stake center for some zone sport. We played soccer, the problem was though, that the goal we were shooting into is as big as i am! haha. so i jsut need to squat down in front of it and block everthing. loads of fun. I also learned that i suck at basketball. there was a sister who destroyed nearly all the elders. it was intense. she played on her team at home, but it was jsut so funny to see this shorter sister just weave in and out of bigger elders and then just somehow throw the ball up and it goes in. all the elders on the sidelines are just sitting there with open mouths in amazement. it was intense. elder santiago who even played college basketball was just sitting there laughing because of how amazed he was and how embarrassing it was for the elders. it was a great day. we came home and had an appointment with herr smer. he is doing so well. He just needs some clarifications on some doctrine but he is doing great. 

Tuesday, we had to leave earlier than planned to get to the train station because another elder was coming earlier than expected, because he is my new companion for the next few days until my new one comes. so we go to hauptbahnhof and find him and then the chaos of transfer days begin. we were running all over the bahnhof up and down stairs and going everywhere to pick up elders and sister and dropping them off at another train so that nobody is ever alone and nobody gets lost. elder we left me in the middle of it. some sisters mised their train and had to catch one an hour later. then at the end it was elder j and i and sister der who was waiting for her new companion. well her train comes but she doesnt get off. uh oh....so we call the zone leaders telling them that we have a lost sister. and i need to get to a meeting in an hour but sister de mer cant be sitting in bahnhof alone. so we call some other elders to come and wait with her. we call the sister fro where this lost sister is coming from and turns out here train was 15 minutes late so she missed her connection in a city further north. hopefully she comes on a train just an hour alter. well we wait and wait and wait for this new train but as we are waiting we get a call from a random number. well sis demer misses the call just and then gets a voicemail...its her long lost sister!!! she is in bahnhof already...we were so confused. this proves to you how big this trainstation is. about 5 levels of trains and i think 18 platforms for trains to come in on. so we go and find her new sister. then as we find her we see two other elders (the ones who were coming to help sis demer so that i could leave. they are now looking for a lost elder who missed his connection in berlin bahnhof on his way to dresden. chaos on transfer days!!! LOL. we got it all worked out and then we went to the stake center so i could go to my district leader meeting. it went well and i learned a lot. we then came home and went by contacts.

wednesday, was a blast! elder j and i were together. we had a good mroning on OYMs and then lunch. we then had a good appointment with florian and then some fallen out appointments. one of our gators, herr franke, tschüssed us. sad day. his friend answered the door and handed us the book of mormon and told us to never come back and to never call herr franke again and never to talk to him or herr franke again. a bit harsh, but whatever. his loss. we then went to the church for an appointment and then it fell through, so we went to a member house becuase they said the had food for us. so we go and their son answeres the door. dal (21) asks if its ok that he didnt cut it. he said it was meat. we said that it was no problem. so he goes into the other room and comes back with a bucket with a pig in it!!!! a cooked pig jsut stairing at us!!!! LOL. elder j and i had to stop ourselves from laughing at the situation. da told us to be excited because it was really tasty, we were but we didnt know how to react. so we just thanked him a bunch and then walked back top the church with a bucket full of pig. we got to the church and the members there gave us the wierdest looks. haha. we picked some stuff up there and went home. for the enxt hour i was carving this pig. i had no clue hopw one cuts a pig, or which meat is best, or whatever. so elder j and i stand in the kitchen just attacking this pig. there is a sweet picture attached that is super funny. 

thursday we woke up and went to lankwitz to ick up our new missionaries. we had some trainer training and then we met the new elders. no sisters in this group. we went up and introduced our areas. then pres paired us all up. i was second to last and i got the second largest elder...elder johnston!.he is from west jordon utah. a cool kid. only 18 years old though. freash from high school and has only been away from home for less than a month. so we shall see how his homesickness goes. he warned me about that possibly being an issue. he is cool though. exactly the same size as me. i was thinking i would get a HUGE elder or a super tiny one, but i got one that i exactly the same size as me. he is an inch taller and about 15 puinds more. but we are basically the same. he gained 50 pounds in the mtc so we have a goal of loosing weight so that he can get back into some suit pants that he brought with him that fit him the first day. haha. after picking him up we went home and dropped off his bags and ahd a comp study to prepare for our lessons. we then went out and had an appointment with herr schwemer. it went great. e.johnston cant speak so well, but he can understand a lot of german. he did GREAT for his frist day! he spoke so much more than i did. i remember my first week and i didnt say a word. elder johnston has some bravery. he just needs to build his confidence in his german and he is solid. 

friday we had district meeting which went well. we then had an appointment with br grb,. our first since he left on his vacation. he still has the same problems but has some motivation to fix them and to change. we will be calling him daily now to remind him to read and pray and hopefully that gives him the boost he needs to "find out for himself" we then ahd our studies and then visited linda. she is so cool and it was in english which made elder jo happy.  we then visited a member family and helped them make a family missionary plan. it was great. they loved elder johnstona nd we had a great conversation about missionary work and helped them, especially the father to have motivation to talk to people. 

saturday we had study and then br eichelbaum. elder jo saw firsthand how much br eichelbaum cooks and how much i can eat. HAHA. he told me afterwards "man if you can eat that much and still loose weight on your mission, then that gives me a lot of hope for loosing weight!" LOL. awesome. i never realized i had lost weight, but then i showed him a picture of me back in lauenburg and he was amazed at how much i had lost. cool stuff. we then went and talked to epople on the strete for a while because our other appointments fell out. wethen had weekly planning. 

sunday we had a great time at church., br geb came back to church which was great. he had some good things to say in the class which was good. we also taught preisthood...well i tauight priesthood because we ran out of time to plan for the lesson, so i threw it together that morning and elder j didnt know what was going on to participate and couldnt understand. after church and our eating appointment, we had study. during german study we were working on it and he got super frustrated. he told me he was just super tired. it made me look back on my frist week and such. sunday are the worst at the beggining because of all the german....soooo much german it makes you want to explode. so i knowhow he feels. i felt that was for the first 6 sundays haha. so we will work on his german and make progress. he does a great job though already. im super proud of him and how much he can already understand. 

thats our week. i love you all and thank you for your emails and support. 

Elder Ustach

beautiful rathaus

elder wilde dancing

the chaotic mess after new years