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
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