I'm so happy that all of you sent me Emails! I kind of forget about being able to email on my P-day until the day actually comes, but then I get super excited that I get to read your emails! My first full week in Germany has just been so great! It's been really fun, and I've learned a lot about myself, (how to be a good missionary, and how to communicate with everybody-people on the street, church members, Elders and Sister, etc.). I've had really really good days, and a couple hard days, but at the end of the week, all you have to do is get prepared for next week. I love being a missionary. We have one focus and care in the world, and in that sense, being a missionary is really easy! You put all your focus and attention into missionary work, and it's just great.
Let me tell you what I did this week/how it went:
Monday: P-Day was fun. I Emailed, got a Döner (kind of like a gyro, but Turkish and dirtier), looked around the stores in Innenstadt, visited Marktkirche (this creepy super old catholic church that got bombed out), and did some cleaning/unpacking. After P-Day was over, we visited a local member family. They were really nice and interesting, but they fed us WAY too much lasagna. Members in Germany make the missionaries ridiculously large meals and expect us to eat it all, but that just shows how much they care for us. I thought I was going to throw up. WE played "kniffle" (kind of like Yahtzee), and went home.
My first Döner...
Tuesday: We went by on a member who had converted about 3 years ago, but he had become less active and apparently moved away from the address he gave the church, so we had to travel way out of the city for nothing, but it was nice to get a little more familiar with the area. We ate lunch (Maggie packs-they are a missionary's dream! They're not incredibly delicious, but the are fast, easy and pretty good. Stuff like rice mix that you add meat too or soup mix.) All three of our appointments fell out. They were all in Mittefeld, which is a neighborhood that is mostly Africans or Russians. We then met with a progressing investigator. She was cool, but she's been being taught for like the past year, so I don't know how promising that is. Then we had Gemiko, which is Ward Mission Leader Conference, which went well.
Wednesday: There was a leadership training on Wednesday, so Elder Thorley had to go to that and I went on splits. I ended up in a quad with Elder Reeze, Elder Von Niede, and Elder Prima. We had quad study, went to Burger King (way swanky in Germany), and then helped out a member moving some stuff. I was proud because I used the Bahns without any help, and knew how to get around Hannover, which is a pretty big city. We then had an appointment fall out, but after, we visited a in Mittafeld. They're an African family with two children. The husband, is really great and spiritual and nice. We made out a baptismal date with him! Elder Thorley had me ask (In English because none of the Africans here speak German) if he'd be baptized and he said yes! So cool. Then we met with an Indian man and played volleyball with him and the ward youth. It was a really cool day.
Thursday: We have district meeting on Thursdays. We meet with the companionship from Hildesheim, and Nienbürg, and the Eheparr (married couple) and us and the zone leaders (Elder Locher and Carlson who live in the apartment with us). We then met with an African lady. We talked about prophets and the chance we had over the weekend to hear general conference. After that we met with returned missionaries in the ward, and students at the university here. The fed us meatloaf with a bunch of melted cheese on it, really good buttery corn, and boiled potatoes (my favorite). Again, always way too much food haha. After that we met with an older lady from Spain who speaks Spangledeutsch (Spanish/English/German. Zum Beispiel: So these are die zwölf Aposteles?). She's been a member for a couple of years, but has some problems so we meet with her. She said that Elders Pollard and Thorley are angels, after we described how we don't get payed to do this work. After that we met with another African lady. It went well.
Friday: We started off our day by visiting a very smart and intellectual man who kind of argues with us the whole time, but it went well. He is stuck on the resurrection. We had weekly planning and ate lunch after. After, we met with an older Russian lady that we had a walk in on while klingeling (doors) She's hesitant, but I feel good about her.
The weekend was just full of lounging around at the church watching conference in the big comfy chairs they have. I took a lot of good notes! I thought conference was great. Especially all of the points they made about forgiveness and love. We took breaks in between sessions to go street contacting so we could make some new appointments. Saturday night was really hard and frustrating for me. We probably spoke to everybody in Hannover that was drunk that night, or didn't speak any German of English.
Anyway, That was my week!
Now to answer your questions:
Hannover is a really great and big city. Most of the buildings here just look so old. There are a couple REALLY old churches and other things like the Rathause or the Opera house that are way cool looking. We ride the Bahns all day, every day. The public transportation system in Hannover is just way good, and it's too big of an area to ride bikes in. I buy German products everyday! I shop at a place called Kaufland (Buyland) which is like Walmart. It's just pretty normal. Except the have escalators for shopping carts because it's two stories. My apartment is nice. It's right near downtown Hannover, but it's not loud at night or anything. I live there with my trainer/companion Elder Thorley, and the two Zone Leaders for the Hannover zone Elder Locher and Carlson. (I'm in the Hannover area which is in the Hannover zone). I called President Pimentel the other day to tell him about our baptismal date, but other then that we just email him and see him at conferences and stuff. The ward is cool. It's pretty big: around 150. I'm trying to meet everybody! They all said my testimony was good.
Well I hope this is enough information for you! It took me 50 minutes to write haha so I need to move on to some other emails but I love and miss you all so much! I can't wait to hear more from you!
Elder Pollard
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