I love reading the emails that I get
every Monday. I'm just so busy all week and expected to immerse myself
in the missionary work, so I sometimes forget about being able to email
home on Monday! But I love hearing about how everybody is doing (even if
it involves Thomas' girlfriend breaking up with him), and I love
telling you how I'm doing. I'm having such a good time here in Germany.
I'm learning just SO much! I get bad headaches, but I think it's just
because I'm learning so much everyday! I'm learning all about the
scriptures in detail, learning German, learning interesting things about
myself and my limits, learning the ward, learning the city, I just
learn all day!
Let me tell you about my week. It was the first week
of the second transfer (Elder Thorley's last transfer), and we set out
to make it really good. Unfortunately, we had A LOT of appointments fall
out. We didn't teach as many lessons as we wanted, and unfortunately,
we lost one investigatorss baptismal date. He didn't show up to church
again, so he won't be able to attend sacrament meeting 3 times (the
required amount) before his baptismal date, so we have to move it back.
Monday: Last P-Day was hectic. We emailed in the
morning as usual. After that, we met up with the Elders from Braunshweig
and the sisters from Celle. It was raining earlier in the day. We went
shopping a little, and got Döner. I really wish that you guys could eat
a Döner. They are ridiculously delicious. It's like a gyro. It's lamb
that rotates and cooks and they cut it off and put it in a pita with
Kohl (cabbage) and some delicious sauces. After that, we shopped a lot,
and visited Herrenhauser Garten! That was so fun. It's a British-style
garden in the middle of Hannover. It was super cool and pretty, and when
we got there, the sun was out! It was nice. You should look it up
online and see some of the stuff that I saw! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
At the Herrenhauser Garten
Tuesday started off normally. Elder Thorley and I
have started running in the morning. Part to wake ourselves up, and part
to get exercise. We usually run for only like 15 minutes, but it's
nice. We did our regular study and that was good. After that, we
traveled up way north to visit our African lady investigator.
She's showing some good improvement, but she's a little unfest (there's
no English word for this-it's just like sketchy). But hopefully we'll
see some good improvement with her. She speaks English, so teaching her
is fun. After her, we helped some missionaries out during transfers.
We went to Hauptbahnhof (like the main train station) and waited for
missionaries moving through Hannover with their bags and getting on new
trains. I got to meet my "brother" Elder Reesen, who Elder Thorley also
trained. Elder Thorley is my trainger aka my "dad" so that makes Elder
Ressen my "brother", if that makes sense. We ate Burger King (this week
was horrible, we ate out too much). We had a meeting with a new member
fall out, so that wasn't fun. After all this, we went by on a member family home for Elder Carlson's surprise birthday party. Elder Carlson is on
of the Zone Leaders that live in our apartment with us. We said it was a
service project, but when he got there, the family had made some
really delicious cake. We had a little party with us and
the Eheparr (senior companionship). We had a grand time, telling stories
in German, eating German Apfel Kuchen and drinking Caro Coffee. After
that, we had TWO more appointments fall out. Not fun at all. We go
through so much effort running around trying to meet with people and
they seldom show up. After everything, we had GEMIKO (ward mission
leader meeting) and I got to lead our companionship's weekly inventory
meeting. It was cool.
Wednesday started off normal. We studied, got ready,
and headed out to an appointment we had made earlier in the week. He
wasn't there, but on our way home we made out a pretty cool appointment.
After that, we had lunch with a brother! This is the sweetest,
nicest, coolest old man on earth. He bought the ZLs and us Döners! He's
around 80 years old, and he ate a Hawaiian pizza, and orange Fanta. What
a boss. I got to know him and he's super nice and loves the
missionaries. After him we met with a younger man from Ghana who
knows the Bible really well and loves to teach us what HE believes. Too
bad, but that's not why I came to Germany for two years haha. I came
here to help spread the true gospel and fundamentals of what Christ
taught. It's frustrating at times. But he is a good guy and he
always apologizes for talking too much. Hopefully we can teach him more,
and he'll be more willing to learn what we have to teach him. After
this, Elder Thorley had to go to Nienburg to conduct a baptismal
interview, so one of the Elders from Nienburg (Elder Cloward) came down
and I took him around Hannover. We had two appointments fall out, but we
did a lot of contacting, and I MADE OUT MY FIRST APPOINTMENT IN 100%
GERMAN! I was so excited! It was a good day. We ate piyya ate night for
our tausch-treat (tausch means exchange.)
Thursday morning we had district meeting. I almost
won the "preach my gospel quiz", but not quite. After all that, we
grabbed a döner at Hauptbahnhof. We were really late on time, so we had
to eat out again haha. We then proceeded to "Dorf-hop" Dorfs are small
towns outside of main cities, that are only reachable through trains.
There are a lot of Dorfs here, and they're in our area, so we have to
visit them a lot. We went to Burgdorf first. There, we met with an American; she's about 18, she lives with the bishop and his
family at their house. She's going to serve a "mini-mission" here in
Germany soon. I guess she'll live with the sisters for a couple of
months or something. We're just trying to prepare her for this mini
mission. After that, we went to Lehrte, where we met with a convert sister. Sad story. She was baptized a while ago, but is someone
that we refer to as a "church hopper"-just joins whatever church she
thinks is cool. So she just asked to stop being visited by the
missionaries, and she wants her name off the records of the church. So
sad. We went back to Burgdorf after her and met with, the 14
year old girl who we baptized the first week I was here. We're just
doing follow up lessons and teaching her 10 year old brother about the
church. It was back to home for that day.
Friday started off with a dropped appointment, then
we went by on an investigator. We asked his wife if he was home, but he had
been in Spain all week. Which is cool, but bad because he didn't
contact us or anything and we were expecting him at church. That makes
me feel like he's pretty unfest. Oh well. We went home and ate home made
schnitzel! I got to eat schnitzel for the first time. It tastes like
Denny's country fried steak. It was way good. We then met with the less active member from Spain. She's so sweet and funny.
She just doesn't understand what it means to be a contributing member of
the ward. But we're working on it! The rest of the day was a lot of
traveling, fallen out appointments, and finding.
Saturday was cool. We did all of our studying in the
morning, so about until 11:30. I made bratwursts with grilled onions
and mustard. They were delicious. Bratwursts here are dirt cheap. After
that, he got the special opportunity so see a TAUFE (baptism)!!! The
Elders in Nienburg had been working with this African family for a
while, and they got baptized on Saturday. HOW EXCITING!!!!!! It's so
great to see the joy in someone's face after being baptized. It's really
a miracle. The man being baptized had some trouble
getting under the water haha. He's a bigger guy
and he was being baptized by Elder Welker (about Thomas' size) it was
tragic, but eventually he sat on his butt in the font and laid down to
be baptized. It was a way cool experience, and we feasted on cake
afterwards. We had weekly planning\study after that. We then went by on my favorite, wacky, hippie, bio-eating family.
They made us "american food" which was chicken wings and fries. After we
played Kniffel (Yahtzee) and returned home.
Sunday: Church was way good yesterday. We watched
the last sessions of general conference (it comes late here for some
reason) I stay in the English translation with Elder Staheli (Elder
Staheli replaced Elder Locher as the ZL. He's super cool and has
ridiculously good German). After those two hours, we had sacrament
meeting. After
church, Elder Thorley, the Eheparr, and I went by a sister's home, and
she made us lunch. She is from the Philippines and she's way
nice and sweet and is a super good cook, and we ate Filipino food, which
was DELICIOUS. Elder Thorley and I taught a super good geistige gedanke
(spiritual thought) about Alma 32. Everyone liked it. After that we
went by on a less active member from Ghana. She is nice, and
has the cutest little kid. We had a way good lesson with her too. After
that, we went by on the lady who I made out my appointment with all by
myself...but she didn't want to meet. Oh well. After that we made out an
appointment with a man who speaks Tamil! Tamil is the language from
Sri Lanka, and it looks like alien language. It's a good achievement to
give away a Tamil Book of Mormon.
And now it's P-day and I'm emailing you guys! We had
a bad week, and a ton of appointments fell out, but Elder Throley and I
talked about it a lot and we know how we're going to fix our situations
and make this transfer rock. We have a lot of big goals for this
transfer, and I have faith that we'll achieve what we want.
Now to answer some of your questions.
German food is really similar to American.
I love the boiled potatoes here. And we always eat with apple juice for
a drink which is cool. My least favorite is...I can't say that I have
eaten anything yet that I haven't liked. It's all so good!
Elder Pollard
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