Saturday, June 2, 2012

Week Seventeen

HI!

I'm so happy that we got to Skype! I'm so blessed with an awesome family. Mom, I hope you had a good Mothers Day! It sure did sound like you did. It's hard to read about steak and mushrooms because I never will get anything like that haha. I sure do miss the food from home. Thanks for sending the Mac 'n' Cheese recipes, too.

SOOOO...here's my week.

Monday: Last P-Day, I did emails at this little Turkish internet laden, and then I got lunch at Pizza Hut. I don't know why, but gross, greasy pizza sounded way good, so I split a pizza with Elder Carlson. While we were eating, we were attacked by gypsies trying to beg money from us, which was interesting. They're like children. They put on a sad face and try to beg for money, but all the elders say that it's a corrupt institution with a head Gypsy who gets all the money. Plus the money we have belongs to the church so we can't give it to them. Oh well. For P-Day, Elder Thorley and I walked all around Innenstadt looking for a Euro suit for him. I didn't mind it though, because shopping here is cool--- everything is so foreign and strange haha. I ended up spending some money last Monday. I bought a big pack of socks from H&M because it was cheap, and I bought a kind of jacket at C&A. It cost 30 Euro. It's like a light rain jacket, which is something I needed because it rains a lot here. But it's like spring now so when it rains it's usually on the warmer side. After shopping and getting groceries, we headed back to the apartment and started on some spring cleaning. I cleaned the study/main room and vacuumed everything. I then had to clean our balcony, including the old pair of clearly women's garments that someone had tried to burn probably 4 or 5 years ago, but nobody cleaned up...I'm glad that it's all over with. After P-Day, we went by on an appointment with an older Russian man. Sadly, he didn't really want to meet so we simply gave him a Book of Mormon and our number and explained kind of everything in about 2 minutes. Hopefully he's reading! After that, we did some finding and made out 2 cool young appointments. It was a good P-Day

Tuesday started off normal. Personal Study, Companionship Study, and Golden Study. After all that we went by on an investigator, who we haven't been able to get a hold of for a while. And she wasn't there again, which is troubling. We kind of know that she's home, she just doesn't want to answer the door. Oh well. After that, we had to take the Bahn way up North to an appointment, but it was like a wrong address or something because we couldn't find the name on any of the Klingels. A lot when people give you wrong addresses and phone numbers. But it's a part of missionary work so oh well. We then called ahead for our next appointment to see if he wanted to meet, but we ended up rescheduling it. For lunch on Tuesday, Elder Thorley made this way good man-salad. It was more topping than salad actually haha. I think it had salad, chicken, croutons, peppers, cucumbers, cheese, and a joghurt dressing. Joghurt is like the closest thing they have to ranch here. It was delicious. After that, we had another hour of study for language study. After study we tried to meet with this African family that was way cool, but we've lost contact with them. They're never home when we go by, and they weren't there this time either. Sooo after that, we walked to our next appointment (because we had to much time) and tried to do some finding. We made out an appointment with a Polish lady. that was sweet. So we got to our next appointment(s) which were all at this Auslander Wohnheim. We had 3 possibilities. And all 3 fell out. It was a hard day because we had 7 of 7 appointments fall out, and we only made out 1 new appointment. But that didn't stop us from having a good week!

We started off Wednesday pretty normally, too. We meet with the 27 year old guy from Ghana. He's kind of weird and crazy but he sure does know his Bible. He had really strange interpretations for everything though. He told us in our lesson that he is like a prophet from God and his mission on this earth is to warn people of Christ's second coming, and that there's only one true church. And Elder Thorley and I kinda thought...hey that's what we do, too haha. He is slowly progressing. He's very stubborn and like what he believes on and is very proud and accomplished that with faith has grown this much. He's a good guy though. After that we went home and ate Lauk-Käse Suppe. That stuff is ridiculously good. All you do is cook a bunch of hackfleisch (ground beef), saute a bunch of chopped up leek, put it in boiling water with the seasoning pack, and then while it's all boiling, drop slices or schmelzkäse in it haha. schmelzkäse is like Kraft singles but it's way good. And we eat this a lot. After all this we met with Kali at the church. Kali is the American girl that's here and we are helping her prepare for a 'mini mission' by teacher her the lessons and teaching her how to communicate in a way that's not awkward. And after that, one of our investigators came and we played volleyball with him and the ward. It was way fun.

Thursday was President interviews! It was sooo cool to talk to President Pimentel. He's such a cool guy. It was super uplifting and motivating. And we got to hear a lot of Themas (workshops) from the President and the zone leaders and others. The focus seemed to be on service and sanctifying yourself. I feel like I got a lot out of it. We ate pizza for lunch. After interviews, I went on tausch (exchanges) to Hildesheim. That's where I rode the bike for like 2 hours and it was hard haha. We met with this guy named Jurgend. I think I've already told you about him. He's like this older intense Harley Davidson biker but he lives alone with his cats and he's investigating the church haha. He's cool. After that, we rode the bikes to the church house and had Gemeinderat (ward council) that was cool too. When we went home, Elder Spendlove (the Elder I was on exchanges with) made us milkshakes! Haha vanilla ice cream, peanut butter Oreo milkshakes. I think I had a heart attack but it was so good.



Hannover District
Elders Cloward, C. Marshall, Spendlove, Staheli, Pollard
Elders Carlson, Welker, Thorley
Sister & Elder Wilhelm

Friday: We tausched back in the morning. Random thought: this Turkish internet laden smells a lot like an indian casino. So we hurried to get to our eating appointment with a member family that feeds us almost every week. They're the older couple with the crazy garden in their back yard. They made us oven baked chicken and french fries. And it was the first time I ate french fries with mayo haha. The Europeans love it with mayo apparently. It was way good and we had mousse after for desert. After that we did finding for a while, with no luck. We taught a couple of sisters-one from Spain and a neubekehrt that night too, and made out 2 cool appointments. One of them was this older lady. We approached her and talked to her for a little, found out she's from Poland (which is awesome, because there's a young single adult in the ward who served in Poland and she loves going on joint teaching appointments). As we were talking to her though, these 3 punks came up and started screaming 'Zeugen Jehova!' which means Jehovas witness. Germans don't like them haha. We tried to explain that we weren't JWs but it was too late before one of them started farting on the poor polish lady. It was tragic and I felt bad. And after that, some random guy walked by and said 'Hi Elders' and we had no idea who it was. Just some guy and we've never seen him at church and he didn't stop so we couldn't talk to him haha. Definitely one of the weirdest appointments we've made out.

Saturday morning we went by on a less active from Ghana. She's nice and her son is a riot and I really enjoy teaching them. But man, she is just busy with two small kids and no man and like she really needs to get to church and we want to help her so bad, but we feel like her desire is just slipping away. We really need to figure out how we can help her. After that, I made Kartoffeln Suppe (potato soup) form a maggie pack, and we ate that with bäckerie bread. We did some weekly planning after that. We then hopped on the zug (train) to Burgdorf, where an investigator family lives. They're cool too and I enjoy teaching them. We taught them about the commandments and prophets. They're a part member family. The parents are members and had recently come back to the church and they have a 14 year old daughter who is also baptized. We just like to catch up and teach them and make sure we're helping them out. After that, we had the coolest meeting. We took one of our progressing investigators and brought her to a joint teach with an investigator family. It was a hit and I feel like everyone really enjoyed themselves.

Sunday was awesome! I got to go to church, we ate at a member's house, and I got to talk with my family! It was so nice and I loved it. It made me so happy and motivated me just to work harder for them. After all that, we went out to some sweet appointments. One with a guy from the Ivory Coast, and the other with a guy from Spain (Pau Gasol look-a-like)

It was a good week and our numbers improved and Elder Thorley and I are happy with how it went. This next week we're trying to improve even more!

Today we're planning on going to Wolfsburg, which is where the VolksWagen factory/headquarters/museum is. It should be way cool! I'll take a lot of pictures and tell you how it was next week!

I'm so happy I got to talk with you guys yesterday! Just a reminder to everyone who reads these emails...my email address is timothy.pollard@myldsmail.net.

I love and miss you all!

Elder Pollard

No comments:

Post a Comment