Week Sixteen

Hey Guys!

Ah P-Day. Or Vorbereitungs Tag as we say here in Germany. It's a blessing, but it's also a curse at the same time. I LOVE emailing home and being able to hear about how everyone back in California is doing. It's my absolute favorite time and part of P-Day. But the rest of the day is so stressful! People wanting to shop, see things, and there's always grocery shopping at the end of the day. We don't have a car, so we have to carry all of our groceries back home through the Bahns and what not. I'm not going to complain though, because murmuring gets you nowhere.

I had a pretty good week! It was an improvement from last week, and I feel like this week I REALLY got a lot out of my study. I'll explain later, but now it's time for the weekly update from Hannover.

Like I said earlier, last Monday was HECTIC! I love emailing, but after lunch it's time to go shopping, which is just the most tiring thing on earth. After running around Innenstadt for Euro clothes, we went grocery shopping.MOM and DAD-If you could send me the recipe for mac n cheese, I would be eternally in debt to you. That's what I'm craving right now. Maggie Packs get old haha. So after P-Day, we went by on our Russian couple investigators. They're so sweet and nice, but we're concerned about their level of desire to meet with us. We're thinking that they just let us in because they're nice and old. We tried to show them The Restoration DVD (which is crazy powerful and spiritual), but it wouldn't work! So sad, anyways we just had to explain the restoration to this family by ourselves. It went pretty well and they said they'd read and pray so that's cool. That's all that happened on P-Day.

Tuesday we woke up and studied like usual. After that, the District Leaders in our Zone had a meeting, so Elder Thorley had to go to that. While he was at that, I tausched (combined) with a Golden! A missionary that is even younger than me. It's weird to think that my group of goldens isn't the youngest any more haha. It went well. Elder Adams was his name. Kinda awkward but he's a good guy. We walked like 5 miles just doing finding haha. After that, we went by on a contact who wasn't there, so we decided to go visit this super cool sister. She's an older Polish lady and she's really nice. And after our visits we always play Mensch Ärge Dich Nicht. It's Germany's version of Trouble. After he, we headed home for lunch. Elder Thorley made Beef Stroganov. It was way good. Elder Thorley is a chef. We always eat well haha. After lunch, we decided to do some hard core finding. We've been in this drought of investigators, so we've been doing intense finding. talking with people unterwegs, and klingeling. Doors in Deutschland isn't like doors in America. There's not really houses here, just apartment complexes, so we go around to each buzz box and talk to people through that. Anyways, we checked out this ausslander wohnheim (foreigner housing) and talked to a bunch of people there. We ending up meeting this really cool young couple from Russia and made out an appointment! After a LONG time of finding haha, it really was an answer to our prayers. That night we came back earlier to get some good language and gospel study in.

Wednesday, we did a lot of study in the morning. At noon, we had an appointment with a younger guy, probably like 25, from Ghana. He's super smart and knows the Bible really well. He likes to talk A LOT, too, but we always have good lessons with him and he's going to read the Book of Mormon and see how he feels about it. After Joseph we went by on 3 contacts who all were not there. For lunch, we went back to the Wohnung and I made mac n cheese. This was the worst mistake I've made on my mission so far. It was so gross and not all the way cooked and the cheese was nasty and we felt sick. That's why I want the recipe! Oh well. After lunch we visited with an older man from Sri Lanka. He speaks Tamil. That language is from outer space. You need to look it up on Google right now. We had a really short lesson with him, but it was good. So we were doing doors over by the last appointment and the Eheparr called and said we needed to go with them to give a man a blessing. We said we'd go, but we only had like 10 minutes to find a new investigator for that day, so we really needed a miracle. And sure enough, in 10 minutes we found a really cool, young Russian girl who agreed to meet with us! Missionaries are blessed haha. The Eheparr showed up right as we came outside and we drove up North to give this man a blessing. He had an operation on his one kidney that he has. It had cancer, so I hope he's doing well because Elder Thorley gave him an awesome blessing. After that, we had GEMIKO (ward mission leader-missionary council) which went well and that was mittwoch!

Thursday, we had district meeting early in the morning. After that, we went up North to visit one of our investigators from Ghana. Unfortunately she wasn't there (again). But we were sent to go visit her for a specific reason, because while we were up there, we saw another member who we've been trying to get in contact with forever. And I saw her walking while we were riding the Bahn so we jumped out and ran to catch her and talked with her. It was cool. We went home after that for lunch and Elder Thorley made Spargel Suppe, which was way good. Spargel is asparagus if you remember from the last email. It was delicious. After that, we had to take a Zug (train) to Burgdorf to visit an investigator family. Turns out that two of their sons are over 8 years old, and we've been coming and teaching the family for a while, so that's two new investigators that we've been teaching and didn't even know it! Cool huh. We came home from Burgdorf around 6 and did some finding.

Friday was Pope day! hah That means that the junior companion is the pope (all the power, but no authority) so I got to plan out Friday and decide what we should do. We started with a lot of study. At around 11 we left the Wohnung to stop by an investigator. Unfortunately, she wasn't there, so we ended up doing some finding over by her house. For lunch, I made Tortellini with Cheese sauce and we got Brötchen from this Bäckerie by our house. Meal of the week-it was awesome. After that, we had language study. I love learning German. It's such a fun language! After unsere mittags Pause, we did more finding. We meet this Russian guy and we're going to meet with him later tonight! (Monday) After that, we meet with our less active from Spain. She's so sweet. We talked about the Word of Wisdom with her, because she has a problem with coffee. She said she was going to stop! Elder Tholey and I have really been trying hard to help her. She's come a long way since we've started to meet with her! After that, we went by on an appointment, he wasn't there. So sad. The cool part about Friday was that I bought an electric razor! It's my new toy and it's way cool. We did weekly planing for the rest of the night.

Saturday was way fun, but also super tiring. We started off as usual, but at 10, we got to go play soccer with some members and their friends! Big news! I stink at soccer. I just wasn't made to play that sport haha. But it was super fun and good exercise. So after soccer we literally sprinted home, showered (it has been raining a lot lately, so we were super muddy) for like 30 seconds, sprinted out and got on the Bahn. We were heading to the appointment with the younger lady that we meet earlier in the week. She wasn't there though. That's the hardest part about being a missionary is all the let downs with appointments that fall through. Oh well. After that, we got Subway because we didn't have anymore food at home. Subway in Germany is not as good as in America just saying. After lunch we did finding kind of by our Wohnung. We doored for around 2 hours and got nothing, but it's OK. After that we met with an investigator. We have tea parties with her when we meet with her haha. We watched 'finding faith in Christ' with her, which is a super cool film and it's super powerful. It went well. After her we met with a neubekhert (recent convert) we shared finding faith in Christ with her too. It was a good day. Hannover 96 (the local soccer team) was playing that day, so there were drunk people all over the place yelling and screaming.

Yesterday was cool. Church went well. We had this guy from some religious magazine interview all of us because he's writing an article about our church in Germany. That was cool. Then we had 5 investigators come to church! That was way cool. We ate lunch with with a member family. They made us Schnitzel with a Paprika sauce that we ate over Spetzel (homemade noodles) So good. For desert we had Quark! Quark is good it's like the step that milk goes through in between yogurt and cheese. But it's delicious.We went by on a less active from Ghana. She needs to start going to church again. We meet with her a lot but she doesn't really make progress. After that, we did finding again at this auslander wohnheim. We made out 3 appointments! Good day.

So that was my week! I hope you enjoyed reading it, because I enjoyed living it.

I did A LOT of good studying this week. I think a lot of people underestimate 1 Nephi haha. Because it's more of a story and it goes by really fast, but when you stop and actually study, and try to learn from what Nephi went through, it's like overflowing with great stuff. I'm doing my study with a student manual for Book of Mormon study, so I learn a lot of really cool and interesting stuff. Like how there is archeological proof of Nahor, the place that Ismael was buried! That was cool to learn. One of the best gospel principles that I learned this week (which helped a lot considering how hard it's been lately) comes from 1 Nephi. After reading about all the hardships that Nephi and his Family go through, I read a quote from Elder Maxwell. He said something along the lines of "When we experience hardship after hardship, and it's not result of our disobedience, it is the Lord telling you that he thinks you're ready to grow." I butchered it, but it was something like that and I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I've learned a lot from being in Germany, and unfortunately, a lot of what I've learned has come through so-called hardships. This mission isn't easy haha. It's mentally and physically wearing. But I love it and I'm learning so much, and I feel like I'm helping so many people. It's way cool.

MOTHERS DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You get to meet Elder Thorley and the Eheparr by Skype! That will be super cool!

Ok so I love you all and miss you a lot! Talk to you on Sunday!

Elder Pollard