Week Thirty-two

Hey ya'll,

 

I Love P-Day. I love logging on to the computers here in the 'Taj Mahal' Indian cuisine and internet cafe, and seeing all the emails I get! I am really blessed, because I have a lot of people who seem to find me interesting. My 2 hours of emails every Monday are PACKED! And I love it. I love hearing about what other people are doing, and sometimes it's crazy to hear about all the changes going on at home. Not too much with the family, but a lot with my friends. I love hearing about it all, because I pray for all of you so much! I wish the best for you all, every night.

 

Last week was OK...the two owners of the 'Taj Mahal' are arguing really loud in front of me in a strange language. Anyways, last week was cool. Kind of relaxed and lazy, which sucks, but all is well and is going to pick up. Let me just tell you about it.

 

Monday: Last P-Day, we went grocery shopping in the morning. The food this week was boring again, so I probably won't tell you what I ate everyday haha. We bought food to have bratwursts, and tune/rice/curry ketchup. So that was that haha. After shopping, we went and did emails. It was really hot on Monday haha, I think I was sweating a lot just after walking to do emails. I loved emails. After that, we walked back to the apartment, and picked up Chinese food at 'Mai Tahn Lang' across the street. Our favorite Chinese Imbiß. The Chinese food in Germany is good haha. Not like restaurant good, but 5 buck take out good. It's always worth it. We spent the rest of P-Day hanging around, watching movies, and cleaning. And I read a lot of Lord of the Rings. I'm so nerdy, I can't even put the book down. It's very strange, because I've never been too much of a reader. But I'm already half down with the trilogy. I'm a nerd. After P-Day was over, we went to M., our Polish investigator, but he wasn't there! So disappointing. But oh well. Next time he'll be there.

 

Dienstag: Tuesday was pretty normal. Woke up, ate, got ready, all that stuff. In the morning, we went by on someone who said to come back whenever, but they weren't there. So we came back and ate lunch. After eating, we went back out on a lot of contacts. After going by on like 6 people, we found at that 2 of them don't live there anymore, and that 2 said we could come back on a different time, so we made out appointments. We've been doing a lot of contact work. We have a list of about 150 contacts, and we made a grid to go along with it, so we could sort out where they live in the city. It's going a little slow right now, but it will pick up. After that, we went by on Bruder L. We had a nice visit, didn't really talk about much because he had company, but he was in a good mood. He started playing Bob Marley for us on his little guitar haha it was funny.

 

Mittwoch: Wednesday, the only interesting things to report is that we did service in Bruder M's garden for a long time. He's totally renovating his house/garden, and we've been helping out a lot. It's going to look awesome when it's all done, but the garden still needs some work, which is awesome for us, because service is a nice break from wearing the white shirts and ties. And it's always good exercise. I got to us a pick to get rid of a lot of stone that the previous owner had put in the back along time ago. I came out with 4 huge blisters on my hands, and a cut on my wrist, but I got a lot of work done, and I felt good helping Bruder Merkel. He's the Branch President here. He's such a cool guy. After we worked for a really long time, he made us some pasta thing. It was good.

 

Donnerstag: Thursday was interesting. In the morning, we went out and bought some stuff we needed. Like soap and stuff. We didn't eat lunch, because we were supposed to eat with Schwester E. Last time we had an eating appointment, she wasn't home, so we had bought an extra meal at the supermarket just in case she fell out again. As we were walking up the her house, we saw her also walking up with her dog. Apparently she didn't have any time/totally forgot haha. Anyway she invited us in and we had a spiritual thought. It was kind of hard because her crazy dog was trying to eat my shoes the whole time. She then gave us all the ingredients to make spaghetti at home, and we left. At night we took the bikes out for more exercise. We rode like a long way out of town on this little kind of cool dirt road. It took us all the way to the next town. It was a long ride, maybe 10 miles or more. But it was super fun.

 

Fritag: Friday we had weekly planning.

 

Samstag: Saturday morning was transfer calls! That was pretty cool. It's crazy to think that 6 weeks have already passed since I've come to Hof. I was listening to President Kosak talk over the conference call just thinking about how fast the time flies by. Next month, on the 18th will be my 8 month mark. Which is like...a third of my mission! I'm not trunky or looking forward to going home..yet...because like I still have a long way to go. Thinking about the end of my mission is a LONG time in the future. I like being a missionary. The call was boring, because we knew already that we were staying together and in Hof. But it was interesting to hear where everyone else was sent and stuff. Elder Donner is coming down from Elmshorn and going to Mittweida, so maybe I'll be able to see him soon. That means that all of the Elders from my golden group (the group of missionaries that I came to Germany with) are now in the Leipzig or Dresden zone, which means we should see each other at the next zone conference. Yes! that will be exciting. I spent Saturday night preparing a talk for Sunday.

 

Sonntag: Sunday went well. I woke up early to make pancakes again, which turned out the best this time. Let me take some time to express my love for pancakes. I would eat pancakes three times a day 7 days a week for the rest of my life. That's how much I love pancakes. We got to church, and I think abut 15 people were there. It's still summer vacation which is the time that every German family drops all responsibilities and just goes on vacation. This happens every year with no fail apparently. My talk went well. Actually, the stake secretary was at church this week. He had to go over some stuff with the branch president. But he bore his testimony before I gave my talk. He stressed the importance of testimony and how we need to always try to strengthen our own. Which was odd, because the talk I prepared was about testimony haha. Kind of cool. I basically taught out of True to the Faith in my talk. The most interesting thing that I found was when Alma talks about how he gained his testimony. We all know that he saw an angel and everything, but he specifically says that he has a testimony though the power of the holy ghost, not because he saw an angel. I thought that was cool. After church we ate at the F's house. We grilled, even though it was super windy, and the wind kept knocking the grill over haha. That was interesting. But it was delicious, and the gave us a lot of food to take home, which was well accepted. We went home and deep cleaned the apartment after that.

 

The week was OK. We didn't do enough work for me to say the the week was good, but today is the start of a new transfer, and I really hope to get back into it. I hate sitting around the apartment. We do it way too much, and it's driving me nuts. I just want to go out and start meeting people again. Also, I look back on the transfer and I realize that I didn't even learn a lot of German. Which I want to change for this transfer coming up. My German is still doing pretty good. I can hold conversations and what not about pretty much anything. And I always know what people are talking about now. But I want/need to refine my German, so I talk more naturally. I love this language.

 

Dad - you can tell Brother Walder that the Bible I bought is a Lutheran translation. It was written in 1903, and is in old Deutsch script. It's way cool. Best 50cent purchase in Germany. We don't use the Einheitsübersetzung bible though. We use a new Lutheran translation. I think. It's red.

 

It sounds like die Familie is doing well. When exactly is Emily's wedding? Like what day? I'm still bummed that I'm going to miss that. Weddings sound fun. They look fun in the movies always. I'm so jealous! I'm sure you're all super busy preparing for that. And you said Christian is losing weight? I weighed myself this morning at exactly 200 lbs. Well, 91 kilo. I have a goal to come back at 180. I think I can do it, if I'm not too lazy. Losing weight is actually pretty easy.

 

Thanks for the banana bread recipe! We have been living SUPER cheap, and haven't really had time or money to experiment with new recipes, but I write them all down in case I ever get put with a companion who likes cooking. I really want to try them all out. Especially the wantons. Food in Germany is actually really cheap. Especially bread.

 

Dad - I'm excited for the fast on Sunday! I know I will be fasting with you all. I decorated my new planner with an artist's rendition of Jesus healing the blind man. It reminds me of how you always tell me to expect miracles. I think it's nice.  Not much else to report on. I'm healthy. Doing good in Hof. I am really excited to start this transfer, and hopefully we can work really hard for the next 6 weeks! 

 

I love you all!

 

Elder Pollard