Week Forty-four

Oh hey everybody!

Last week was just insane. This might just be the most exciting/weird email I send home haha. It very well could be. I just want to get to telling you about my week. I have a lot of pics to send tool.

Monday: Last monday Sister Wunderli and Holbrook (the senior sisters), Elder Stanley, and I went to this place called 'Karls Erlebnis Dorf'.

The happiest place on earth?

This place used to be/still is a strawberry farm, but now it's like Disneyland. There's this huge shop that sells these super indie products that are all made right there on the farm. Like a bunch of strawberry jam, they make soap, candy, toys, a bunch of Christmas stuff, any food product you can think of too. It was way cool. There's also an outside that's like a mini Disneyland. There are rides and animals and thins to see and do. It was way fun. There's also this super good restaurant where you get whatever you want on your plate, and pay by weight. It was cool. The food was so delicious. I ate a huge schnitzel and veggies and kohl and rouladen. It was amazing. And filling. So we hung out  there all p-day. When we got back, we had Family Home Evening. My planner says that we taught a lesson. I'm guessing it was with M. He's so cool. We also made out an eating appointment with one of T's friends. It was a good day.

Dienstag: Tuesday morning we went by on a less active again. I've said it before, but it's just amazing how the people you NEED to get in contact with are just never home and never answer the phone. People might just be really good at dodging the missionaries. BUT we just keep on keeping on haha. So the member wasn't home and we did a couple of doors there. An old guy told us not to do doors in Mecklenburg....which is like the giant region/state of Germany that we're in haha. We met with M. after that. AH M. We want to help him so bad, but he's not letting us help him! He's super nice and chill but a little hard to teach. We really want to focus on working with him and helping him out. You'll hear a lot about M. in the coming weeks. So after M. we went to Toitenwinkel/Dierkow. This is basically the ghetto of Rostock. The sisters aren't really allowed to be there after dark...that's how sketch it is. We spent our whole evening walking around going by on contacts and less active and got nothing. But this is the great part. Elder Stanley and I were crossing over these train tracks to get to the other side, and I stepped on this huge piece of glass that went right through my shoe into the bottom of my foot. NO JOKE it felt like it went right through my foot. I freaked out haha. I'll send the pic. So we had to ride the bahn back to the church. That only took like 20 minutes and my foot is just bleeding this whole time haha. We got to the church and Sister Linford (just one of the sister missionaries here) is like a med major and worked on an ambulance and stuff so she checked it out and said it was good. We got some neosporin up in there and bandaged it up. Crazy though.

Mittwoch: Well I couldn't walk on my foot haha. We had to let it heal up or something. So I spent Wednesday in the apartment. With orders from Sister Kosak. It was hard just because there was NOTHING to do! So boring. Elder Stanley an I did a puzzle. And caught up on sleep. T came and hung out with us for a little too. That evening I HAD to get a haircut because President interviews were the next day. So with my foot and all and hopped over to the haircut place and got one. It's a very average haircut. Nothing special haha. It was kind of cool actually. Talking to the haircut lady in German. Classic. So that night we had an appointment with Marcel at the church. Sister Holbrook was there too helping us. We taught the gospel of Christ. Marcel is super smart and catches on quick. he studies a lot on his own too. Like he knows a lot of Book of Mormon scriptures now. We had institute after that. And that was the day.

Donnerstag: Thrusday was interviews! We all went to Berlin to meet with President. I had a cool interview with him. Nothing super crazy. He told me I was staying in Rostock, which was cool. It was cool to see everyone in the zone too, even though we see them like every week. It was way cool to see President and Sister Kosak though, and the Assistants. SO GET THIS! I got a package from Sister Brockbank! I was so happy! But like it was 2 months ago!! Like what's up with that? Weird German Post. But I was super happy and just thankful for it. I'm going to write her a way good thank you note. SHE SENT ME PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!!!!!!! And letters from the Primary. I died. Overall good day.

Freitag: Friday we did zone finding in Neubrandenburg. It was boring haha honestly. He did doors (because of my foot I couldn't walk around all day) for like 4 hours. It was killer. We came in contact with one lady who had met with the missionaries before. And we saw the biggest dog on earth. That was it. We went home and ate with T. and his friend L. We really want to get L. involved and excited about the church. So maybe! She was way nice and we're like friends now. So good.

Samstag: Saturday morning was transfer calls! It was exciting but not much changed in the Zone. We have a new ZL, Elder Riesen, who is my 'brother' so Elder Thorley trained him too. And a new DL from Austria. Other than that everything stayed the same. Elder Stanley and I are still in Rostock. Which is good haha. After the call we went home and studied/planned. We played BBALL that afternoon and made out two appointments with the bball guys! That was just a huge blessing. We came home an go ready for Ping pong. So Y is one of the bball players and he came to ping pong. He won haha. And we taught him a little after. It was sick.

Sonntag: Yesterday was just killer. Before church started M. told us that he wanted to be baptized! Which is just great for him. T. taught a good lesson in Investigator class. And Sacrament was good too. We ate with T. and his family after church. It was way good. And after that we went back to the church to watch this fireside. We ended up watching a Mormon message about the priesthood and taught M. HE WANTS TO BE BAPTIZED THIS SATURDAY! How great is that!? So hopefully we'll have a baptism this week. It's sad because he's moving to Switzerland in a couple of weeks. I just want to see him totally understand baptism and see him do it. It'll be sick.

So the week was exciting and crazy! And Elder Stanley and I are stoked to stay together and keep working. We feel real good about this transfer coming up. Pray for us!

Parents!

Thanks a lot for the family history stuff! So the Senior sisters here help out at the geneology center here and were asking me and like I just had no Idea. I knew that Grandpa was Irish and that Grandma terry was eastern Europeanish haha. But thanks a lot. How cool is it that my great great grandpa (?) was born in Hannover! That's awsome. So you guys don't need to worry about my foot haha it's all good and healing up. It hurt really bad though. Glass like right through the bottom of my foot. And how crazy is it that it went right through my shoe?! But it's all good. I'm still enjoying my time a lot here!

Thanks for the money. I'll try to take it out today. We're going to Ikea today! How fun is that. Well hey! Thanks for everything you do. Elder Fullmer (the assistant) said I had a package already!

Everything is GOOD. I love Rostock and I'm super stoked to keep working. I want to send you some Christmas presents though! So maybe a little more money......I just want to send you some German chocolate and maybe something cool.

I love you all!
Elder Pollard

Week Forty-three

My adoring fans,

Elder Stanley and I put in work last week. We seem to have the same conversation a lot: we are just always busy and working, but we can't seem to make out appointments, and get any teaching in. It's hard, because I love teaching way more than finding, and it's rough to not see any direct result of all the work. But as long as were doing it and not being lazy then we have nothing to worry about. I love being a missionary and having this aim and focus. It makes life really simple, and I just learn a lot about myself and life and all these deep
philosophical things. Loving it.

But like I said, we were super busy last week and ran around non-stop. We just didn't get through to anyone really, or even have the opportunity to.

Montag: Last Monday. Oh my gosh. It started off pretty normal. You know, waking up, eating Nougat Bits, studying, cleaning, emailing. We ate lunch at McDonald's, because we got some sweet coupons in the mail. But while we were eating, we got a call from Bruder A. He told us that the toilet in the church was overflowing and that we needed to come hang out at the church and wait for the repair guy. On P-Day. Haha at least we had something to do. But it gets better. We got another call like 10 minutes later, saying that we had to go and pull up the old carpet that was now soaked in poo water. So, Monday from like 3 to 7, Elder Stanley and I tore out the old Poo Carpet. It was wonderful. We had Family Home Evening after. I think only like 1 person showed up, but it was still fun.

Dienstag: Tuesday we were supposed to go on splits with the Zone Leaders, but that didn't happen. Instead, we finished up some planning and then one of the Sisters investigators took us out to lunch to celebrate the election. We're not sure why, but he thought that election day was like a super huge deal and that we celebrated and stuff. Oh well he bought us some Chinese food. After eating, we went back and finished this 'grid'. We made a grid of the city and marked where we have old investigators and contacts and stuff. Just so we know who lives by each other and where they live. It's helping. We then went and bought some gummy bears. We met T. and ate at the D's that night. It was so cool. They made this 'bread soup' thing from Italy. It was super good and Sister D. made Snickerdoodles that we just ate in 2 seconds. It was delicious. After eating, we went with T. and dropped the gummy bears off at M's house. M. is investigating the church and has a lot of friends and connections with the members here. She just got back from a big trip and has been really sick. So we got her a present.

Mittwoch: Wednesday was alright. We had District Meeting in the morning and after that, I was on splits with Elder Smith, our District Leader. He's sick. He's from Beaver Utah, and is a wrestler. He's pretty good too, like he's wrestling at college when he gets back. He's super nice too. He had a good time on splits. We went by a bunch of people on our grid thing. It's been really helpful in finding out who still lives in Rostock/has interest to learn about the Book of Mormon and stuff. We've been weeding down our area book and getting
rid of teaching records that we don't need. We also met with Mark, who's super cool. We didn't really teach a lesson, we just kind of talked about a lot of different topics. It was good though. We then had Institute, which went well. After Institute, we talked to people in Innenstadt and made out 2 appointments. Bonus.

Donnerstag: Thursday we were in Prenzlau haha. Prenzlau is interesting. It's super small, but has like 5 huge churches. It's a cool place. We were doing zone finding. It was rough, because there's not a lot of people in Prenzlau, but we were there for 5 hours talking to everybody haha. We had 6 missionaries there, and we probably talked to everyone twice. It was cool though. We made out a couple of appointments for the Elders in Prenzlau. I ate a huge Döner too. like 5 pounds. It was just a mistake. After Prenzlau, Elder Stanley and I rode back to Rostock and did some studying that night.

Freitag: Friday was hard. We had Gemiko with T. in the morning, but from like 1 until 7:30 we were walking around, going by people on the grid, going by members, and talking to everybody. But at the end of the day, we made out no appointments, and taught no lessons. Just like a whole day of walking around and talking to people haha. Oh well.That night we studied German with T.

Samstag: Saturday was just a blessing. We had all the elders in the zone come to Rostock and we did service for the zoo.

Working at the Zoo...

It was so sweet. We raked leaves for about 3 hours, but after that we got to go for free to this thing called 'Darwineum'. It's about Darwin's theory and evolution. It was super interesting, and we got to see a lot of monkeys. The monkeys were the best. Like orangutans and gorillas and little monkeys. I just love zoos.

Velociraptors in Germany...who knew?

After serving, we decided to have ping pong that night. So we invited M. and he said he'd come. Which is just awesome. We had to go buy some ping pong balls, which was a hassle, but ping pong was fun. We met with M. after and talked about Joseph Smith, and how we can find answers to our questions. It was a good lesson, I just hope M. can see how bad we're trying to help him.

Sonntag: Sunday was church. Marcel was there, which was cool. We had 'investigator class' and one of the sisters investigators was there, too. T. taught the class in English and it was cool. Sacrament meeting was also fun. After church, we went home and planned and then had an eating appointment with the F's. We ate potatoes, Rotkohl and some sort of meat. It was way good. Bruder A. drove us back and was driving like 130 in his VW on the autobahn. It was a little crazy. Well Sunday night was hard, too. We just got nothing. We came home earlier and studied/made and ate home made potato chips. It was delicious.

So as you could probably tell, not a lot happened last week. Going on splits and visiting the zoo were super fun, I just wish we could have done more work. Missionary work isn't all about finding! And sometimes it just seems that way. We just need to get more people who we can TEACH. It seems like everyone is super busy always, and has no time to meet with us. But next week will be better. I'm already looking forward to it.

In other news, I hit my 10 month mark this week. 10 months doesn't seem special haha. But I've been in Germany forever haha it seems like that. I love Germany! It's super cool.

Learning to appreciate German Art...

It's not as cool at America, but there are thing in Germany that American just doesn't have. Like public transportation. The bahns and buses here are just nice and everyone uses them. It's way too expensive to have a car here, which is ironic because Germany is known for their cars. Also, bakery. There are bakeries on every corner and they're all so good! I could just eat bakery all day. And Nougat Bits!  Chocolate cereal, filled with Nutella. Just try to imagine that. So good.

Elder Stanley and I are doing real well together. Like I said, the work needs to pick up, but we get along really well and always have fun. It's a real blessing to have a companion who wants to work haha. I'm loving my time in Rostock. Transfer calls are on Saturday, which is crazy. Hopefully we'll stay together! We're praying for it.

I love the ward. It's small, like 30 people, but it's fun. T, who is the 2nd counselor in the branch presidency, and our Ward Mission Leader, is awesome. We hang out with him a lot. We only have like 4 or 5 people who are 'investigators'. M.S. and M.E. are our most promising right now. M.S. is cool he's like 28 and from Indonesia. He has some really intense emotional problems, but he's super friendly and outgoing. He's a Bible freak and doesn't really want to change. We heard very quickly that Obama won. President Kosak even texted us at 6 in the morning haha. I'm kind of really indifferent about it at this point. Like I just don't know anything about the situation haha. It's something I'd like to know a little about when I come back.

Thank you very much for the more money. I just need stuff. Like a couple weeks ago I had to buy new shoes. I honestly need a new suit, but I don't want to get one right before winter. Hopefully after. It's not too terribly cold yet, so the jackets I have will do for a while. I do need long underwear. I'm gonna buy some more super warm socks, too.

Everything is going well! I'm so happy that I have a loving family who emails me every week haha. I love talking to you guys! And before we know it, we'll be skyping! It will be great.  I'm super stoked for Christmas, even though it will be my first away from home. Germans go hard. The Christmas Market is going to start on the 22nd of November, and last until Christmas haha. I'll be sure to take a lot of pictures!

Anyway, I hope everything is going well at home and that you're all happy. I'm getting really into reading conference talks. They just rock. I suggest it!

Elder Pollard

Week Forty-two

How's it going?!?

This is Elder Pollard reporting from the mission field. I am currently in Rostock, Germany just hanging out at the usual internet cafe and reading all the great emails from home. I love P-Day so much. It just means cleaning the apartment, e-mailing, eating out, and walking around the same 5 stores we do every week haha. It sounds boring, but it's just the best. I eat it up. So this last week was hard. Elder Stanley and I were just always busy all the time, running around the city non-stop, but we just didn't get to see any reward from our
efforts. It was rough, and finding people was really hard this week, but this one week doesn't effect anything. We know like what we have to do and why, so on a daily basis, it's nice just to refresh your mind and get back to basics. It's just great. But let me tell you about this last week.

Montag: Last P-day was cool. Our weekly shopping only cost 12 Euro, which was nice. we emailed, ate Döner, and shopped. We ended up playing games with the sisters at the institute, and listening to music. We also started a beast puzzle, that we didn't get to finish, unfortunately. Oh well. After P-Day, we were supposed to have an appointment with a guy named K. K is super cool and really wants to meet with us (we think) but the appointments keep falling out. It's hard to tell if he really has interest haha. Hopefully he does. Well Monday night was Family Home Evening. Only one member came, so it was 5 missionaries (the senior sister was there too) and 1 member haha. Kind of weird, but it was cool. We had a spiritual thought, and ate abendsbrot. It was delicious. We also worked on the Puzzle. Good times.

Diesntag: Tuesday was just great. After studying, we met the sisters to go help an investigator clean up his apartment. This guy, E, is really sick and old, and we really wanted to help him. It wasn't going to be a lot of work, but it would have helped him A LOT. So like we were really in the mood to help him clean up. We got to his house and klingeled him. He talked to us over the speaker box and said we couldn't come up because his cat was sick...and then all of my good happy service thoughts just left. It was a joke haha, but he was dead serious. Oh well. Like we showed up and were ready to help him out. Then we went to anmeld. In Germany (and probably all countries) you have to register yourself with the government to tell them where
you're living/where you're from and all that good stuff. So I had been putting it off for a while, but decided that we just had to do it. So we took care of that. After lunch, we made a bunch of calls from the numbers in the phone/area book. We made out one appointment for Sunday night with a lady named S. After that, we met up with T to help him do his home teaching. He doesn't have a partner, so we just go with him. We met with Bruder S, who is just the coolest, and talked with him about teaching with the spirit of God. Bruder S has this dog named Mopple. Mopple is like the strongest animal on the face of the earth. When Mopple wants to sit where you're sitting, he just does. And there's nothing you can do about it. I love it. After
meeting with Bruder S, we went by on a couple of less actives, who weren't home. That night, we went to talk to people in Innenstadt. This was just the most memorable night of my mission haha. We were walking up Innenstadt, and we heard like a bunch of yelling and screaming. Then we saw the Zombies. Apparently a bunch of students got together and had a zombie flash mob thing. It was just crazy. And when they saw the Mormon missionaries, they just went crazy. Elder Stanley and I just got mobbed haha. They were all around us like bumping up against us, just being zombies. Fun times. After our little moment with the undead, I asked Elder Stanley if he had everything (wallet, keys, name tag)...and he just didn't have his name tag. I was thinking a zombie took it. So we found the zombies again and asked if any of them had the name tag. They did haha. We got it back and talked with them for a while. They were really cool guys actually.

Elder Pollard and Elder Stanley make a friend...

They were all students, so about our age. Then they wanted us to be zombies with them. We politely declined.

Mittwoch: Wednesday morning we had District Meeting in Greifswald. So we got on the train super early and rode there. The walk from the train station to the church was just miserably cold and long. But we
survived. After district meeting, I went on splits with Elder Risley, from Greifswald, and we both rode back to Rostock. Right when we got back to Rostock, we had an appointment with Mark. Mark is way cool. He
invited us up to his apartment to take part in his Indie Kid Muffin Party. We were kind of surprised, because it turned into us teaching a first lesson to 6 students. Kind of a cool experience, because they were all interested and asked questions, but I wasn't sure how many were super interested. Oh well! We left cards and stuff so if they have questions, hopefully they'll call us. After that, we had to go to institute. There was no official institute, because it was a holiday, but Mark showed up! Which was super cool, because he left his Indie Kid Muffin Party to come to Institute. It ended up being only him, which was rough, but we watched Johnny Lingo, did the Puzzle, ate food, and played Kniffle.

Donnerstag: Thursday was zone finding in Greifswald's area. Elder Risley and I got on a train at 9 and rode to Stralsund, which is a big city in Greifswalds area. And we did finding there for like 5 hours. It was cold and raining. And talking to people for 5 hours straight can be kind of rough. Whenever I find myself in situations that I just don't like, I just remind myself that it'll be over sooner than you know it. And when you look back, it's always great to know you didn't complain or cry about it. Just stick it out! Learning experiences. Good stuff. We ate at McDonalds and I came home with Elder Stanley.

Freitag: Friday was hard haha. We had Gemiko in the morning, which is always fun. Tobias is just a cool guy. And he's our Ward Mission Leader, so we just see him all the time. Almost every day. Its just great. Well after Gemiko (Ward Mission Leader - Missionary meeting) we hung out with Tobias and went in the city to find a card for one of his friends. We had a good talk about finding and how to find effectively. We found a good card. After that, we went home and worked on mapping out where all the less active members live. We really want to focus on working with less actives. After that, we met Tobias again at the Universität, and we ate at the Mensa (cafeteria) with him. He said it was going to be really good and cheap. It was actually super good, but kind of expensive. Bummer. After eating, I had to go buy shoes. So here's the story haha. Both the pairs of shoes I came here with are just toast. The brown ones fell apart super fast, and the black ones were doing OK. Until Friday. We had just walked home, and right before I was going to walk inside, I looked down at my shoe and noticed the GIANT just ice cream scoop sized piece of dog poo on my shoe. I tried really hard to scrape it off on the sidewalk, but that just made my shoes fall apart. So I had to go by shoes. I bought 30 Euro shoes, that look pretty good. After that little escapade, we printed out a talk from conference, and wanted to give it to a less active. We walked around FOREVER trying to find where this person lived. It took like an hour. Not cool. We didn't find it, and after we tried doing doors in the area, we got yelled at and escorted outside. That's the biggest joke because we're allowed to knock on peoples
doors and stuff. So the people who yell at us and tell us to leave are just being silly.

Samstag: Saturday morning we did weekly planning. After that, we ate Tortellini and played basketball.

Basketball, Rostock style...

Fun stuff. After Basketball we played Ping Pong with the branch. And after that, we talked with Tobias for a while. Not much else haha.

Sonntag: Sunday was just wild. The sisters had a really cool investigator at church, so we had investigator class. Tobias taught it and we helped. This girl was way cool though. I blessed the sacrament, and it was testimony meeting. After church we had Gemeindeessen, just like break the fast with the branch. That was way good. After that, we printed out a bunch of talks, and planned to drop them off at less actives houses. We spent the whole night finding these places, trying get in contact with these people, and leaving them a note and a talk if they didn't answer. It was fun, but nobody answered haha. I don't understand how sometimes we can go by on a person like 15 times and they're NEVER HOME! It's crazy.

Well that was the week! We didn't teach a lot, and didn't find a lot either. We were both kind of curious about where the time went. Because we were always busy! Kind of weird. But the week kind of went by slow. I have just been way way tired and almost sick just this whole last week. My feet are always cold, and my nose is always runny. But I'm still loving it! Attitude really does make or break any experience you're ever going to have in life. I have to remind myself often that it doesn't matter how many people we find who want to learn more, or how many lessons we teach, as long as we're always working and always trying hard.

Halloween at home sounds like it was way fun! I miss clam chowder, of course, and home made rolls. On Halloween here I ate Subway, and spaghetti pie. Kind of weird, but it was all good. That's funny that
Thomas dressed up as a missionary. That kid. I'm not cool with the giant shark being built so close to the house. Thanks for voting for me! I'm really excited to hear who wins. I really don't have too much of an opinion, or desire who wins, because I just know nothing about what's going on, but I still want to hear.

King Tobias was already here when I got here haha. Just a ferret statuette ordained with some fake foliage. No big. The food in Rostock is pretty normal haha. We eat the typical missionary meals. A lot of pasta. And they have Döner here. Hopefully we'll have a real Thanksgiving dinner here. The senior sisters might make it happen. There's no such think as Libby's pumpkin pie stuff here, and they just don't eat pumpkin pie in Germany. I'm bummed about that. I'm going to send some pictures! I hope you enjoy them.

I miss you all so much! The holidays are coming, and I won't be with you all...bummer. But they'll be good anyways. I want to send home some candies and stuff soon! Maybe hit me up with some moolah, and you
could have some way good chocolate and Haribo in the mail!

Love you all!

Elder Pollard