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
No comments:
Post a Comment