Week Fifty-nine

Hey Family! And Friends!

This last week went by in one second. It's so strange and just mind blowing how fast the time is going by now. It's already March! For the second time! It's totally bittersweet though. Like long days and you just look at your plan and think that the night will never come...but it just does haha. I just can't blink too much or I'll look back and realize all the good times that slipped through my fingers. I love being here! I'm in this weird avatar-state of learning and progressing and being able to help other people through that. I don't ever want to look at my life and find myself being in no position to help the people around me. I really love that.

But thank goodness I write down my plan everyday! Or else I wouldn't be able to tell you what I did all week haha.

This is what I did:

Montag: Last Monday was good. It was pretty cold haha I remember that. I remember we ate Döner at the 2€ döner place. Döner macht schöner! That's what they always say! Monday was also interesting because we had like 15€ between us haha. The end of the month is always rough. So we didn't get to do too much shopping. We did get ice cream though, which never upsets. I tried to write some letters too but we didn't have enough time. So after P-day was over, we had a really good lesson with T! She's the girl from Africa who found us! We bring T along because we can't meet alone with women unless there's another man there. It's part of the missionary rules. But it's great, because T is a great teacher! So having him there is only a blessing. We taught about the plan of salvation. Her reaction was great haha because I said, 'T, did you know that you lived with Heavenly Father before you came to this Earth?' And she was like 'REALLY?!?!' it was just great. She's super cool and I'm so grateful that she found us.

Diesntag: Tuesday was a little different haha. A lot of what we planned for fell through. But we did end up going by on the S Family and getting to talk a little with them. I don't know how interested they are in investigating, which is too bad. But Herr S is doing not too great - health wise - and we really want to do anything that we can to help. We had an appointment with M that night. M is a pagan. Like literally. He worships Idols and believes in Thor and stuff. It's way cool haha. He had read a little bit in the Book of Mormon which is always great! We'll see if he can learn anything from us haha. It's going to depend on if he has an open heart. We got to go to institute after and eat some good food.

Mittwoch: Wednesday morning we had district meeting. The Zone Leaders were there too, so that was cool. It was a good district meeting. The day was slow...some finding haha. But we did get to meet with M, a member here. He doesn't come to church, and has some other issues so we're really going to try and work with him. And our appointment was really promising! We talked about God haha, pretty general and talked about prayer,  too. He asked when we were coming back! Which was huge. It was a good appointment.

Donnerstag: Thursday was a good day. We had another joint teach with T! We went and met with T and taught the rest of the plan of salvation. She's making some good progress. Helping people come closer to God! Good stuff. We also got to meet with Brother G, and his wife who is not a member. We ate a lot of cake haha. They had a really nice house, which isn't too common in Germany. A lot of people live in apartments. Especially in the city. But there are a lot of really nice houses in Germany, too! And Brother G's got one. We ate cake and got to know them better. We had an appointment with F and we started talking about repentance with him. Then we had FHE that we taught haha it was a busy day.

Freitag: Friday was good, too. We had Gemiko in the morning and ate lunch with all the missionaries and T. We also planned that day for the week. After planning, we had a movie night with the branch. We watched 'Das Himmels Fenster' Which means "the Window of Heaven". It is about Lorenzo Snow when he went to St. George and talked about tithing. It was a super old movie. But kind of cool to watch in German. We met with Brother S that night. We helped him move some stuff in his apartment and shared a thought about following the commandments.

Samstag: Saturday we just did a lot of finding and played ping-pong.

Sonntag: Sunday was so nice. We had church. T and F came to church! We taught F and read from the Book of Mormon with him. After church, the E's realized that nobody signed up to feed us, so the invited us out to Neubukow. We ate a lot and saw the beach. Good times!

The week just went by so fast haha I can't explain it at all. But it was such a good week for me. I was pretty much sick the whole week, and am still sick now. I realize that I'm sick when I wake up every morning with a headache and my body is just weak. But the work goes on haha. I am especially excited about my study still haha. I love the scriptures! They're so cool. And I love them so much because the story is so applicable in life. And it should be haha that's why it's scripture. I have no doubt that the Bible and the Book of Mormon are from God. And that they're here for us to learn what we need to do in this life. 2 Nephi 32: 3 says  'Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do.' I like how it mentions feasting upon the words of Christ (the scriptures) and from that, learning and knowing what to do. My study can kind of be described as feasting haha. But I've been learning a lot just from reading for an hour every day.

I read some really great scriptures this last week. Pertaining to Sunday, and keeping the Sabbath day holy. In Leviticus 23:3, God is speaking with Moses and telling him to remind Israel why we have a Sabbath day. It says, 'Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.' That word convocation is hard haha. In German it says that Sunday is a day 'of holy meetings'. Convocation means meetings. How applicable is that for us! Going to church is a commandment of God. And like all commandments, it's only there because we will benefit when we follow it. The interesting thing then is trying to find out how we can make Sunday a better day for US. Ezekiel 20:20 says, 'And hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God.' English uses the word sign, but German uses the word covenant. I thought about that for a while, that keeping the sabbath day holy and going to church is a covenant. Something between US and GOD. Everything we do on Sunday, not only going to church, but everything else we do the rest of the day is holy and should be between us and God. From waking up in the morning to coming home after church and going into 'relax mode', everything we do is between us and God. Let's remember that! It might change our attitudes when we want to run down to the store to buy soda, or when we want to go to the Chargers game. Are doing these things strengthening the relationship between us and God? Let's remember to keep the Sabbath day holy and to set apart this day and let's keep our actions and everything we do on Sunday in coordination with this sacred 'sign' or 'covenant'.

THAT'S WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK IN THE SCRIPTURES.


This segment brought to you by Elder Pollard.

Everything is going great family! Only two weeks until transfers....that's kind of scary.

I hope you all have a great week! I love and miss you all!

Elder Pollard

PS...

Daddio,

I wish I could say that I'm getting healthier haha. I'm not doing GREAT, but the work here is. We have 5 progressing investigators! I love that. A couple are harder to get in contact with because they're sick or busy, but all in all, it's going great. We still have a lot of finding to do. It's kind of hard to work with the ward here, because there are like two less actives that we can work with. Like literally haha and we do work with one of them. The sisters work with the other. So our work pretty much focuses on Finding and Teaching. But it's going well.

That's super exciting about the stake changes. Are Brother Clyde and Brother Romney in the same ward? Or do we have one of them?

Good luck making chili for 250 people. I thought you were in the High Priests group, not the relief society haha. Thanks for sharing with me what you've learned in the scriptures. I like the example that Ammon sets by staying 100% obedient and putting everything into his calling of being a missionary. Even after the arm incident, when King Lamoni's servants bring the arms to him, Ammon is taking care of his horses. There was no 'I just cut off a bunch of people's arms break'. But the point about the armless looking back at Ammon and how they felt is interesting. I like that. We always have to remember though, that some people aren't going to like it when we stand up for what we hold as truth. Christ himself was a stumbling block for A LOT of people, even though he stood for 100% truth and love. As long as we're standing up for the truth and being the best disciples of Christ, it's not going to matter what people think of us. We don't want to offend anybody, but if we do, hopefully these people will be able to look back at sometime and be glad that the 'stumbled' on the truth.

I hope some of the themas that I sent you and mom will be able to help in your weekly tradition now! I love being a missionary!