Week Seventy

Alright family, here we go! Another week of emails! To start everything out, it's important to know that for the past 3 weeks, I've had no money. The mission is getting a new system in for how they deal with the money, and we haven't been allowed to send in receipts and stuff to get reimbursements. Life has been real over here! We're looking at a week of eating a lot of rice....which is good and bad. This transfer has definitely taught me that you only really need a couple of dollars to stay not hungry haha. If you like eating rice it's just no problem.

This last week has been pretty good. It was pretty nice to meet with a lot of people and get out and do some good stuff! Oh it basically rained like the whole week. Non-stop. Let me just tell you about it.

Dienstag: I'm starting with Tuesday again. We were in Hamburg to email and enjoy p-day again. I had no money, so the term 'enjoy' is being used very loosely. It was still fun though. Elder Lykins paid for the KFC....yea KFC again haha. 

 

Hamburg Fried Chicken???

Worth it. Not much else. I took a nap. We had GEMIKO that night with Bruder Z.

Mittwoch: Wednesday morning was District Meeting in Lübeck. It was a good meeting! We didn't have too much to talk about in terms of our investigators and how we can help, but the Themas that were given were pretty good, in my opinion. I learned a lot. The Zone Leaders were there, which was good. When we got home, we changed right away, and went to the S's to help with the ceiling. We are so close to being done! Scraping the paint/stucco stuff off the ceiling is way harder than it sounds. She gave us some delicious pastries, so our efforts were rewarded. That took a while haha. We ended up coming home, getting changed, and getting back on a train to Kiel to go on exchanges. I was with Elder Rückauer, a German missionary from Freiburg. He's sweet. I spent a long time on trains that night! All the way to Kiel and all the way back was like 4 hours. Riding trains is so tiring....

Donnerstag: Thursday was way cool. I learned a lot of German hints and tricks from Elder Rückauer, who just happens to speak like perfect English. It's not fair at all. Americans are just at a disadvantage because English is our mother language..usually. Almost everybody in Germany can speak English, and if not, they can at least say a couple of words. But yea he helped me with some things. We had a couple of great appointments...one with Herr V. He was the referral from the other missionaries. He's way cool, I like him a lot. He's very open and honest about what he understands and knows. We just have to help him realize what he actually believes in. He has a family, so hopefully we'll be able to help the whole family! Elder Rückauer and I made a very interesting lunch, after he decided to challenge me to a hot chili eating showdown. I didn't have any problems....but oh man haha he did. Germans aren't the biggest fans of spicy food...as a general stereotype. Anyways we made some spaghetti, pea, carrot, spicy chili, egg pasta thing. It was good. After lunch we went by a couple of contacts in Ahrensburg. We got into contact with one man who told us to come by in a couple of weeks, which was sweet. We also had an appointment with Herr S, the man we found right when I arrived in Ahrensburg. He talks a lot....so it's hard to teach. That seems to be a problem with a lot of investigators. It turns from a teaching/learning environment into a sit and listen to me talk one...Oh well. After that appointment we had to race home, pick up Elder Rückauers bag, and ride the bikes back to the train station. No big deal. Elder Lykins was back in Delingsdorf area, and we had an appointment with the family W. They made us some delicious potato cheese thing. I just ate it up. After the eating and spiritual though, we went home and crashed.

Freitag: Friday was weird. We studied in the morning, went and had to carry a 50 pound package into the city and mail it.....my goodness that sucked. It was actually one of the most challenging things I've ever had to do. No big deal though. We came home and ate lunch, and started weekly planning. That went for a while until Bruder S from the office came and had us clean out our basement. That took a while haha. There's like this big push in the mission to make nasty old apartments nice again. With new furniture and painting and what not. It's a blessing and a curse. It usually takes like a lot of time and is annoying and hard work. But then you can just enjoy the nice new apartment! well after finishing planning, we had an appointment kind of far away with the family Thomas. They're way cool! They young and the have bunnies like Emily and Matt. I don't know if they still have their rabbits after the move...but it's cool anyways. They made us taco salad. Taco Salad is apparently like the most American thing you could make for the missionaries. It's really good, but we eat it a lot haha. We ate and gave them a Book of Mormon. They wrote their testimony in it and then we got them to promise to pass it out to one of their friends. Good stuff!

Samstag: Saturday was sweeeeeet. We started with soccer in the morning. There were these kids there from Spain or something. They couldn't speak any German but the were sooo good. It was incredible. Not too big of a deal though...still scored two goals. Be proud. It rained a lot and I was very tired afterwards. We had an appointment right before lunch with a man from Angola, who had grown up in the Congo, so he only knows French. His German is alright, but it was hard to communicate. We're going to try to bring a member from the ward who can speak French next time obviously. He was way cool though! We also had our weekly meeting with Dr. M. This time was a lot better. Bruder M went an hour early to talk and we could come in and start with teaching. We taught about reading the scriptures. It was good to focus on that. We learned a lot about where he stands right now with God and what he expects from him. We said he'd try to read in the Book of Mormon. That would be good progress. After that appointment, we walked around Bargteheide for a long time in the rain to go by on contacts there. 

 

 

We found a couple of them. We came home and ate and then something crazy happened.....I just passed out. I sat in my bed intending to sit there for like 15 minutes. I woke up on Sunday morning.....

Sonntag: Which just proves how tired missionaries really are! I felt bad, but am grateful for the 12 hours of sleep. We were intending on planning anyway. Elder Lykins said he just let me sleep because I seemed really tired. When's the last time you remember me being tired? I slept so much at home that I was never tired haha. But anyways Sunday was good. It was great to see some people at church that we've been trying to help come back. No investigators yet, but members that we've been working with. I love seeing that. Because members see their old friends and people they already know and everyone talks. It's like coming home for the one who's been staying away. H A came to church for the first time like a while. Probably like a month. Not SUCH a long time, but it was still good to see him there. After church we had to RACE our bikes home and RUN to the train station to catch our train. It was annoying. But we made it and were one time for our eating appointment with the family Z. Brother Z served in HOF a while ago! So it was super cool to talk about the city and the people there. We ate delicious lasagna. We came home and cleaned up the apartment a little, and then had an appointment with Herr Friedrich, who I met for the first time. The guy is so cool and he loves reading books about religion. He has so many of the same beliefs as us, just not hat he needs to belong to a church or anything like that. I loved the appointment. He's a smart guy.

So that was the week. I also talked to the Mission Doctor about my knee. The bad one haha. It was bothering me pretty bad yesterday and it was even swollen. He said that I could have some torn cartilage in my knee, but he really can't say anything. His prescription was to tough it out and not destroy my knee while I'm in Germany haha. Good stuff. The week was long and wet. So much rain...but it was also way good. I'm happy in Delingsdorf area. I'm super excited to get the work going here.

Oh by the way! Do you remember F from Rostock? He was baptized confirmed over the weekend! How cool is that?! I didn't get to go to the baptism, but it was just super good to hear that he finally made it. It seems that the Rostock branch is also pretty excited for him. I remember that night that he talked to us that night in the bahn! Like it was yesterday! the Lord is hastening his work.

I hope you have a good memorial day! Enjoy the day off of work. Eat good food for me.

Well anyway, things are still chugging along here in Germany! I love and miss you all and I pray all the time for you!

Have a great week!

Elder Pollard