6.12.2004

hey friends! sad do think that this is my next to last email from the land of the sauerkraut. strange indeed... yesterday was fast sunday. it was great! my last chance to bear my testimony in German,... or so i thought. we ate after church with our first counsellor, and he told me that i would also get a chance to say goodbye to the ward next week as well, so cool! i am very happy... as i think back on my mission, all the wonderful things i´ve seen and experienced and stuff, i really am sure it´s been ´the best two years´. i´ve made so many friends, and seen so many proofs that God loves us and is there for us... i dont want to get sappy, but i know that it´s all been worth it, more than i ever dreamed. i just hope i havent forgotten how to drive.... we took a few minutes to visit the Hamburg christmas market last week, as well as the small one that was held in Lauenburg. they were amazing.. i cant describe the feeling, walking through the narrow strets with the smell of roasted almonds and warm Glühwein in the air, hearing the music and taking in the stands of colorful stuff... simply amazing.. like something from a book. i love life! we ate Fufu again last saturday with Christina, the Ghanan lady who got baptised a few weeks ago. many of her friends were there, and we ate it at another members´house, so there were quite a few people there. another awesome experience! i gotta get going.. there are still people to find in my last 10 dayys... i am sad to leave but excited to get home.. it´s a strange time for me... have a great week please!

30.12.2004

hey friends! Another great week. i think the Lord notices i am starting to think about ome more and more, so He is giving me more and more great experiences to keep my mind centered on the work for another short while. Christina, the lady from Ghana, got confirmed last sunday by my companion. she is simply wonderful, and the ward is accepting her amazingly well! we are going to visit her in just a few more minutes, actually, and these are always appointments i look forward to. We seem to have so much going on i dont have time to be trunkie! last week we were working all day, didnt get a chance to email you, i´m sorry. we had a service project at the mission home, raking leaves and cleaning the yard. i beat up a big ol´ stump. it´s strange to think that the next time i see that building will be my last. Our week is pretty packed, as was last week, and it couldnt be a better way to close a mission. there is one family who is on the verge of baptism, the Königs, they both know it is true but need to get married before they take the plunge. they are so excited and have changed their lives so much in the time i have known them! We are also working with an old lady named Evelyn, who is in a nursing home but the misisonaries have visited her every week for years, because her daughter is a member but doesnt have time to visit too often. we love her, and i suggested to my companion that he start teaching her the discussions, kind of as a way for him to practice his german, because Evelyn speaks English also perfectly. he teaches, and when he needs help i help him and when he gest a word wrong Evelyn corrects him. she has been coming to church and also wants to be baptised! i want to thank you all for being there for me, and i wish you a good week. i ask for your prayers for the Torke family, some very good friends of mine, and for the Königs and for Frau Reich. God loves us and is there for us. peace! P. S. if you want to send me one last letter before i go home, now is the time. hint hint....

22.11.2004

hey friends! this week was great... just great. it´s strange knowing i´ve been on my mission for over 2 years now... i am way thankful.. it seems like this time is just gravy.. like a ´bonus level´.. and everything is going wonderful. we are teaching many great families, and the ward is helping out a lot. we gave 2 baptismal commitments last week, and although the families probably wont be ready to get baptised in 3 weeks, it´s great to be a part of this great work. i am thankful for this time i can still be here, and it´s great having a companion who is ready and willing to keep up. we have two more important appointments today, so i gotta keep this short, but thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. i am thinking about you. peace out, and take care!

15.11.2004

hey friends! wow, what a great week! as i get closer and closer to the end of my mission, more and more wonderful things keep happening to make me want to stay! my comp is totally awesome, we love each other and work really hard. the ward is totally psyched to have me back for some reason and yesterday some members invited us to teach a friend of theirs at their house.. something that virtually NEVER happens here. i love the ward here and am really excited to be helping out. the most amazing thing is, we had a baptism yesterday! Christina Ahl, a lady from Ghana, got baptised in Bergedorf, a city about 20 minutes away, because we dont have a baptismal font in Lauenburg! Many missionaries were there, old friends of mine, as well as the mission president and his wife, and all the missionaries brought nonmember friends from their respective cities.. some coming as far away as Bremen and Bielefeld! We also had a few friends there who are investigating the church, and they found it awesome as well. the service was in two languages, because Christina brought many of her friends who dont speak German very well, and everything went without problems for a change. we had a great time- nothing makes a missionaries´ day like a baptism. Last saturday Christina invited us over to her house to eat Fufu, an african dish i have heard a lot about, but never eaten. basically, it´s a thick ball of mashed potatoes as big as a softball, sitting in a pool of super spicy soup, with chunks of chicken floating in it. not just sliced chicken breast like we are used to at home, but actually hacked up chunks of chicken, including all the insides, and if you get a bone you just spit it out. it is eaten without silverware, you just rip off a chunk of the potatoes with your fingers, dip your hand into the soup like a spoon, and slurp it up. a truly one-of-a-kind experience! Christina told us to invite friends of ours, so we invited 3 other missionaries, and we had a blast! the soup was so spicy, we were crying, and she kept asking us if it was too hot, and we had to keep saying no, it tastes great, because we have to be polite, even if tears are running down our faces. then Christina also had african friends of hers there, and they put on some music and started dancing and singing... the whole thing was an amazing experience! i love how Germany is such a cultural melting pot... there were 5 africans, 4 americans, and a frenchman sitting in a room in Germany, talking and laughing and stuff... i know i will never again in my life get to have such an experience. A ton of other stuff happened last week too, but i am running out of time. the church is true. God loves us. i am so happy to be here.... take care of yourselves! have a good week!

8.1.2004

hey friends! i was expecting this transfer to be worse than it was, but everything turned out okay, without problems. my luggage is nearing the end of its life, having been transferred with me a total of 8 times on my mission, with one left to go. Lauenburg is doing great! we actually have a baptism this weekend, a lady from Ghana named Christina! she is super-cool, and her and her daughter will be going with us to Hamburg tomorrow for a Fireside and an interview with the mission president. we are really excited, of course, and hope everything goes well. it was awesome to see the looks on the faces of members as i was in church yesterday. most of them were happy to see me again, and a few hadn´t even noticed i was gone! it is awesome to see my old friends again, and i know we will have a great next 5 weeks. shame i cant stay longer.... my companion is Elder Watkins, from Utah. he´s a cool kid, plays, like me, guitar and piano and alto saxophone, and he also sings really well. i am excited, to say the least. he is new here in Germany, so we are going to be concentrating on his German for the next little bit as well. This week we are pretty busy. it´s cold, and we ride bikes a lot, and its starting to get dark around 5 oclock now, but we are happy, and i love this apartment.. with the old wood supports and atticy feel. we bought some candles today and a new pot.. i left some stuff in our old one last night on the burner and went to sleep. luckily everything didnt burn down, but we´ll be having the windows open for the next few days despite the cold, and the purchase of a new pot became suddenly mandatory. oops.... hope you all have a good week. i am praying for you. see you soon!

1.11.2004

Hey friends! there is some pretty interesting news this week, i guess. I got a call from the mission president today, and i am going to Lauenburg again this thursday! I got transferred my last transfer, back to a town that i´ve already been in! that doesnt happen very often. It was quite a surprise for me, because i was sure i was going to end my mission here in Minden. i will be getting a very new companion, he is only a few weeks here in Germany. I will also be district leader, which means number monkey. wa-hoo. it will be cool to see the ward there again, i have some pretty good friends there. Of course, it will be sad to leave Minden, as well, especially cuz i was totally expecting to stay. Last saturday we had an activity with the other missionaries in Hannover area, first we had a street display and sang for 2 hours, then we played soccer for 4 hours, and then we all went to the church and saw a movie, `the best 2 years`, about missionaries in Holland. It was funny to hear them in the movie speaking Hollandish, because it´s kinda like a sloppy German. heh. it was a great movie, though, really motivated me to get to work my last few weeks. the problem with the bike took care of itself. i found a misisonary here who is willing to buy it for the price of repairs, that is, 85 euro, and then when i get to Lauenburg, there is a bike there i can use for free ´til i go home. so, no sweat. funny how things seem so terrible and then have a way of working themselves out. I had a talk yesterday in church again-about the ´path to perfection´. went well, i guess. just so you know. I am doing well. i am happy, and even though this week is going to be hectic, i am optomistic and looking forward to going to Lauenburg. And home. ´til then!

25.10.2004

hey friends! great week, huh? i agree. The weather has been perfect.. wonderful fall weather! the leaves are falling off the trees, it´s been cold and windy, but not bitter cold. my legs hurt. lots of walking this last week- lots to do. but it´s a good kind of hurt... The bike problems continue to escalate. my ´Tret-Anlage´, or pedalling mechanism on my bike, has fallen apart. the Liahona bikes are designed to be ridden thousands of kilometers by missionaries, but the only problem is, no ball bearings are tough enough to last that long. the gears on my front pedals are stripped too, and i figure i need the bike 2 more months, and then i can sell it to another missionary for more if it´s repaired and in good condition. to make a long story short, the bike is taking way longer to repair than we thought, and it will set me back 95 bucks, which is more than i have. i first accepted to get it fixed after the place that offered me the best price and said i could pay with credit card, but they turned out charging me double what they said, and when i went to pay, they said, óh, we take all credit cards but those´. i can hardly afford that, and it was for sure not worth it, but these guys are tough, and its either pay or leave the bike with them. tough choice. oh, well. you win some, you lose some. this one hurts, though, because our mission doesnt help one penny with bike problems- missionaries have to pay out of their own pocket. thursday we had two elders out of Hannover come visit- Elder Wächtler and Elder KiniKini. One is a big German kid from Bavaria, and the other is the quietest kid i´ve ever met, of Samoan descent, born in Alaska and raised in Utah. A funny companionship- but we had tons of fun. elder Wächtler is one of my favorite missionaries- he is a genius with cars.. knows everything. i worked with him almost all day, and learned a lot. he has a hilarious accent and a great attitude about missionary work. Last saturday we had a streed display in Stadthagen. The missionaries from all around arrived at the train station at ten in the morning, only to hear that the two elders in Stadthagen had to make an emergency trip to Hamburg, and that we had to do it without them. It was an adventure, to be sure, because nobody had been in the city before, and we all had to walk to the downtown, and people were asking where the church was, and we didnt know. hilarious, but we helped a lot of people. We sang again, and it was a wonderful time. Friday we went to Diepholz, a tiny town that´s a 2 hour train ride away. We spent a day with a family on our ward, and they had company from america that didnt speak Gerlan, so it was good to hang out with him. he is a 17 year old kid from Utah named Jon. It was funny hearing his opinions of Germany, basically the same things i thought 2 years ago but am totally used to now. We took a walk through a Moor, which is basically a big swamp. Germans like taking walks, as a way to unwind and slow down. i think we americans did it wrong... we were making jokes and playing around and finding cool stuff, like boy scouts on a hike. One can hardly blame us, but our hosts were surprised that we didnt walk in a straight line, quietly and pondering the deeper meaning of things around us, like that soggy stump. At least some of us had fun, and we had a wonderful discussion and i learned a lot about Moors. Mmkay, this week is probably the last week my companion and i will be together. shame- we get along really well. I dont include in my letters usually the doors we do, the people we talk to on the street, etc., mainly because that is only the planting of the seeds, but i promise i will let you know when the first ones start to sprout. life is wonderful. Christ loves us. peace out, and have a good week!