September 21, 2023: Questions of science

 science and progress pulling the puzzles apart :)


It's the end of the transfer! We got to listen in on the "leavers testimony meeting", which is where all of the people leaving this week (or 'dying' as we say) bear their testimonies. That was pretty powerful.

We got notice on what the plans were for transfers on Tuesday (we call it D-Day), and both me and my companion Elder Koch are staying! Actually our entire district stayed, which is apparently unheard of, but now my companion is District Leader, which will be cool. We'll get to go on exchanges a lot more often. I will say I was hoping for some kind of a change just to see more of the country and see new perspectives, but Wesel is a great city so I'm mostly OK with staying.

We started out this week strong, going 4/4 on lessons getting canceled on Saturday, and learning the boy that we had a baptismal date for a couple weeks ago now is dealing with some stuff and we have no idea what the future holds for him. BUT! We were able to do more street contacting because of all this spare time from canceled lessons, and we got 100 LSI's this week. That's the most my companions ever seen in Wesel, and we met a lot of cool people because of it. We celebrated with some deutsches Eis :)

Sunday was a good day overall, but it started out a little rough. I'm trying to learn how to choose to be joyful, and enjoy the work of the Lord, rather than simply enduring my time here. At times it is easy to start thinking about home, and how I could play tennis every day, or see my friends, or play my favorite video game, and simply relax. But I know that this is the most important work I could be doing right now, and I know that if I wasn't here, my only wish would be to come back. This mission shouldn't be treated as a burden to bear, but rather as a blessing to enjoy, and finding joy is the purpose of this life. "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy." (2 Nephi 2:25) I know that there is joy to find in life, no matter our circumstances. You just have to choose it :)

We had our friend Sunday come to church! He only showed up for the 2nd hour and my companion translated for him, and he fell asleep a lot but he was super happy to be there. One of our members even connected to him through Nigeria, and he's wanting to bring his wife next time so that was awesome to see. He wore a purple suit and everything. Wish I had a picture.

We had an Essen Termin, and the food was great, we ate our fill. Then we got some quark for dessert which was great, and we were already pretty full. Thinking that this was the end, we ate our fill of quark. Suddenly, the member brings out 2 whole cakes, one of which she baked by hand! So we ate more. We exercise every morning, I just hope it's enough because I can't controll how much food they expect us to eat.

We bought some seasoning packets last week that said mac n cheese on them, so we were super excited to try it out. But it lied to us! We started making it on Monday, and shortly realized that it was actually just seasoning you put on top of already made mac and cheese, not mac and cheese sauce or powder, and it was too late. So we took about an hour making homemade mac and cheese, luckily we had just enough of everything to make it. Did you know that boiling milk makes it expand like super tall? Probably, but we didn't. It spilled everywhere. But it's OK, we finally finished, and made 8 servings of it. It was good, but not an hour of preparation good. We decided we would just make Nudelschinken next time. Plus now we have no milk.

I introduced the game smurf to my district, so that's fun.

We talked to a sweet old lady with a little dog named "Timmy" :)

Did a side quests on Tuesday! Brought in some chicken feed. Acquired ice cream, 20xp and 4 RP (relationship points).

We had a bunch of lessons cancel on us again, which was a shame. It was super windy and a little chilly, just like it'll be in Oklahoma in a month or so.

We had an austauch from Tuesday night through Wednesday in the beautiful city Krefeld! Don't ask me how I felt on the bus there. Let's just say "[Elder Koch's] number 2 had to go number 1" -Lego Batman. Unfortunately our bus that was normally 45 minutes took 1.5 hours, and so we had to wait for another train, and if you didn't know Germany doesn't have free bathrooms almost anywhere. Except for on trains for some reason. Eventually I made it though :). 

Our austausch was a trainee tausch, so the trainers went off on their own and Elder Stuki and I were left to fend for ourselves. It was really fun though, and we got to teach a lesson together. We also had D-Rat, and did a finding activity with white boards where we ask people a question on a board and look for people willing to write on it. It was super fun and casual, making it so much easier to talk to people. And of course we went to Sucuck&Chill :).

We had some wonderful cuisine for dinner. The Krefeld elders had nothing left to eat in their apartment except for powdered mashed potatoes. We started making them, and realized that it was making a lot more than we expected. It turns out, every packet makes 4 servings, and we put a total of 6 packets in! The instructions were in german except for that one part which was randomly in French. Unfortunately that was the most vital part. So we made 24 servings of mashed potatoes, and only mashed potatoes. I ate 3 large plates of mashed potatoes for dinner last night, with some ketchup to help the flavor. It didn't work very well. That was probably the saddest meal I've had since making mac and cheese with water or some uncooked lil caesarea bread sticks I had at home with a brother of mine.

For P-day today we went to the city of Köln, or Cologne for yall 'mericans.  It was insane. We walked a little through the massive cathedral there, went through the treasury, and climbed the massive spiral staircase to the top of a spire. Pictures probably won't do justice, but trust. And for those of you who know what Anor Londo is, it looks something like that. We ate 5 Guys for lunch, and I've only gone there like 3 times in my life but it always blows my mind, and its identical in Germany. 

Now I'm on a double decker train back to Wesel. I thought I'd have less to write about this week, but stuff just keeps happening. 

Remember to choose joy :) 
(Thanks Elly)


Elder Tage Rex

Here's some nice pictures.
(I'm going to send some more to you later mom but they're on other people's phones. You can add them in if there's any you like)












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

November 28, 2024: I need something more than only me

Image
  First- Happy Thanksgiving!!  Second- I did not write last week. There may be some lost content but it's been a great couple weeks since my last email! We've been teaching a crazy amount of lessons and it is awesome. We have a very nice variety of languages, backgrounds, and people we're teaching. It's probably about 33% German, 33% English (often from Nigeria) and then 33% other where we have to involve translation, wether Turkish, French, or Arabic. It's super cool. We have a few people making a lot of progress: Alex: I was calling up old contacts a couple weeks ago and a Turkish lady named Alex picked up the phone and we made an appointment. We ended up meeting with her but she couldn't speak much German at all. We set up another appointment and got some translation there, and then God worked some insane miracle! We learned that she used to be Muslim but she had been reading the bible and known something was special about Jesus that she couldn't deny. Sh...
Read more

October 19, 2023: I hear there's a new hero in town

Image
  Challenge me, if you dare. This week was great! I saw a lot of little miracles, so it was nice to know God is looking out for me :)  We had interviews on Thursday! We had to head out pretty early to make our way to the city of Düsseldorf, where our stake center is located. We got to play with logos and eat candy while we waited, and it was nice to forget how old we are for a few minutes. My interview went really well actually, last time it was very short but this time my mission president, President Cropper actually helped me with a lot of what I've been struggling with. To be fair I didn't really know anything for my last interview. Our president calls the food döner (sounds closer to doo-ner) "doner"(doe-ner), but nobody's told him how to say it right for the past 3 transfers, and its pretty funny. We we did some street contacting for the Düsseldorf Elders, and did our studies there as well. As soon as we finished, we got a text from our Bishop, asking me to g...
Read more

July 26, 2023: IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII

Image
  IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII "Revenge is a dish best served cold" The Ping Pong Bandit Today I bring you rad tidings of great joy. It rained like 4 times this week! With lightning and everything, it was wonderful. Reminds me of my days long past in the state of Oklahoma, with howling wind, skies ablaze, and lightning in the air. Tis all yet but an old memory. In all seriousness, during one of our 10 minute breaks we got to run all the way downstairs and outside to play in the rain for just a few minutes. That seems like such a little thing, but you really learn to appreciate the little things when you are here. Every normal thing you get to do is just filled with wonder and amusement. Also, The sky was almost literally on fire yesterday. Sundays are incredible here! I used to not look forward to Sundays that much, but they're such a good breath of fresh air in the MTC. You get to hear your fellow missionaries bear testimony, knowing that they are going through ex...
Read more