Elder Tage Rex: Germany Frankfurt Mission

  For now I will stay alive This one might be a bit scatterbrained, a lot happened and there's a lot of mixed emotions. We got some news this week, on Tuesday we finally got to see the transfer boards, and find out what the next 6 weeks entail. I fully expected to see my name under the "Wesel Elders" category. I looked, and to my dismay I was not there. I am leaving Wesel! I started my mission here, and I've been here for about 6 months now. I've had so many ups and downs, crazy experiences, incredible support from the Omas, and after all this time I just really feel like I'm finally at home here. I came here a helpless child, and I'm probably still a helpless child, but I've grown and learned so much. I've learned how to talk to strangers, how to bear witness of Jesus Christ, how to teach, how to live with other people, how to cook (kinda), how to appease the Omas, how to eat salad among other veggies, and I've learned to communicate in a fore...

  You could be me Two raindrops in the same sea Guten Tag, Guten abend, und Guten Nacht! -German Jim Carrey, probably The train strike finally ended on Saturday! Unfortunately the trains in Wesel are still down, so we have to take replacement busses anyways. It works though.  Schwester Ebbert has still been driving us around everywhere, but my bike is finally fixed as of yesterday! I'm going to miss Taxi Oma, but she's taking us to lunch today so it'll all be OK.  We had two exchanges this week, one with our ZL's and I went with Elder Hale in Düsseldorf. It was good! We taught some good lessons, and I met a cool Japanese dude on a street train who lived in California for 8 years and new English! We also had a Fußball night, and I pretended to play soccer for 2 hours. There's some insanely good soccer players here, I can't wrap my mind around how they learn to control the ball so well.  We had a good Sunday, and had a little miracle! We had asked Jakob earlier fo...

  But it's really kind of life-like Another week is gone already, only 2 more in the transfer somehow!  German mission tip- don't go door knocking at 8pm. Last Friday we decided to do that, because we were outside and didn't know what else to do other than go home. The people do not like it. 3 people complained to us about it being too late and their kids were going to sleep, and then an old lady (who we saw through her window that she was just watching TV) opened the door and said "in dieser Zeit?!" Or "at this hour?!" I should've just said "Yes!" But we decided to call it done after that. On Saturday we had 3 lessons fall through, and had a whole day to go finding. We decided to go to a new city in our area, Xanten! It was super dope actually! Its a bit smaller than Wesel, but there's a lot more historical stuff and just wayyy prettier. We got a couple numbers, and got the first success from finding we've had in a while.  Church w...

  Everything is upside down This week was a little crazy. Jus a lil' I'll start with some exciting news: we were able to make it to Mike's baptism!! It was such a miracle, really. A newish member Felix baptized him, and he's not super well versed in baptism yet, so he got him under the water and then didn't pull him back up... Mike was just in the water for a couple seconds flailing his arms and legs and then Felix got him back up. But what counts is that he went all the way under, and 'eventually' came all the way back up. The experience was amazing to see though, because the ward just took him under their wing after that. He has such a great connection with all the people there and you could feel the joy in the air. I feel so incredibly blessed to serve in this ward. Some say its the best in the mission.  Quick tip- the city I serve in is spelled "Wesel", but it's pronounced  "vae-zull". Now you sound German Crazy stuff: On Friday (...