January 25, 2024: In time I will leave the city

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 foreign language. Wesel is really everything I know about the mission so far, and I'm incredibly sad to be leaving. I'm going to miss it a here a lot.

But don't get me wrong, I'm super excited to go to Kaiserslautern! It looks like a beautiful city, and it'll be amazing to have some new experiences! My new companion is named Elder Perez, I've never met him bit he seems chill. There's also a massive American base somewhere in the city, and I heard through the grape vine that there's a Taco Bell somewhere on it. And the grape vine doesn't lie.

Anyways, we had another crazy week. This entire transfer has just been non stop craziness. We made a new friend on Friday named "Simon Peter" (that's actually what we call him). We taught him over a video call, and then realised we would be in his neighboring town later on that day, so we stopped by and gave him a Book of Mormon! He is super interested in strengthening his faith in Christ. After that we met a cool Vietnamese dude who speaks English and is Catholic who also seemed pretty interested. Fingers crossed!

We had the weirdest service project on Saturday. An inactive lady told the Elders Quorum she needed help, and they forwarded that responsibility to us. We went to her house, she told us that she needs the wallpaper scrapes off the walls, got out some spray stuff and some scraper tools, and then didn't say hardly a word to us for the next 2 hours. So we scraped away. We also installed a weird light fixture on the ceiling, and it wouldn't actually fit so it was kinda just hanging there by the electrical wires that were plugged into it.... She still doesn't know our names, but I'm glad we could at least do some service because that doesn't happen super often here.

We also ate canned ravioli that day. Would not recommend.

Jakob got baptized on Sunday!!! It was awesome, we had our normal church meetings and then he was baptized afterwards. It reminded me why we don't have 3 hours of church anymore because we were there wayy too long. He was really happy though, and he had a ton of family come from really far away! Hype for Jakob!!

On Monday the wonderful Elder Gibert (my companion last transfer) and his new companion visited Wesel for a few hours for him to pick up his drivers license, and we got lunch with them. It was super fun! It was insane just how much has happened in so little time, after just 6 weeks we had so many stories to relate to each other. We got döner, but I made a mistake. There were only 2 options, groß döner or klein döner (big or small döner). There was no "middle" döner option, so I opted for the 10€ groß döner, and it was bigger than my head! It was good, but really difficult to eat because of the sheer size of it.

After that we had a lesson with Pasquale about some commandments, which is hard to make entertaining for him because he's 9. We did get some fire lasagne from his mom tho. And my companion got pulled over on his bike on the way home. We weren't sure exactly what they told us, other than his light was broken, and eventually we just said OK enough times that they drove away, and we kept on biking.

Transfer announcement day (We call it D-Day) was on Tuesday, and we waited for any calls for leadership positions in the morning, but none came. We eventually went to DRat, and learned that Elder Stucki is going to be in media, Elder Dodge in the office, and Elder Picklesimer is training! Along with that, Elder Berndt is going home this week, and we hosted a funeral for him. With all of these changes in the district I thought for sure I was staying in Wesel.

We planned on doing an exchange Tuesday to Wednesday, but there's a massive train strike for the next WEEK starting Wednesday, so we basically can't travel till next Tuesday. We did a mini exchange for a couple hours and then went home. We had a testimony meeting for the leavers, and then saw the transfer boards, and I was in total shock for getting transferred.

We had a surprise emergency mission zoom meeting Wednesday morning about transfers, because the train strike prevents people from actually going anywhere, including people leaving the country and people coming into the country, so it's a crazy situation. Basically for me though it'll just take place next Wednesday rather than this Friday, which is nice because now I can say bye to people at church on Sunday! I still kinda wish I could get it over with though.

We ate with Schwester Klucken, and then we had a game night with the young adults, which means that it was just us and a dude named Felix. The 3 of us just got snacks at the store and played card games for like 2 hours, it was really sad but also really funny

Sorry its a bit of a long one. A lot is happening!

God loves you!

I'll be in Kaiserslautern for the next one!

Elder Tage Rex

Jakob's baptism!

Young adult activity

Elder Picklesimer mini exchange

Canned Ravioli

Our funeral decorations

Service project

Simon Peter

Groß döner