February 29, 2024: There was nothing to fear

 and nothing to doubt


This week was good!

I'm not sure if I said this last week, but Thursday night I was assigned to give a talk by our Branch President, and my district leader asked me to lead a spiritual discussion/lesson for D-Rat on Friday. It's really weird, for some reason specifically with church things I feel like when I get one assignement , like four other things happen on the same day.

Anyways, we had our D-Rat. The Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders were both there, so that added a little pressure for me, but all went OK. I talked on how we can help others endure and "thrive" until the end. It's actually very interesting, The definition of the word "thrive" is "to make steady progress". It's super important not only in our temporal lives but also our spiritual lives, that we are able to "make steady progress" or "thrive". It's super easy to get caught up in things in the moment, but its important to always have the next step in mind so we can continue to make steady, unhalted progress. Think about it and see what you can do this week to take just a small step to becoming better! Then do it again next week. You will be blessed!

Saturday was an interesting day! We helped with that one house building service project this week. I took down a bunch of wooden planks. By the end we'd probably got down about 300 planks (equivalent to about 75 logs). My comp spent 2 hours fixing a massive slide/chute to throw shingles down, which would be a HUGE help, and he was very proud of his work when it was finally finished. The next day we found out that it broke again about 15 minutes after we left. Sadness.

We met with this random German dude named Marc Schulz. He visited my MTC back in that period, and is basically known on the mission for traveling around Germany, saying hello to missionaries, and then just heading out. We said hi, and he took us to 2 random grave sites of some German soccer players from Kaiserslautern. He also gave us both one donut from his hometown for whatever reason. He's also met and had pictures with an astounding amount of famous people including the recent Queen of England, Donald trump, and a bunch of other people. It was super kind of him to stop by and see us!

We got a referral and were able to give him a church tour so that was cool! He works till 6AM so it will be really hard to get him to church tho :(. after that though there was a church dance happening as I was preparing my Sunday talk, so we took a little mental health break and did the Cha Cha slide together, that was amazing!

On Sunday I finally gave my talk about magnifying our callings and finding joy therein! It went mostly well, but I forgot to print it out so I had to read and scroll from my tiny phone screen which was really uncomfy, but it worked out. That night we ate a pizza and put potatoes on it because my companion insisted it would be good. I have no idea where he got that idea from, he isn't even from Idaho, much less Ireland, but we tried it, and it was actually pretty good! Would do it again. 

Monday was also really weird, we were about to go street finding and then I suddenly felt queasy, so I took a few minutes to lay down before heading out. I woke up 2 HOURS LATER with my companion telling me it was time to go to our lesson. I didn't even have the capacity to be frustrated though, because those two hours were some of the blissfullest sleep I've had in a while. 

From Tuesday to Wednesday we had an incredible exchange with the American Elders, and I was with our lovely District leader, Elder Bleazard (AKA Peter B Parker). We made a huge pot of what we call "J-dub-grub" and played a game of magic between the four of us. Also, they have an incredible apartment, and from what I've heard, it's the nicest in the whole mission. The next day we went to the church to have D-Rat again, and went to Burger King for lunch (because it's actually good here). We somehow got roped into the senior missionaries giving us a shoe shining tutorial. My shoes are getting rough so that was actually helpful! For dinner we went to a little hole in the wall fried chicken restaurant called "Crazy Chicken", and that was actually some of the best friend chicken I've had! definitely the best in Germany, which at the end of the day just means it's better than KFC. And at a reasonable price. We went to a youth/YSA game night for the Americans, and we played board games and ping pong! racket/paddle sports are just an irreplaceable activity for me. We ended our exchange after that, but I got a lot of really good advice and council from my District Leader. He's a great man. 

Today for P-Day we celebrated Sister Connell's birthday, which also just happens to be leap day! she turned 5 today. She seems very mature for starting kindergarten next year. We went to an escape room, which we crushed (it was in English), and then just played chair soccer and ate cake. 

That's the week!

Bis nächste woche!
Elder Tage Rex 











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