Elder Tage Rex: Germany Frankfurt Mission

  Code: Fine back A wise woman by the name of Brenda once told me, "If you're going to make a mistake, make it a doosey!" So, that's exactly what I did. Just after visiting the beautiful city and cathedral of Köln, we headed back with the trains and busses to Wesel. The busses were a little late, but everything was going fine. We got to the Bahnhof, and went to get our bikes, and it was pouring rain. I felt around in my pockets to get the keys to unlock the bikes, and was in a slight panic as none were to be found. My companion didnt have them either. We dumped everything outside of our backpacks, rummaged through every corner, and alas, no keys. No bike keys, no house keys, no church keys, nothing. All hope was lost. And I was the one in charge of them. We spent about 30 minutes in the rain wondering what to do, and eventually took a bus that dropped us about 2/3 of a mile away from our house, and we walked, keyless, and drenched towards our residency. We rang the do...

  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 f...

  It'll all be OK in the end Sorry this email is coming out late, our mission president made history this week by giving us an extra half p-day on Saturday! I wasn't able to finish on Thursday so this'll have to do :) (he even let us sleep in and stuff  ) it just might be extra long this week, and you'll get a treat next week with a shorter one. On Thursday evening we had a lesson with a guy named Mike. He looks like a leprechaun, he just needs a green suit and a lil hat. He even sounds what you would imagine a german leprechaun sounds like. But he's really cool! It was over zoom, but I was able to contribute some thoughts in my broken German and it went really well.  On Friday we were doing some street finding, and were on our way back, and found this couple from Greece, who speak Greek and everything! We were talking to them and had a great conversation- they don't really partake of any particular church but they are Christian and practice meditation to feel c...

  I'm afraid that's not possible, sir This week was a doosey. Not sure what that word entails but it feels appropriate.  We got home last week after p-day to a voice message from the Oma that lives beneath us and owns our dwelling. We got scolded for a solid 3 minutes in german. The words "junge junge junge, meine gute" are burned forever into my brain. Don't worry, we didn't really do anything wrong I think and our relationship has repaired and she hasn't kicked us out yet. I think.  My companion almost got hit by a car, but he saved his life by turning the bike and crashing into the ground, from which he was nearly unscathed but his phone is broken now, so we've been sharing a phone for a week which has been interesting. We've still gotten everything we need do to done though so it's alright.  The german language is wild as always, and I can tell I understand just a little bit more every day but still very difficult. Some people speak incredi...

 I didn't quite catch that last part. This week went by so fast. Not even sure exactly what happened, but it was good.  All of the trains in the beautiful city of Wesel are not running for the next month, so we take super slow buses whenever we need to get somewhere else, which is pretty often. It sounds bad, and yeah it's not great but maybe It'll help me get better at finding people on buses, because that's not my favorite thing to do.  We had our first exchange! I prefer the German word "Austausch". There's a whole slew of German words that are just part of our English lingo with other missionaries and it's great. So my companion and I split up, and I went to the beautiful city of Krefeld with Elder Manning, our district leader. We took our bikes on the way there, and one of the street trains was soooo full. We had two bikes, one guy in a giant electric wheelchair, 3 grandmas, and 3 ladies with strollers, all in the entrance part of the train. Just ...

Why do people think that German sounds angry? It really isn't at all- people just talk louder in German for some reason.  I've also noticed that when whole cherries are put into a dessert, they don't usually remove the pits. It's like navigating a minefield.  I met one of our friends named Marita, and she is super awesome. She has 2 kids, and was recently divorced so she has felt very alone and it's been really hard for her. She has found happiness and peace from praying and coming to church though, and we invited her to pray about baptism! Our lesson with her this week was the first one that felt like I actually was involved, and not just listening. We were really worried about teaching our friends Eicke and Sophie about the Word of Wisdom, because sometimes they would take smoke breaks during our lessons. But they actually took it really well and they said everything made sense, so that was a Wunder. They even came to church for the first time and had a great expe...

  The Beginning.  And so it began. I don't have much time, so I'm going to try to go day by day on this one. Dawn of the first day: We landed in Frankfurt! It was crazy to see English be the subtitles this time, and not another language. We met the mission president, and drove to the church building. I tried mayonaise for the first time. We had interviews and a couple meetings, and then we were paired to go street contacting for a lil while for the first time. So a random missionary picked me and we went on the streets of germany to find people to talk to about The Gospel. after a few people who ignored us, somebody took interest in a conversation (in english, he was from Africa). He bible bashed us for over 30 minutes haha. hardly got 2 words in the whole time too. It was a good experience though, and he wasn't mean he simply believed that we had no idea who Jesus Christ was. I think if he knew how much we sacrificed to be here, he would at least have respected us. The peo...