Week 6

Guten Tag meine freunde!

First off, sorry about last week, the timer tottally ran our probably like .0001 seconds before i hit senden. Haha, talk about devastation. That could be one of the worst feelings for a missionary... my district all gave me candy our of sympathy. I was actually going to just write witha foreign stamp home and say "sorry i couldnt email, but they've sent me to Germany early," but then realizing the havoc that could potentially bring and decided i better not.:)

Well first off, that Elder i mentioned last week ended up going home, so my drit was split up and i was left with Elder Van M. It actually has been really really good. It's soooo much easier with just one companion. I appreciate all the lessons i've learned with the drit, but this has been really nice.  It means a lot lot lot more conversation in the lesson, which is good, it's hard because Elder Van M's german is a work in progress, but it really pushes me and accelerates my growth as well. haha last week in the TRC we were having this amazing discussion over the book of Mormon.. i was having like an out of body experience and just sitting there listening to myself speak German... anyway... so the question comes up "what language was the book of mormon translated in?" so figuring that would be an easy question i looked to Elder Van M, who then proceeded to bear testimony that God was our loving heavenly father of our Spirits, and then pulled out Bread-Stone parable in 3 Nephi 14. haha it was epic.  I love that parable. But anyways it was all good, I tied it back in to the parable and testified how God loves all his Children and will give them what they need, in their language. I love teaching in German.

Speaking of German, i shouldnt dwell on this so much... but George Lucas... come on. It clicked this week, Yoda uses like totally German sentence structure sometimes! And Darth Vader's helmet i guess was based off a Nazi design. Anyway, i could go on forever about it, but won't :)

I talked to a German elder who speaks Berlin style german, holy cow, ha he talked sooooooo fast. I was super excited with how much i understood tho, the answers on the other hand, welll let's just say i'm sure the gift of tongues will come here in a bit. :)  Oh, especially because this week Richard G Scott pretty much came to the MTC and INVOKED APOSTELIC BLESSINGS ON ALL OF US. Ya. He "excersied the office of the apostleship" and invoked a few very special blessings on us, it was pretty amazing. TWO APOSTLES IN TWO WEEKS. That's a special thing. He gave an amazing talk on following the spirit, and gave us all copies of his talk with about 30 paragraphs of revelelation he's received about following the spirit "over a lifetime of experience." So basically we all just got new scripture:) It's pretty amazing stuff. It is just so neat to see an apostle 30 feet in front of you. It just boggles my mind how one man can have lived that type of life for that long to eminate that kind of power. Really really neat. I'm not going to lie, these past couple weeks have been super super tough at times, but experiences like that, and one's like i had in the temple today just fuse your soul with so much hope and joy. Not to mention after his talk when we came outside it was totally snowing! We woke up to a snow covered MTC Wednesday morning. Haha Elder walker was running around like a little kid, he even pegged me with a snowball in the thigh when i wasnt looking. Ah, but just walking back form that devotional in the beautiful snow in my coat, scarf, and gloves, with a bunch of Elder's i love, pondering what an apostle had just told me, those are nights you wont soon forget.

So another cool thing i've learned this week from various MTC people. I guess 20 years ago, they refered to Brazil as the 'sleeping giant'. Pop quiz.... do you know what country they refer to as the 'sleeping giant' today. Bingo, Germany. I just cant wait to get over there. The MTC is a special place, and i appreciate it, and i know i'll miss it, but put me on a plane to GERMANY? haha i just want to go soooo bad. I'm getting there tho, we're the oldest district, we actually just got 32! new missionaries yesterday! We have 60 in our zone now! That's pretty huge for a German branch. The stone is really starting to role

I'm still a DL, i was sure i'd be done, but President Curtis kept me around a bit longer to help the new district DL's apparently. But im sure i'll be done this next week. That'll really be nice. I just want to focus all my efforts on teaching and preparing for Germany.

Well other than that, all is well here i suppose. Just trying to focus day by dad. Like dad said, Germany is just around the corner!

Best of luck to Butch at his Farewell this week, it'll be awesome. Cant wait to see you up here.

Thanks grandpa for the Haloween card!

Feel free to write! I get the least mail in the district now haha, but it's all good i suppose. But i'd luv to hear from everyone.

God bless

Hoorah for Israel

-Elder Ott