Week 8

Hallo! Wie gehts wie stehts?

Wow, so here're my last e-mail from the MTC, Coolo. Wow i have a lot to talk about...

Well so first off, for all of you who dont know, Elder Bednar came to the MTC on Tuesday. HA. 4 straight apostles! Maybe it's like a new thing. But it was an amazing way to end my stay here. He spent 45 mins just chucking mind grenades of pure knowledge at us. He really tought some amazing things, and invoked amazing apostelic blessings.  He tought us the difference between doctrines, principles, and applications. He said he could "care less" about our numbers on our mission. It's non important whether or not you teach, what is important is that you HELP people to UNDERSTAND true doctrine every day.  Doctrines are true teachings revealed by God pertaining to our eternal welfare. Principles are guidlines based from those doctrines. And applications are ways we apply principles. He changed the way i'll study and teach forever. He said 90% of the time we focus on applications to teach, and use them to solve problems. True doctrine understood however, changes people forever. If we understand the doctrine, that's what will help us BECOME what we know we should become. Teaching purely applications is really useless. Ya... he was pretty bold at times... haha but it was awesome. He's such a prophet. :)

Well we had another fun meeting too the other day. Foreign Missionary Health LGM! That was so fun! It was so fun to here about all the diseases all the other missionaries will have to deal with.:) Haha truly horrific stories. It was funny to watch there faces as he told them. Haha, it was so fun. Glad i'm going to Germany :)

Oh ya, guess who was Elder Hatch's host Missionary!? Ya, me. :) I weasled my way into it. It was sooooo good to see him. He looks great and really was handling everything very well. I won't really see him around much, he's not anywhere close to where i live, learn, or really do anything. Schedules are totally different. But still it was awesome to see him and help him get settled in.  Brought back memories for me seeing the little orange dot on his name tag and looking at mine i wear on the back of my name tag now. It's such a vast experience here, i just dont know how to describe it, but it was so weird having been here for 8 weeks and then see your best bud just get started down the same path. Really cool. :) 

Speaking of which i've seen Elder Mike Sharp a couple times too. It's crazy how different you see people out here. It's been cool to talk to him a bit.

So i'm at an extrememly awkward time in my life right now. I'm at the point where i speak German and English so interchangably and often that i really cant speak either well. Ha my English has just plummited as you can probably tell by my awkward phrases when writing. It's like i just wish i could speak one language decently! Is that so much to ask! Ha bleh. Oh well, it's fun speaking Danglish with all the other German missionaries. Conjegating english verbs to the German past tense is probably one of my favorite past times.:) I hadreally really awesome teaching appointment in the TRC Tuesday tho. We tought the 2nd lesson in German and it went really really well. Haha and i have my first German Joke!!! Ok, so when you teach the 3 kingdoms, the last one is called the 3rd Kingdom ya know? Which in German is Reich. So the 3rd reich? Get it? With Hitler? Tee hee.Cever. A bit blasphemous tho... so i probably wont use it. But still, it's my first German joke! And it's really hard to make new jokes in another language.:)

Oh ya, so pretty much i fly out Tuesday Morning by the way, i forgot to bring my darn plans, so i'll throw the exact times in a letter. I leave the MTC 5am and fly out of SLC to JFK where i'll have a 4 hour layover. So that's probably where i'll call from. around 3 in the afternoon or so? I'll try to work out when. Let me know what time is best. But hey NYC! Always wanted to go there so i'm super super stoked for that.

As far as other things i need packages... not really much. Just as many pictures as you can find. Family, Friends, Basketball. I'd love more pictures. Most everything else i can do without or find somewhere for myself.

So what else to say? Well i learned this week to really take more responsibilty for myself. That was something i took out of Elder Bednar's ansprache. When things go really good it's easy to take credit and be ungrateful. When things go not so good it's easy to say "well the companion though gavest me.." But all in all, all success comes from the Lord. It's all a gift like Elder Bednar said. The rest is just for us to be teachable and correct ourselves to become better.:)

How lucky are we to have the Gospel in our lives!!! Think of that this week! We are so fortunate. Let's all share it better. We should be missionaries for life

Love everyone, have a wonderful week here in America :)

-Elder Adam Ott

P.S Have fun a Sadies Ler :)