Monday, March 21, 2011

Aufwiedersehen Kiel!

Hallo everyone!
 
Well i hope your week back there was as good as mine out here. Lots of stress this week, but lots of blessings as well. Well i dont know where to start out first so i will just take you through my last weekend step by step since that is where most of the big stuff happened.
 
So friday we had lots of appointments lined up, and then the evening free to focus on our baptismal interview candidate. We wrapped everything and after a bunch of problems getting the District Leader here and finding him, i sent my comp and him with the senior couple a half an hour up the autobahn for the baptismal interview. After they left as i was walking with our DLs comp our DL called and said that my comp had forgotten the baptismal form. That was bad because president had to do the interview via skype, and they had to get there early to install it. And president had to do transfer calls, so his time was VERY short. Haha so i called the ZL´s had them come pick us up, grab a form from their appt and zipped up the autobahn to get it there in time. Long story short, everything worked out just right and as i was doing some doors waiting for the interview to be over, we got the call that he had passed his interview. It was a huge relief.  Then transfer calls came.
 
So i think i mentioned before, that transfer calls for me are like the most anticipated 30 minutes of my life.  So to know you´re probably going to another city in Germany, but not having any idea, haha that´s epic. Well anyways, i will be leaving Kiel and headed to Prenzlau in East Germany.  My area heads up to the Polish border and is right in between Neu Brandeburg and Berlin.  Basically Prenzlau is the black hole of the mission.. EVERY missionary make Prenzlau jokes\and or is mortified to go to Prenzlau. So to sum it up, i´m going from  the jewel city of the mission to the smallest, hardest city of the mission. Supposedly every door of Prenzlau has been knocked on 10 times if i understand right haha, so it´s supposed to be way hard. President called and said also that there´s a possiblity either my comp or I will be called to the Branch Presidency there. I´m going from one of the most solid wards in Germany to like the smallest branch haha. Afterwards, after a bunch of missionaries had called to say how sorry they were to hear i was headed there and to tease me a bit, i was feeling pretty down to be honest. But after i talked with my next comp and worked out when i´d be getting there and stuff, i´ve felt a lot better. I´m gonna go work my butt off and light Prenzlau on fire!  Haha, it was funny though, i literally said one day after i had been teasing one of the ZL´s that he´d be going to Prenzlau "i should probably stop making Prenzlau jokes or else i´ll end up going there" and bam, haha now i´m going. My new comp was in the mtc with my comp now, and he says i should like him. I really hope he´s solid. Good news though is i get to stay a junior comp just like i wanted.:)
 
So Saturday, after recovering from a brief moment of depression, haha was really really cool. We had an awesome appointment, and i extended my 3rd baptismal commitment in German, and our investigator accepted!  Way cool. Basically i´m leaving this program my trainer and i started here with 2 baptismal dates, so i feel really good about that. The program did not have less than 17 lessons this entire last transfer, so i feel really really blessed to have seen it develop like it has. It seems like just yesterday my trainer and i got off the train with no area book, no map, no bus schedule, no ANYTHING, and now it´s just taking off.  Saturday was a good day.
 
Sunday was the BEST however! I got to give a short goodbye talk, which was A LOT harder than i expected. I kinda got a little emotional surprisingly. I was always so scared i would never be able to make a an impact on the people here as well as my trainer did... but this last weeked i got so many phone calls and invites to visit, it was just overwhelming.  It was such a bitter\sweet feeling seeing how much a missionary can mean to someone, but also having to say goodbye to them. It was a pretty emotional day for me.  The baptism was AMAZING as well. Everything ended up happening without to many problems. As i was sitting there with this investigator, who means a lot to me, singing "kommt ihr Kinder Gottes" (one of my favorite German hymns) i felt the spirit really strongly. Afterwards i asked him how he felt, and he just said "clean" It was a very special experience for me. The rest of Sunday and today has consisted of packing and goodbye appointments. It´s been heart wrenching at times, but so sweet!  I really cant sum it all up how much Kiel means to me. I´m not even going to try.
 
So tomorrow morning i´ll be hopping on my bullet train to Berlin, and the connecting up to Prenzlau. I leave at 753am and get there at 2 o clock. A little bit of a ride, but i really like that. I´ll finally be able to catch up on a letter or two and reflect on my wonderful time in my birth city here in Kiel. My DL here will also be in my district there as a ZL, so that will be cool to have a good friend in the District already.  I´m excited to get to work fulfilling my next assignment in Prenzlau and all the cities up to the Poland border.  I´ve been learning a few Polish phrases from an investigator, so maybe i´ll get to use them! Hopefully.  Have a wonderful week everyone! Thanks for everything!
 
-Elder Ott 

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