Monday, December 5, 2011

Week of December 5 from Berlin (kind of)

Wow! Well we had a really crazy week on the road last week, and sadly it ate all of our p-day, so we only have a couple minutes to write today.  I´ll see if I can maybe explain a little bit what has been going on.


 
So last week we had a normal busy office Monday- taking in numbers, generating reports, sitting in meetings, then packing everything and getting ready to hit the road Tuesday morning at 6 am. Tuesday we headed over to Dresden, which was way way cool to be back there for a little while. It was fun seeing a lot of friends still in that zone and just being in that city again. Afterwards we enjoyed a nice dinner with the Pimentels in the beautiful central garden in Dresden, which made it a very enjoyable evening. We then drove over to Leipzig where we slept and got ready for interviews. Leipzig was one of our bigger zones, and president started interviewing at 9am and we didn't finish until 8 pm. It´s amazing how much time he takes to worry about the individual missionaries. During that long time though I got to do some finding with an old MTC friend.  We found a couple really cool guys, and taught a lesson with one of the ZL´s, so that helped break it up a little bit. Then we loaded back in the van for the 2 1/2 drive back to Dresden to reload on supplies (which we deliver when we go to visit the zones) and get ready to hit the long leg of the trip. We got home late and I wasn't asleep until 1 am, then we woke up at 5 am and made the super long drive to Hannover where we stayed for a day.  I met back up with my good friend from St. George. After that we headed up to Hamburg where we slept over, had interviews, and the next day we drove all the way up to KIEL! Sooo epic being back in that place again. I taught the one investigator we found my first week in Germany, and it was just so so so so so cool! After FINALLY finishing interviews and having given our half hour workshop 12 times, we were able to make the long 4 hour trip home to Berlin.
 
So ya, yesterday was a crazy missionary Sunday.  We still had 5 investigators at church somehow, and today is actually almost even crazier, just trying to get caught up on all the work we missed last week in the office. Good news is though, that president has just called 2 office elders to help relieve the burden a bit because it has been getting bigger and bigger lately. So ya, that´s kinda where I´m at right now, just trying to take a deep breath before we plunge back in for Zone Conferences in a few days. It´s been very enjoyable though, being able to spend great quality time with president and with an awesome companion.

As far as missionary work is going... our new baptismal date had a lot of problems this last week, but she got lots of help from the ward and is doing a lot better at the moment. This family we´re teaching from the RLDS church did end up coming to church and that was super awesome to see them there. We are building a really good relationship with them and hope we can keep getting to know them a bit better. Other than that though we just didn't really have time to teach people much.  We just weren´t really home at all this last week. Oh I found out something really cool at church though... so one of the young families in our ward has a mother who is from the Suttner family back in St. George. I used to play golf with her younger brother and danced with her younger sister in social dance sometimes... weird how small the world is. This ward here in Dahlem though is really just super awesome!

Well there´s lots of little stories that happened as we travelled this week, lots of little miracles too, and as I try to think of what I could share there´s only really one experience that comes to mind. So that morning we woke up at 5 am to leave, we were a bit bummed to have to go get all the ice off the huge van and about how cold and miserable the morning was going to be... but for some reason as we came outside to get all the ice off, we realized that even though all of the other cars were caked with ice, ours didn't have a trace of ice anywhere. How it happened I cannot really say, but we counted it as a tender mercy and are super thankful for it. There are so many little blessings that attend you as you do your best to serve others.  The tricky part is just recognizing it sometimes.  :)

Well, love you all and hope to hear lots more from you soon! Have a great week!

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