January 17 from Kiel

Hallo lieber familie und freunde,

    Well well well, this week´s email will most definitely be shorter than last weeks, haha, but it was still an amazing week none the less. We also have appointments today... lame kinda... but it´s a good problem to have when you have to have appointments during your p day i suppose.

    The weather here has been like the best EVER this past week, it has been like the perfect temperature, ha like 10 degrees c and it feels like we should be sun bathing, we dont even have to wear coats or anything, it´s been way nice.  The one downside though is that it has been raining a lot, which isnt really too bad because i mean i love the rain, ha but as a missionary it´s a bit of a hassle. The main problem is that i had to find out the hard way my backpack is absolutely 0% water proof haha, i didnt loose too much stuff, but did take a few losses. It´s a good thing i just got some scripture cases though or that could´ve been devastating haha. But i´ve got it rigged up to where it works seemingly good now.  Street contacting is a lot more effective too when you have a big umbrella for the person you´re talking with to stand under. We found a way old huge umbrella in our apartment, an "apartment special" as we call them and it was pretty fun. Elder B kept hitting me with it though when we were walking and right before people were opening doors, so i eventually took it and threw it off a 13 story building.... ya that´s right, i dont mess around haha. I was careful though, i threw it into a fenced off garbage area. Now he has to use the sister's old nasty brown flower umbrella in our apartment haha. He shouldn´t have kept hitting me, i told him i would destroy it. But ya anyways... i still dont feel bad.:)

  So our investigators are all doing well, this next sunday is going to be HUGE. We have i think 7 planning on coming to church, which is like money. Sundays are like gamedays here, you practice and tune up all week for the big dance on sunday. Herr K said he was going to come last week, but pulled a no show. We have to go back over this week and figure out what´s up, but other than that he has been progressing. Ha, he is one of the most perverse men i have ever met though. Last lesson he was asking the most perverse questions and making the nastiest jokes, ha Elder B said that was definitely one of the more intense law of Chastity discussions you can have out here, it´s only fitting that it would have to be that way for my first one. Definitely learned some new German words, ha let´s put it that way. But that aside though, he read and says he is going to take the challenge to find out if these things are true, so he´s making progress. He wants to meet our members and see what they´re like, so we´ll keep working.  The P familie are doing wonderful too. They are all coming to Church this week and we are really excited to see them. Our last visit was really good, and we took them over some cookies and promised them more if they really came to church haha. Chocolated Cookies are of very strong influence here in Germany as Elder B has taught me. We met with most of our other investigators too and had some solid lessons. Right now our main focus is the P Familie though.  We also found another huge family last night and had an awesome lesson. Two solid families in your teaching pool is a very rare but awesome thing here in Germany. This new family is called the B familie. The parents arent married and are Gypsies with 6 children together. At first we just got in the door with the father and he was very open, we set up a return appointment and came back to teach his family, but it was obvious it was going to be hard to teach with the spirit there. He has some tiny kids all over the place with PSPs and GameBoys and the big Screen TV was on, just a lot of distractions. His wife wasnt interested at all either. But as we started talking he opened up and shared some big problems with us, and luckily we had an AMAZING member with us on a joint teach who knew how to handle everything perfectly. He´s been having some legal problems and our member has studied law and offered to clear everything up for free. The wife overheard everything and was astonished at how nice we were and really that just opened the door. The husband cant read a word which is going to make it hard, but we're planning on how we can work with him. They speak okay german, but it is VERY slurred and VERY fast and i dont understand most anything they say, haha so my job is to play with and entertain the children and then bear testimony at the end, which i am more that happy to do.:)  Our joint teach, Bro H, is soooo amazing though, haha and he was like the only one who could understand what they were trying to say. But ya, it´s definitely a project and a half. Got to get them married, legalized, off alcohol, and cigarettes, and a few other things, but they said they are willing to do all those things if we will help them, so here we go.:)  Overall though, even though 78% of our appointments have fallen out the past 2 weeks, we have seen crazy growth.

     J is also doing great. We met with him and set a re baptism date for the 30th and he is way happy and excited to do everything. He was at church again is just solid as a rock. We´ve been building a good relationship and it´s way fun to joke around with him. I said the closing prayer in sacrament meeting and he was BLOWN away, haha he was like "you can speak German!?" "how can you speak good English and German!?" He cant really speak either haha and he says when we combine our two minds we´ll make one German one haha. He´s way cool though, and he invited me over for Fufu whenever i´d like.:)  His biggest worry right now is that his wife is stock in the Cameroon and it really weighs his mind down. Our project now is proving he is married to her and financing her trip here. It will be a long process, but he really loves her and would give anything to be with her again. Anyways, she wants to get baptised too in our church when she gets here, ha and their two kids, so hopefully we can get her here.:) It will be cool if he winds up getting re baptised too, even though we talked with president saturday and apparently according to the new handbook we might just be able to change his records, but ya we will still see.

     Speaking of Pres, we had our zone meeting last saturday up here in Kiel. President interviews us once every 2 transfers at zone meeting. (Zone conference is every other transfer and is 2 zones combined) Haha i think my interview lasted one minute though, but Elder B says that just means he trusts me, so that´s good? It´s too bad, i´d like to know him more, but i mean he´s got like 200 Elders haha so i understand. I think my total time in interviews one my entire mission will be around 10 mins ha. Elder V's was like 20 mins though haha, i know how that is, interviewing him, he sure can talk. It´s good though, he was definitely ministered to.:)

     Well i dont know what else to talk about, not a whole lot of crazy things this week, just another solid week. Elder B and i talked last night though and we really feel like we´re just hovering at around 211 degrees and need just that next 1 to start to boil. Hopefully we can find it this week.

    Have a wonderful week all! The Church is true my friends, i discover that every day out here. Love ya all and have a great week!

Viele Grüße,

Elder Ott

P.S. Paco to Berlin!!? Sickest thing ever! Gotta work my tail off and become a Trainer now.:)