January 24 from Kiel

Moin to tha moin to ya,

    Hallo all of you, how´s it hanging? Hopefully you are all doing wonderful.:) Well i´m doing wonderful also, but let´s just say i have a lot of mixed emotions about this week.  This was kind of a roller coaster week, lot´s of ups and downs for sure. We taught the most lessons we´ve ever tought though which is good, but it was still like 7 lessons less than we were planning. SOOOOO many stupid fallen out appointments!!! I dont understand!!! We make out an appointment with you for tomorrow, we leave a card with our number and the date and time of the appointment on it, then we show up and your no where to be found! Or you look in the eye hole and see us and then we can hear you walk away from the door! (that happened twice this week)  Bleh! Just tell us you dont have any interest! Haha save us a 20 minute bus ride and be straight up with us... okay that was my vent for this week, we wasted a lot of time going to fallen out appointments, it´s INCREDIBLY frustrating. Anyways, but ya, we still taught a lot of people this week, a lot of Iraqies actually, but they just got the book and said they would call us, they didnt want to set up return appointments. We did find a new family though, a single mom and 3 little children, they were really fun and are pretty solid. Overall though i think we only got that mom and one other new investigator this week. 

   Saturday we had to go on splits with the ZL´s because they are having some serious problems with each other.  It was the LONGEST day of my life. I really really hate having to do exchanges when your program is doing really well and you love your comp, it´s the worst. Anyways, i went into the ZL´s program with the Elder who´s been causing the problems i guess... man it was bad. We had a lot of appointments and it was going really well, them a bunch fell out and we had 4 straight hours of street finding time. Now normally, i actually enjoy a bit of street finding time, it´s fun to talk with lots of different people and get in a few cool conversations, but wow, this Elder... WOW. Haha he was like insulting people and stuff haha. It was bad. It was honestly humiliating. He stopped a single mom who was in a hurry with 3 kids, one crying, and tried to talk about eternal families. She of course said she was sorry, but had no time, and then he just said "wow, you dont want an eternal family... you must really love your kids"... wow... i just stood there with my mouth wide open. It was really really sad.  I guess he´s gotten beat up on his mission a few times, i can see how. You´ve really got to have love out here, without charity NOTHING works. Some missionaries i guess just think if people wont listen then they are just close minded and stupid, it´s sad, it makes everything gloomy and sad. Just LOVE PEOPLE. Anyways.. that´s another vent, sorry that´s two already, that was a really bad day, i´m certainly glad to be back with my companion.:)

    So as you might have been able to tell this week was a very long and hard one, lots of cool little miracles, but a lot of hardships as well. That was all leading up to Sunday though, which was supposed to be like the best day EVER! We had planned on having 7 investigators there at church, and J was scheduled to meet with the bishop to get cleared to be re baptised next week. It was supposed to be the BEST. But... ya... the P family cancelled, there goes 5, and the other 2 (who are kind of at a make it or break it point) didnt show, and we are probably going to have to say goodbye to them this week. And on top of it all, bishop forgot about his interview he said he´d do with J and booked some other things. (J´s been waiting for 2 weeks to do this interview) It was very sad. J´s wife is stuck in the Cameroon because they cant prove they´re married and they need bishops help to do it, and on top of it all, we cant find his membership record and so he needs to be rebaptised. He lives a half an hour from the church too, so it´s hard to have contact with him and he was very very sad because he had really been looking forward to meeting with bishop. Ha, it just was not a good day. We had two WAY solid appointments after church too that fell out too, and well, haha i was about in tears by the end of the day. It´s hard sometimes, when you fast and pray and want something so bad, only to see it go up in flames, but what can you do i guess? Just keep on going i suppose. Focusing on trying to be thankful for the good.

     Overall though, i think i´ve said this before, it´s hard to be discouraged when you know you´re doing what your´re supposed to be doing. That doesnt necessarily mean you wont feel frustrated by the language, or sorrow when you have to say goodbye to people, or sad when you see people making wrong decisions, all those emotions are still there, but you dont really have to ever feel discouraged. There´s always another day ahead of you. Now there´s a lesson i´m starting to learn haha.:)

   Well anyways, i hope everything is going well for all of you back home.  I miss and think about you guys a lot. Have a wonderful week and remember, the church is true!

Herzliche Grüße,

Elder Ott