January 31 from Kiel

Liebe Familie und Freunde,

 

   Well i honestly have nothing in mind to write at the moment... i´ll try though i guess? So many things happen out here though and it´s all so complex, it´s just a brain jam in my head.  First off though, haha i have to talk about the food this week. I dont think i´ve ever had to be so creative with food in my life. You see I lost my wallet last week with about 100€ and all my debit cards, haha and Elder B´s money ran out, so we had an interesting week. By friday i was just baking slices of cheese because we were out of meat and bread, and all we had left in the fridge was ketchup and cookie dough. So basically we survived off cheese and cookies this week, oh and jello. Haha we dont know why but we had like TONS of jello packets in the apartment. Jello breakfasts get old REALLY fast though, like two spoonfuls fast haha. It was fun though, luckily we´ve been having lots of eating appointments lately, and the Döner laden right next to the apartment was having a huge 4 year anniversary sale, and we´re already chill with them, so we were getting döner stuff for pocket change haha. Our money gets in on friday, so we have just enough eating appointments and money from our recycling to get us through the week we hope. Threw a day or two of fasting in, and it helps all the more.:) It´s been fun though, i´ll be super happy when we get our MSF money though for sure.

    So it´s a good thing i´ve been gaining a better perspective on things lately, because technically, this Sunday was worst than the last one. We had a few good lessons though that helped dull the pain, but it still hurt. We had 7 commitments for church, 0 showed, and ya J is offended now and wont come to church. He has been begging to talk with bishop because he says he has lots of "problems" he needs to discuss. Twice bishop has promised to meet with in, and twice bishop kinda stood him up. Bishop said he´d call him and set up a time to go over and meet with him, 3 weeks he hasnt called, he also invited him to the Ward Mission Leaders house to a little party, but never talked to him there. And to put the cherry on the cake, the ZL´s went over on miles in the car and we couldnt get out to him this week. So when i called to talk to him to apologize and see how everything was going, and if he´d come to church tomorrow, he was MAD. It was the worst.  We´re really hoping we can smooth it all over with him this week though. Also, one of the other new converts just started meeting with the JW´s, and it´s basically a show down now between the 2 churches for her. It´s not going well. We set the goal for 30 baptisms in the ward this year last week though, even though we got 6 last year, and i am actually 100% behind it, but something´s got to change in the ward for it to happen. Moral of the story... HELP THE MISSIONARIES at home. Believe me people, it might seem weird and awkward to go out with the missionaries, but after 15 minutes you´re used to it and i promise you, you will feel a unique spirit when you help them. Great blessings await those involved in the work.

     Now, i won´t share any more of my frustrations, i´m going to talk about the good now.:)  The B familie didnt come to church, but when we went over last night they apologized profusely and swore on everything they had they´d come next week haha. We´re starting to kinda play the "it´s Elder B´s last Sunday" card with all of our investigators, so that will be good when they come. Also the P familie promised to come next week as well, and we decided if the mother backs out again but the kids who are old enough still want to go, we´re picking them up anyway.  We also have a few other investigators who say they want to be there for Elder B´s last Sunday as well, so hopefully it will all work well. We were talking the other night, and it is so clear that at SOME point we HAVE to break through the ice. We feel that everything´s been working against us and the tables will turn at some point. They HAVE to! It´s Elder B´s last week of his amazing mission, and we just have to see something happen. We are planning on hopefully having 4 people on date for baptism by the end of this week, so hopefully we´ll see it happen. We have faith, we really do.  That´s about it though for our investigators, i cant think of what else to write. Oh we found a new investigator though. She used to be addicted to drugs, and we still think she is, she´s way cool with us though and she thinks she can talk to animals. Which sadly isnt a new concept for me because JZ talks to animals as well. He also believes he can speak with us telopathically and says he has a conversation with us every day... but ya... so goes it here haha. Our new investigator is hard though because the animals have taken over the apartment. She lives with her boyfriend who just sits there and shoots up and watches Phineas and Ferb all day. It´s sad. We are helping here redo her apartment though and turn her life around. We decided we have to teach her in the Church though, the Spirit just cant be in that Wohnung.  

        Anyway, i´ll wrap it up here with a little funny thing. So as it turns out, there´s over 300,000 JW´s here in Germany.(more than us) And it´s seriously like a Jedi v Sith battle, no joke. But ya, so we found out a place where a bunch of them always stand and street displays (it´s actually funny, they stand there holding signs, or they walk around with them because they arent legally allowed to approach people because they arent recognized as a valid church) but ya they are always in this one spot. So long story short, we found our new favorite place to do street contacting.:) We actually have licenses to street contact here, so it´s fun to kind of chase the JW´s off in certain areas. Sometimes they approach us with just little jabbing questions though and it´s so much fun to talk with them! My personal favorite is when they come up to you with their whole "How was Nephi a prophet if he was a murder" Haha, Genesis my friend, Moses killed an Egyptian and literally hid the body in the sand. The whole JW shuffle is always fun, usually fruitless, but always fun.  There little one liner questions are always interesting, it makes ya happy to have a completely true church.

       Well anywho, i hópe you all have had a wonderful week back home, thanks for all the letters and love. Have a great week!

 

Alles Gute,

 

Elder Ott