Week of July 18 from Prenzlau

Well dear family and friends, had another great week in His service this week. I think we ended up teaching more lessons this week than have been taught in this program in a long long time, and there´s a special reason for that i believe... let me explain it to you.

So, it´s no secret that the transportation in this area has been really rough. It´s hard to schedule lots of appointments when you have to bike 45 minutes in between them. I tried to talk with President about getting a car for the area. Eventually he said it would come down to me having to draft up an argument to take the car from another program. I wasn't sure if i wanted to do that because i don't like to think that our program is more "special" or has more needs than another, even though it has nothing to do with that, so ya, i entertained the idea, but wasn't sure whether or not to push it forward. Well this last Monday President called and said he had talked about it with the Assistants and would like to try a car out in Prenzlau for a little bit. haha The only thing was, we would be taking it from our neighboring city Eberswalde. Ya, that was kinda an awkard phone call afterwards haha,
Me- "hey guys, so how ya doin?"
Eberswalde-"good"
Me- "good... sewwwwww, about your car"
Haha not good, it was kinda like, ya drive your car up here for district meeting and then you´ll be taking the train back. So they aren´t way happy, but at the end of the day they have a much bigger city with a great transit system and their program will benefit a lot from them getting outside more. Oh ya, so the main point, WE HAVE A CAR!!! :)  It´s been so great being so mobile! It really has helped a lot. I love the euro roads here with the beautiful trees and the autobahn right there, it´s great. And it´s helped the work a lot. We were able to maintain our finding of new people as well as boost our lessons quite impressively. She´s a little blue Opel Corsa hatchback and she´s beautiful.:) I actually don´t like Opels to be honest, but i can't complain i guess. The church actually could have had a cheaper deal with BMW, but they didn't want the image (which is weird because you can't throw a rock without hitting a Beamer here) nor a bunch of teenagers driving around with BMWs, especially on roads with no speed limits.;) So ya, that was a big highlight of the week.

Overall though it was a more quiet week this week. We stuck around in Prenzlau and Paselwalk, and just taught most of our investigator pool. Sad part was, very very few of our investigators made much progress this week, so sadly it looks like it´s back to a bit more fishing to find the elect. Our baptismal date is having some real problems and has ended contact with us for a reason we don't know, which was really hard to take, but ya, that´s the thing about missionary work. You can keep trying to get better and do your best, but at the end of the day the ball's in the investigator's court. So we are going to really hit up the doors in the surrounding Dorfs.

Next week however is going to be just as crazy as the last week it looks like though. Gotta go up to Neu Brandenburg to do two Baptismal Interviews this week, back down to Eberswalde another day, and then off back up to Neu Brandenburg to be at the baptisms. It´s too bad too, i really was hoping to be in town this Wednesday. We´re having our Pioneer´s day celebration which i got put in charge of planning, and i was really excited for it. We were going to make root beer and johnny cakes and watch Legacy. It was genius because Germans HATE root beer so i was going to get a lot of it... oh well, gotta take one for the team sometimes.;) I hope everything goes okay.

Well transfer calls are this next coming week. This transfer has honestly been one of the longest i feel like, so it will be good to finish it off.  There´s lots of buzz and rumors and stuff, but i think at the end of the day, i´m going to have to end up going 4 here. I was really hoping to get a shot at training my good friend Paco, and it could happen if President wants to move my junior companion after 1 here like he did with my last companion, so ya, we shall see.:)  It´s always refreshing to finish a transfer though.

Well i´m trying to think of what else i could share... we had a pretty funny/scary moment the other day.  So we have been working a LOT at the local refugee camp as of late, and the other day i parked my car in the parking lot out front. I had kinda a uneasy feeling because in Germany you NEVER know where you can and can't park and they give out little parking tickets like candy. My main concern was whether or not the parking area was public or privately owned, but we were only planning on being there an hour and there were no signs at all saying we couldn't park there. Well anywho, we´ve been having lots of troubles with the guards at the camp lately, but there was a new one there who i hadn't met before. Anywho, while we were in our appointment he went out and locked the gate up so we couldn't get out, even though it was still visiting hours, so when i left the building i saw what he had done and was pretty angry/nervous. I went and talked to him, and he said the car was going to be impounded for illegal parking on government property without a park slip, which made me mad because it´s like wide open with parking places and everything, so he said i could either give him 80 euro right there and he´d forget it, or that the car would be impounded. He let me sweat it out for a while and then... he start laughing and said he was just kidding haha. I wanted to punch him, but i had to laugh myself.:) He said he saw me come in and wanted to talk to me, so he locked the car in, we talked for about an hour actually and it was as if we were best friends, it was really weird actually, i´ve never really connected with someone like that. He said he felt as if he had known me for 20 years. Of course i brought the conversation back to the gospel... and after talking about his beliefs for a while, i introduced what the Book of Mormon is and he found it interesting, he then gave me his work schedule and said that we could come back and talk more about it whenever we want. Haha it went from disaster to miracle in literally 1 second.:)

All the experiences you get on a mission, i hope my journal will be sufficient enough to help me remember them all.:) I still have and entry for EVERY day of my mission. But anyways, hope everything goes alright this week, it´s going to be a big one for sure! I hope you all have a wonderful week as well! The Church is true, Jesus is the Christ, and the Work goes forward! Hoorah for Israel!

-Elder Ott