February 28 from Kiel

Hallo everyone wie gehts wie stehts?

 

Had another fun and eventful week here in the good ole 24118. We found, we tought, we worked hard and it´s paying off.

 

So first off, we were supposed to have a baptism this week... however after having talked with Salt Lake, it looks like we´re going to have to push the baptism back a couple months due to circumstances beyond our control. So ya, i probably wont get to see Sarah get baptised, but as long as it happens i dont really care. Ya it´d be nice to see, but all that matters is that it happens. J is close to being baptised as well... just gotta get him to give up his wine darn it. I hate alcohol and cigarettes. EVERYONE has a problem with one or the other here it seems like... but ya, it´ll happen.

 

In other news, my workshop at Zone Conference, haha, man it was rough. I got to give it twice to both halves of the Conference, and the first one didnt go how i had hoped at all. The second one though ended up going really really well, and that´s the one president was at haha so it helped the first attempt not sting as much.  Now that i´m thinking about it, i dont think i wrote about my having to do a 40 minute workshop at our Multi ZoCo last week. But now ya know. The ZL´s had me give a workshop on "Starting Right" because they said they´ve been impressed watching me start my mission. I suppose that should have been flattering, haha but it just made me a nervous wreck leading up to the conference. It was a really cool oppurtunity though to get to do something like that not even half way through your 3rd transfer, but hopefully i dont ever have to do it again.:)

 

So another cool story, we have a way way solid new Investigator named Josef. Found him as we were walking to an eating appointment while he was walking his dog. We decided we´d walk around the block once and see if we could talk to some people because we were a couple minutes early and when i saw him i ran across the street and bam, way awesome guy, way way solid. 21 years old too. I love working with the college kids here because with the large number of LDS students at the college here and the Youth Outreach center and all, it all works together very smoothly.

 

So we met with the B family again this week because the husband ran into us while we were doing some work out in the Ghetto´s here and he saw us standing at a bus stop haha. Way solid appointment though and they are getting back on track. We also had a couple of the P kids at church and that was cool. The kids dont like church at all because they say it´s super boring, but i try to make it somewhat fun. They just need to understand it´s not just always a party and not everything has got to be a rush of fun. So we´re focusing a lot on the Sacrament and Baptism now, and these next couple appointments will really be critical.

 

Other than that, cant think of a whole lot else. Had a pretty crazy experience with on a joint teach this week where the investigator said some pretty perverted things and tried to get up on me, it was way weird. She calls and stuff now too, asking us if we can make some guy who owes her money pay up and stuff... pretty messy situation. But we´re doint everything carefully with her and hopefully she starts showing interest in the right things.

 

Well have an awesome week everyone back home. To bad Morgan had to be at the State Tournament again, but good year boys! Love ya all so much and thanks for everything ya do!

 

Herzliche Grüße,

Elder Ott

 

P.S: ZUM GERBURTSTAG VIEL GLÜCK DAD!!!

February 21 from Kiel

Liebe Freunde,

 

Well another week has come and gone, and although it seemed like a long cold one, i appreciated it though because i really feel like i made a big change in myself.  We had 7 appointments that were pretty solid fall out, we lost quite a few invesitgators, and we werent finding many solid new people, but something in me just kept wanting to go and go. It was the weirdest thing. It was just like getting in "the zone" and i just kept going.  The transition from golden to junior comp has been one of the hardest most frustrating things i´ve ever had to do. My new comp is very "hands off" you could say, so i definitely share a lot more of the load of responsibility. But i really feel like i´m starting to catch my stride now. The language comes when i need it, my minds clear when i need it, and i dont know, it´s just a weird phenomenon... no idea how to spell that word.

 

Well anyways, i´ll start off with how things have progressed last week. Bishop just barely annuled J´s membership record out of the blue, so although he told him he´s a member and welcome to the ward, haha well now it´s as if he was never baptized. So even though J was not happy at all when he heard what happened, he´s letting us teach him again. Which has actually unearthed a few brand new problems we didnt know about, with the word of wisdom. So it´s going to actually take a while now, but hopefully we´ll see him re-baptized soon. I just wanted to re-baptize him in the first place, but when we talked to pres he just said to get the record and change it, because we baptize people not names. Now my personal opinion was ya that´s true, but in the temple everything has to be done perfect right? Well anyways, you could argue over it forever, and i wouldn´t ever argue with president, so we left it at that. but apparently now we just going to do it again anyways haha.:)

 

The member who asked for her name to be removed is also making lots of progress and we hoping to get her baptized on March 6th. There´s just a few minor details with paperwork and stuff that need to be taken care of, but hopefully we can get her in the font then.  She is absolutely eating it up though, working through all the lesson pamphlets, flying through the BOM, really cool to see. I also got to annoint her for a sick blessing in German, which was a really special experience.

 

Yesterday we had 4 investigators at church too. One of them, Jerzy, completely surprised us by coming and it was a really good meeting. Dont know what will come of it, we have to visit him again, but hopefully it will make him think. Haha he still calls us drunk all the time though, i love it... not that he´s drunk... just that he calls us and is hilarious.

 

We also met with the PhD muslim man again in the University lecture hall again, and that was interesting. It´s becoming more of a theological debate now, so we´ll probably have to stop going. But hey, i got a really really nice Koran out of the whole ordeal, so that was cool.

 

Other than that, most all of our appointments fell out. The P family doesnt want to come to church again, so we´re hoping they have a change of heart somehow. The past two times we were there, they hadnt read or prayed, so this next one is kinda a do or die appointment. I really hope something gives.. it´s going to break my heart to have to say goodbye. And oh, ha, ya the B family, well we met with them twice, and the first time it went pretty good actually. They invited a friend whose mother was very sick, and he had lots of good questions. His mother ended up dying the next day actually, it is a devestatingly sad story. He needs a lot of time he says, so we havent been able to meet with him, but hopefully our message will help him somehow. The next time we went over though... not good at all. Turns out the mother did lots of stuff in the circus they traveled in with tarot cards and wigi boards and stuff... not good stuff at all. She was telling some stories and it was obvious we needed to leave. We´re still scrambling to decide what to do. The husband was gone all last week dealing with some family problems... but hopefully when he´s back, it will all go better. So ya, it´s looking like the end could be near with our too favorite families... i really really hope it isnt.

 

Other than that though, all is well here. Just got done playing squash and pulled like every muscle in my leg it feels like. Haha always fun though. Europeans are stinking good at squash, i got my butt kicked pretty hard. But ya, hopefully we find some solid new people this week. I really hope we can. Time to refresh the teaching pool. Have a great week back home, love and miss you all

 

-elder ott

February 14 from Kiel

Moin moin liebe Familie und Freunde,

 

Man, ha, so pretty much i´m just going to cut to the chase... you do NOT realize everything that a trainer does until he is gone. This week has been probably one of the most stressful, hard weeks of my life. It´s like i just reached a new high in almost every one of my emotional levels. But nevertheless, despite my complete inadequacy, we fulfilled our purpose this week i would see, so you just have to keep moving on and try to keep fulfilling it better.

 

So monday i said goodbye to Elder B and sent him off on his train to Berlin, and man, that was actually a lot harder than i thought it would be. I kept myself together though haha. But then Elder P and i headed back to the ZL´s apartment and i got to be ZL for a morning haha. It was way cool actually though, we had a way awesome long conversation and it i really learned a lot from him, and about perspective on a mission, it was actually really fun. It was really cool to have a way awesome comp study and stuff too in German with someone who cant speak any English at all. But ya, it was a way cool little morning, haha and it was just preparing me for what was coming next.  

 

So we picked up the new ZL, he is a way cool missionary from Austria.  He is way solid and he´s gonna rock it here with Elder P here in Kiel. Then next we got Elder H, haha and he wasnt quite what i expected at all. He´s a big guy from Mission Viejo California.  He´s an artist and he´s actually way good, really quiet guy, but really cool too. He´s been on his mission for 10 months now, so he´s a lot older than i thought, but at the same time he´s a lot younger than i though too. It´s really really really hard being a junior comp and training a young senior comp into a new city. Finding your way around, which i´ve actually done good at, but just taking all the phone calls and making all the appointments and trying to adjust to a new teaching style with somebody who is also struggling to learn the language like you are. Man, it´s hard. We´ve have barely clawed our way through so many lessons this week, but a lot of that i think is because we have had some VERY difficult lessons haha. But the spirit is still there, and like i said, we´ve brought people closer to Christ this week i feel like. So ya, that´s what´s been kinda messing with my mind lately, just trying to get everything under control here in Kiel and make the adjusment. I haven´t been able to sleep at night it´s been weighing on me so hard, haha, and our investigator are all saying i look like i´ve aged a couple years, but things have been going a bit better lately, so i cant complain.

 

Speaking of these tough lessons though, we have 4 new investigators this week. 2 of which are ex members we somehow found and we have them coming back to church and stuff which is cool. We also have a baptismal date cleared with one and it´s been really sweet to see her come back. The other two are two way cool muslim guys. One is from Shri Lanka and says he´s willing to make the search to find out if the BOM is true, he´s way cool and we have a cool joint teach lined up with him, so we´re excited. The other is just finishing up his Phd in Geo science something, and he really just wants to learn more about our religion and teach us about his. It´s cool, we meet in like a massive lecture hall at the university, and i really learned a TON from him, but i dont know how much he learned from us while we tried to answer his really really complex questions in terrible german haha. But we are meeting again, and we are just tying everything back into whether the BOM is true or not. He gave me a way nice leather bound german Koran though haha, it´s way sick. But ya, we´ll see with him.

 

Our other investigators are kinda struggling. The P familie didnt like church at all and said they havent been getting answers to their prayers, and the B familie is having some family problems. And both of the families dont seem to really like Elder H too much yet. But we are still meeting this week and we got a few good joint teaches for them, so i really really i´m praying it turns around.

 

Well anyway, it was another really hard week, but one with success.:) Thanks so much for all your thoughts and prayers! Love you all the mostest!

 

-Elder Ott

February 7 from Kiel

Liebe Freunde,

 

    So i just finished the most emotional, tiring, satisfying, wonderful, dope week of my missions ever!  I dont know where exactly to start, so i´ll just go ahead and puke it all out on the keyboard.:)

 

    So transfer calls were on Saturday, and wow that was a fiasco. Transfer Conference Call is probably one of my favorite things on my mission. First because you all have to check in with a 3 second long name, and i love to say "Kiel 2 standing by" (Star Wars style) :) But also because it´s way fun to here where all your buddies are going and see how everything shakes out. It is also completely nerve racking when you know you might be leaving, which there was a high possiblity of me going, so yes it´s basically an awesome way to take about 5 years off your life span. This time was a wreck though, the conference call network crashed and everybody went into confusion. It was like the Great Apostacy or something. Haha, we had already moved the call from comp study in the morning to 930 at night, so people were already a bit anxious, haha but at about 1045 after calling every one and trying to work thing out, we finally got the text from mission office that the AP´s would be calling us all individually. So yes, they called at 1130 at night haha. But i´m absolutely thrilled to say that i will be staying in Kiel... absolutely thrilled! And my new companion will be Elder H, he´s from the USA somwhere and will be coming up from Braunschweig. He is actually the son from my "godfather" Elder J (really really good friend of Elder B) and he is way way cool. He called me last night and we talked for a bit, and i´m way stoked to work with him. It´s gonna be fun to because he is really young as well, he´s been here 4 or 5 transfers i think, so he´s only a bit older than me, so it will be way fun to work our tails off and grow a ton together. It´s sad to say goodbye to Elder B, i learned so much from him and am going to miss him dearly, but that´s how it is on the mission and i´m excited for a new chapter to open.

 

     So as exciting as that is, i still have one more thing i think i´m even more stoked about. This last Sunday!  We KNEW something had to give, and the dam finally broke! We had 7 investigators there in fast and testimony meeting and we reactivated a sister from Portugal. She hadnt been to church in over 6 and a half years, and after meeting with her just 3 times, we finally got her back. I cant tell you the joy you feel to see someone like that come back, and smile at you and thank you for "finding" them. She loved the meeting. It was way solid. There was not a second where there wasnt somebody at the pulpit. It was big time.  That´s are third reactivation, and man, it´s a wonderful sight to see. We also had the 3 of the P familie children there, one of them was sick along with the mother, but they liked it for the most part. And then, haha, the B familie came in with style! 15 mins late, haha all wearing leather jackets, with the girls in fur. Haha a member leaned over and said "are you guys teaching the mafia here or something" Haha it was so epic. They absolutely loved it though and want to come every week. The problem with them though is now the concept of priesthood authority. He still thinks if your baptised for Christ it´s all good no matter what, but as soon as we can help him with that, i think we have at least 4 new members.:) We also got J back, and he is very happy now. We got him in with bishop, and things are rolling with him again. Haha he also has a close friend from Ghana who he said wants to be baptised in our church with all of his family. So , Elder H, and I will all be over there on Saturday and we´ll see whats up with that referal.:) It was really a blessed Sunday though. It was awesome.

 

     After church we got to go over with the Familie H aka the most solid family in all of Germany. Brüder H is honestly like Superman, and is the best joint teach ever. He has a massive family too, and they are all just awesome! Haha oh and he´s also a former World Champion in Tai ?.Kuan... Dough.. fighting. So basically we dont tell Chuck Norris jokes, we tell brother H jokes. He is soooooo solid. It was a great last eating appointment for Elder B and it was a nice rest from a very frantic Sunday. 7 investigator and a reactivation requires quite a bit of running around on a Sunday. The food there is totally hammer too, so it was just super nice.

 

     Also, our money finally came in, so we are back to eating normally! Haha. I didnt ever think i´d be so thankful for CornFlakes, but it´s really nice to feel more secure again.:)  Haha it wasnt bad actually, it was always more fun than anything, but ya, its nice to be back on top of things again.

 

     Well anyways my dear friends, ich muss los. But i would first like to thank you for all the fasting and prayers this week, from my family at least, they were absolutley answered. I am soo stoked for a new transfer. It´s going to be a white and wet one. It has to be! Love you all, thanks for everything!

 

Liebe Grüße,

 

Elder Ott

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

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

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.:)