Germany Week 88

Well well well... Let me see what I can recall.... Monday Elder Olson and I taught Institut (more like lead the discussion) to our three JAE's - It's important to keep up your vocabulary words - And that was nice.

The Halberstader Dom in quite a bit of her (his? its?) Majesty

 So for Tuesday I ought to start with the Tuesday before where Elder Olson and I slipped up. So there had been Osterbasteln (an Easter Artsycrafty activity) planned, but a bunch of people weren't going to be able to make it, so we switched it to this Tuesday. No problem with that right? Leider doch. You see, We had invited a less active member to the activity, but forgot to inform him of the change. So we learned later that they had showed up, but there was no one there Osterbastling when they arrived. So I felt super bad about that. We let him know that there was the activity this week, but we wanted to do something more to apologize. So Elder Olson's trainer taught him how to make this Swiss bread, (apparently called something along the lines of 'Zopf') so we decided to bake some as a peace offering. But then that kept being postponed, then it took longer than we anticipated, so we went to deliver the bread just like 45 minutes before the Activity started, but we drove over to give it to them, but they weren't there. Upon our return, we discovered that they had just come to Osterbasteln pretty early. But then we felt weird giving them the bread at the activity, so we just had it there for everyone. I felt pretty sheepish... But they seemed very happy to be there and not at all upset that we'd forgotten to tell them about the change. Hopefully I'm not thrust down into the fiery pit or anything.

The Road Trip is kinda hazy...

 Next Up: Off to Dresden! It was perty intense! Magdeburg got permission to stay overnight with us Wednesday so we'd be able to make the vast journey early the next morning together. It was quite the party - but don't worry, not too much of a party. I was pretty excited to get to sleep because I knew I was going to be driving at 6:30 the next morning. I don't know what those two had been eating, but we had to open a lot of windows.... Anyway, Thursday morning I got to drive off into the snow. I was not happy when I saw that it was snowing, but luckily it cleared up pretty quickly as we were driving, so it didn't obstruct my driving too much. What did obstruct my driving however, is that just outside of Dresden there had been an accident and there was bumper to bumper traffic. It took us around half an hour to get less than 10 kilometers. And that's a very vague description, because I really wasn't paying attention, and actually have no idea how far we went in that time. I hope the people in the accident were ok, but it looked pretty bad. Most of it was cleaned off to the side by the time we could see it, all we saw was a totally destroyed motor home. I'm grateful that we made it safely. We were on time too. Well, actually we were late for the "Only the people who are a half hour early are on time" thing, but no one except for Elder Beck seemed to mind that we were a few minutes late for that one.

 No prison can hold KARL G. MÄSER!

 Zone conference itself was fantastic. It's also really weird because it was my last. We've still got a couple Zone Training Meetings in the Zwischenzeit though. So that's good. President talked a lot about our purpose and our vision of strengthening the members and the church in Germany, specifically about building up the stakes. Sis. Kosak talked about the importance of having unity in companionships and what we can do to foster that Unity. I'm glad that Elder Olson and I get along so well and are able to support each other. Of course, there are always things we can improve on. The Assistants talked about being more creative in our finding activities - that we don't just depend on Street contacting and Door to door, because we know they're not the most effective anyway. Instead we should be striking up natural conversations with people wherever we go that will naturally lead to who we are as missionaries and to the gospel, and that we should be trying new things that get people to talk to us rather than us talking to them. And as you know, that is like my favorite thing ever. I'm all about people talking to me and hunting people down has always been dismally low on my list of favorite pass times. The tricksy part is that it takes a lot to create those situations where people come to you. The APs called it "Risking the Awkward." Somehow I feel like I'll just end up missing the mark and "Embody the Awkward." heheh, not really. I'm much too much of a coward to take it that far. One of my companions, Elder Ririe used to talk a lot about the importance of creative finding methods and that always struck a cord with me. I'm really excited about it sort of becoming an official stance of the mission. Mal seein' what Elder Olson and I are able to come up with.

 You told me those brownies were FREE!

Whatever you are, don't be a scrub

 It was also really cool to see friends there - Elder Pack is now serving in Chemnitz, Elder Dzierzon is in Görlitz, Elder Jenkins is in Forst. 7 Missionaries from my MTC group were there, so that was really cool (The same as when there were 6 plus Elder Jenkins). And It was really cool to be in Dresden. I'm told that it's a gorgeous city, but the only site [sight?(sitesight?)] seeing we were able to do was the Karl G. Mäser statue outside the Stake Center and the Burger King inside of HauptBahnhof. You know, Brigham Young said something along the lines of, "If you don't go on your mission with frivolity in your heart, seeing the sites, looking for this and that, you'll've come and gone in vain." What was that? Did I accidentally slip an extra negation in there? Naja, It was a really fun trip. The Magdeburg Elders are so cool. It was a really great day.

 There wasn't too much else exciting in the week. Easter was nice, I sang with J in Church, and it went well until something went terribly wrong in the third verse... And we had a nice eating appointment with Sch. M

Elder Olson in most of his Majesty

. And today we went to the Branch President's house for another Easter Meal. It was fantastic. They're awesome people.

 Well kids, I guess this is where I sign off.

Gaaawwwldiiin Greeewwwwp!

 Love you! The Church is true!