Umziehen

Moin!

If any of you were wondering why I didn't send a letter this Monday it is because I was moving into my new apartment in the actual city of Bremerhaven. Which is far better than living in Nordholz which is a little town out in the woods, north woods that is haha. But this move will make it a lot simpler to plan things and just plain get out and do some work. But oh goodness that was the most obnoxious move of my entire life. Mostly because of how complicated it had to be. Moving is Germany is just a pain especially if you live in an apartment. I mean we are missionaries and don't have that much stuff in our apartment but it still took four trips to get everything and us into the new apartment. I mean I am not sure if they have bigger moving vans than what we were using but it was small and we had to take every piece of furniture apart to get it out of the apartment, in the van and then into the new apartment and build it all back up again. We were up at 5am and we didn't get done until 8pm. So there is a small glimpse of what happened to me in the last week.

I am not sure what to say about this last week because really the central point of last week was basically moving and getting ready to move and talking to the landlord and having people check out or old apartment and this and that. But something of significance that I can talk about was that on Saturday we had our Branch Christmas Party. And if I want to be honest...it was probably one of the most awkward Christmas parties I have ever seen in my life. haha it was kind of robotic in sequence and not quite as comfortable for that reason. It didn't help that only a week before it one of the Branch presidency told us to do something for it. So we had to come up with something really quickly. So we tried to show the He is the Gift video and sing silent night as missionaries. But we had technical difficulties so we weren't able to show the video and we awkwardly had to give our testimonies in place of it and then sang Silent Night after much embarrassment. Haha that will be an interesting memory to say the least.

In Bremerhaven we have to do a lot more finding because we don't have as big of a teaching pool as I had back when I was in Hannover. And this week was just hard. And I don't say any of this to be pessimistic or to be down on myself. But to just honestly tell you how things go sometimes. So for instance just the other day the very first person we talked to, literally the very first door where somebody answered. There was an old man maybe in his seventies close to eighties is there. And even before I can finish what I am saying he interrupts me. And then begins to talk about how he was all alone and that a year ago yesterday his wife died and he begins to start crying a little and then talks about how they were married for so many years. And then just slowly begins to close the door as all we can say is sorry. And then right as the door is completely shut he begins to absolutely and sincerely bawl, we could hear it even better than when the door was open. I don't think I will ever be able to forget that moment. I have never cared for people as much as I do now in my entire life. It is hard to have so many people reject that which will truly bring them that peace and comfort that will give purpose to their lives. I know that Christ is the source of all peace, comfort, hope, and joy. It is not enough to just have that for myself. It is not enough for me to be the only one on my mission to grow and be blessed. But alas I will keep going. I will never give up.

But I hope all is well wherever you are right now. And I have received all of your presents from zone conference that we had last week. And I got entirely too much. I am ashamed in all of you! haha. I'm just teasing but I truly do appreciate the love you have shown me in sending me stuff although I have not opened them yet. Of course I am thinking of you all during the holidays and being away only makes me appreciate all of you more during this holiday season. You are all missed.

Tschüss,

Elder Foster