Ein Neues Jahr bzw. Abenteurer!

Moin!

It is really starting to get about that time where it gets harder and harder to sit down and write something. It is hard to put all your thoughts and experiences down after an eventful week. You are not sure where to begin or how to explain everything that has happened in a few
short paragraphs before times runs out and so you aren't spending your entire day writing letters. It is rather taxing on the brain, or at least for me. But as you all now this last week we just had Christmas (Woot!). And of course with that comes lots of thoughts and feelings
and also lots of events depending on the kind of person you are.
However on this very week I happen to find myself in polished black shoes, a tie, and a name tag. Not your average wear for the holiday season mind you. I naturally still have the same responsibilities of a missionary. There is no time to be looking for eggnog and mistletoes haha. But of course in Germany there are 3 days set apart for the Christmas holiday and they even open up there presents a day earlier
than us. But before we get to that lets take a step back for a moment.
What kind of things happened before this 3 day shut-down of the entire country. For the sake of time I will simply start with Tuesday. Once again because i find myself still in the lovely position of
District-Leader, I have the responsibility of going on exchanges. This time it was done more out of emergency than out of simple regulation. Because Elder Schulte has been in the apartment with Elder Stank all week. And it was driving him crazy, basically he needed some fresh
air. And it is strains the mind to sit in an apartment all week doing nothing when you are on a mission supposed to be going out there and doing something. So we had an exchange woo! Which honestly didn't bother me at all because I love Elder Schulte. We didn't have much
planned for the day other than an appointment with a man that we had
found the night before. But that didn't stop us from doing some wonderful things here in Cottbus. So it was your average white day meaning we had nothing but finding planned for the day except for this one appointment. But nonetheless Elder Schulte and I manage to have a good time and have a ton of great conversations, we even manage to get a couple of numbers which is actually a lot better than you might think. You can still get an appointment out of that later on. But anyways we are walking along and talking to as many people as possible because we are missionaries and I honestly think street contacting is
great when you have the right attitude about it. But we stop this lady and at first it seems as if she is just going to give us an excuse and then keep walking but instead she went on to explain to us that she had always seen the missionaries in the Bahn (tram) or on the street but she was never spoken to by one of them. But on this particular day she had the feeling that she would meet us today. You can imagine that Elder Schulte and I were quite surprised when we heard that. But yeah basically we got her number and we are going to make an appointment out with her after the holiday season. Naturally Elder Schulte and I felt pretty good about that and it just made us even more pumped to go and talk to people. Actually we went to the Christmas-Market and got crepes haha what?! We were hungry but don't worry we started up a conversation with the lady making the crepes for us. Haha shortly thereafter it was about time to head back to the apartment. But we thought why not we will walk a little bit more down the street and then turn around and head back home on the other side of the street.
And at first there weren't that many people and even less of those who would talk to us for more than 5-10 seconds. But just before turning around and heading back to the apartment there was one more girl on the street, and she looked kind of young but I thought aaw why not, and so I talk to her and she turns out to be only 16. So my assumption was right and then we began to ask her about what she does for the
Christmas and that is where things turned a little bit sad. She said
she didn't really spend Christmas with her family, and then we asked her if she was religious at all and nope not at all, and then we asked her what it would mean to her if she could know that there was a God.
And then she said she didn't really think much about it or would know what it mean if there was one, and as you can see this conversation is just going down hill. But I am trying to sympathize with her being born and raised in the east Germany so not a lot of religious
influence and she wouldn't really know what it would mean. And then she said well if I think if there was a God I probably wouldn't be in the situation that I am in now. And for a second I hesitated but then I asked her why she thought that way and that is when we found out that she hasn't even lived with her parents for the past few years and she is just living in a home with other kids despite her very own parents living in the same city as her. And I am not sure where the turning point was but we starting talking about God and giving testimony that he was there and that he loves us and has a plan for us and then we talked about prayer and that she should try praying to him and asking him if he is there. And then a couple minutes later we asked her again what it would mean if she could know that there was a God and she thought about it for a second and then she said, well I think i would look at the world differently if i knew he was there. It was really a tender moment and we ended up getting her number and setting out an appointment for this week. It is moments like those when I am really happy to be a missionary and to be there to try give
those hope who might be having a rough time. Sometimes it may seem like we are just trying to get people to join our church or take advantage of their difficulties in life. But I have never felt that
way I truly know that the message of the Gospel will be a light and a help in each and every persons life that decides to live according to its principles. Haha unfortunately I spent too much time talking about a few experiences and i am now out of time. But there were lots of
moments like that this week and I wish i could tell you all about them but alas i must go! We will see what comes out of this next week.

Anyways I love you all and wish you a happy new year!

Guten Rutsch!

 Tschüss,
Elder Foster

Weihnachten mit den Kosaks!

Elder Braun & Elder Foster

Hallo meine kleine Elfen!

 

And the verdict is.........transferred! Just like last year I will be transferred out right before Christmas. Woot! Haha not that I mind it too much. Some missionaries would absolutely hate that and just feel betrayed by the president. But I really don't mind. The more I get into my mission the more that kind of stuff doesn't bother me because it isn't about where you serve and whether the area is the pretty or if it is a big city or if the members invite you over a lot in order to eat or not. Those things don't really matter to me. I mean they are certainly appreciated don't get me wrong but that isn't what the mission is ultimately about. I guess I have just been around too many missionaries who talk so much about how they haven't gotten any good areas or that they haven't served in a big city, because your not on the mission just for the nice experience and getting to play around in Germany. Anyways back to the point, I am being transferred and the new adventure begins. I will being going to Cottbus and if any of you could read the title you would know that I will be spending some of my Christmas time with the Kosaks. And in case you have forgotten that means I will be serving in the same city as my old mission president.

Haha so I will have two mission presidents watching over me. I will also be serving with someone from my MTC group. Elder Barboza. No not the pirate. I am also still a district leader. I am not sure if the president is quite aware how insane that is. haha But I know most of the missionaries in my district and they all are cool so I am pretty excited to go there and just have a nice fresh start and get into the groove of a new area.

 

A couple of interesting things happened to me this week. And the first one is pretty hilarious. So we have this investigator and his name is Herr (Mr.) Thieme. He is this older guy in his high fifties and we where meeting with him on Thursday and this guy just loves to talk you can literally sit there for two hours straight without having enough time to say two complete sentences to him. This time we were a lot better though and of course we didn't want to be there for two hours anyways. But right in the middle of talking to us, he says that we need to get out there and talk to more youth or more people our age.

And naturally we said yes we would love to do that although we haven't been able to talk with too many of them despite there being about

2,000 of them in the city, really weird. And his son goes to the college here and so he says hey I know quite a few places where where we you can find students and I can show you after we are done talking.

So we agreed and decided to have him show us where we could find these places. And we are just following behind him in our car. And the first place he takes us to is this back street a little bit behind the main bus station in the city. And we get out of our cars and we head towards this building with some neon lights and we open this door and the second I open the door a smell of smoke ploughs into me. And the we start descending the stairs and I already know that he is taking us to a bar. Haha thank goodness it wasn't going to be opened for another

15 minutes. And so for the next hour or so he basically leads around to all the bars in town where we could find students haha  so we basically went bar hopping with this guy. No idea why he always wanted to take us inside them as well. One of them we did go into but it was more like a DDR styled restaurant with pictures of Karl Marx and Stalin and other communist leaders hung up all over the walls. In this very same place the lady was asking us for I.D.'s because you had to be 18 or older to get in and of course I left my wallet in the car and was going to leave without a fight but Herr Thieme just starts contending with her and telling her that he can confirm our ages himself and even said to her "Die sind doch meine Söhne!" (They are my

sons!) I never saw this side of Herr Thieme until that night. Haha At one point we where even at the college itself and he just stops and asks these random students where we could find all the places where students hang out. So It is just us standing there awkwardly as he talks to these students about who knows what for about 10 minutes after he asked the initial question. All in all it was pretty funny and at least we got a little bit of good information from it. Because we did find out that there is a student club that meets together every Tuesday and we or Elder Braun and his new companion can go check that out.

 

The next random thing that happened to us was that we where in Pasewalk waiting for our train so that we could head back to Neubrandenburg. And I am looking at the times for when I was going to leave on Tuesday to go to Cottbus from Neubrandenburg. And around the corner 3 cops show up and start interrogating us and asking us for our passports and everything although we hadn't done anything. Maybe I looked scary with my neck-guard up over my face and nose. I mean the side bag, name-tag, slacks, and the polished shoes probably just added to my scary factor.....not. So i take out my german drivers license and apparently that is not good enough for them. They wanted to see my passport, they didn't even accept the copy of Elder Braun's passport.

Eventually they called somebody on their phones and checked our drivers license but they told us if we didn't have our passports next time then we would be fined €15. And I tried to tell the officer but he wouldn't listen when I was trying to explain that it was a ver important document that if I happened to lose it or if someone stole it then I would be in big trouble. So even if it happens again I would much rather be fined than to risk such of thing of happening.

 

There is actually so many things I could talk about this week. But unfortunately I do not have all the time in the world and actually I have been writing this letter throughout the whole day because of how crazy today has even been. But to end it off I just want to say that I am very very grateful to have served in this area and I have made many many friends and it has actually been in this area where I have had the most fun. That could be taken in a bad way but nonetheless it has been the most fun that I have had on my mission. And hopefully if the next missionaries don't mess it all up there should be baptisms in the next month here in Neubrandenburg. I will miss the people here very much. And thankfully we have the technology in this day and age that I will be able to keep in contact with a lot of the people I have met here. I truly have felt that I have grown so much here as I have served in this particular area. But of course at the same time there is still so much more to learn and so many ways I can improve and so many more things to accomplish. I only hope and pray that I will be able to do that which the Lord has called me to do.

 

I love you all and I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas season.

I am certainly enjoying all the decorations that Germans put up during this time of the year. Anyways I pray for you all and I will see you next time in the next not so exciting edition of Elder Foster's Mission Adventure!

 

Tschüss,

Elder Foster