Hallo!...gel
Well I am now writing you from a different city, namely,
Erfurt. But you already knew that. And unfortunately I am also writing to you
on a Tuesday and not a Monday because here in Germany, whenever there is a
holiday almost the entire country is shut down. So even if you are out of food
in your entire house, you don't have the option of going to get some
unless you are eating out or going to someone else's place which isn't good
when you are a broke missionary. But we will get to that in a second.
Basically this whole week was like a disaster. I don't even
know where to begin! So, first of all at the beginning of last week and even
until now I have had no money because the last few weeks I have had to travel a
lot and therefore buy a lot of tickets. So starting right from Monday, my still
Frankfurt companion and I had to pack all our stuff and clean the entire
apartment spotless and just get rid of whatever we could in order to get ready
to move and then we had to go visit some of his relatives for the last time in
Weimar. Kind of cool right? Haha funnily enough he asked me if I would come
visit him again. And then still do the normal P-Day stuff like emails and what
not. And then Tuesday we take all our stuff in buses, trains, and city-bahns
all the way to the apartment in Erfurt and then we had to coordinate with the
Elders in Erfurt and Gotha so that someone could give us the keys to the
apartment. And then after we dropped off all our stuff we had to head back to
the train-station and pick-up my new companion, go back to the apartment, drop
his stuff off. And then head all the way back to Weimar and give a couple
lessons. And also mind you this is all during the DB strike so basically every
train in the world falls out and we had no idea if we could even make it back
that night. And also that night and on Wednesday night there were about 10
Elders in our apartment about half Frankfurt missionaries and half Berlin
missionaries. So the place was packed with suitcases and all other manner of
things. Once again to mention that there is no food already at this point. And
then Wednesday we had district meeting and we had to go back to Weimar again
for appointments and what not. And then Thursday we sent off all the Frankfurt
missionaries and we had to register ourselves in the city and also had to help
the other Elders in Erfurt with some of their appointments. And then by some
miracle we four elders in Erfurt had to be in Werdau on Friday, which is about
2 to 2-1/2 hours away by train and bus. We managed to make it because one of us
had enough money to get us all there. And we had to be in Werdau because we
were having a special zone-training-meeting because we were getting iPads, and
for us Elders in Erfurt we were also getting a car. However, when we got the
car and thank goodness we did because we did not have enough money to make it
back. We did not get a gas card, or at least we don't have one yet. So that
means we have to use the funds we get every month to fill it up with gas and
just send in the receipts for reimbursements during the month. Which believe me
the money goes fast. The other day Elder Johnston spent 74 euro of his own
personal money to fill up the car with gas. They go by liters instead of
gallons here in Europe. But yeah I don't remember what we did for the rest of
the day it was already a long day of traveling. And then on Saturday there was
a baptism and we also had a meeting with our ward mission leader and we had to
head back to Weimar to get some stuff from the apartment before they shut the
apartment down. And then finally but not really on Sunday we had a little
bit of a rest but still lots to do. So that is kind of a basic overview of my
last week. A not so well written one and it is also missing lots of details. I
am just glad that now, finally I am no longer eating rice and whatever kind of
spices or random things we could think to put in it.
So on a quick and happier note. The apartment that we have
is really nice and it is right in the center of the city where all the people
and the cool stuff is. Although that doesn't make it fun for the fact that we
can't really park our car anywhere, and we are actually not even allowed to
drive it up in front of our apartment because it is in the pedestrian zone. We
did it anyways haha until the police told us we couldn't. So, even though this
week was such a mess and not a whole lot got done in terms of missionary work I
still learned a lot and this week we have already managed to have a good start.
So really there is a lot of hope for this area. We are just going to blow the
minds of everyone in our mission.
Well sorry for the mess of a letter haha, hopefully next
week I can manage to write something with a little bit more quality. I hope you
all are doing well and you are constantly in my prayers. Love ya and...
Tschüss,
Elder Foster
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