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| 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
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