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| Elder Foster with Elder Merrell (new missionary) along with Pres. & Sister Fingerle |
Hallo hallo hallo, meine Leseratten! Haha
Well the day
has come, the dawn is breaking and the giant is awakening....or something. This
was certainly an interesting week to say the least. Because I put my last
companion in his mission grave and now I am helping my new companion make his
first steps into the mission life. In case you are wondering what any of that
actually means. It means that my last companion went home and I am currently
training a new missionary. If we were to use mission lingo, you could say that
he is my son but before we get to any of that let us start at the beginning of
the week.
I started the
beginning of my week with the Forst elders. Because when somebody is training
he doesn't get his new companion until Thursday. So they had to keep me busy
somehow. But I got to spend a little bit more time in Forst and of course with
my experiences from "dritts" (trios). I expected it to be fun from
the start and it was but then again it was still Forst. Which means you are in
a small town filled with crazy people on the border of Poland and have been
recently finding out that this city is known for its drug problems around these
parts, in particular meth which makes sense that the Elders there run into so
many interesting people. But once again it is always interesting to see how the
Lord works. We probably walked around that entire city without really talking
to 20 people but somehow managed to find somebody at the end of the day.
The day after
that I was back in Cottbus with Elder Ashby who is serving in Braunschweig but
because he is also training. They sent him over to me so that we could wait
together before heading to Freiberg Thursday morning. So the time we spent
together felt kind of like an exchange which wasn't all entirely bad because
usually a lot of cool stuff happens on exchange so I was up for that. And a lot
of cool things did happen. We got to visit with a lot of new converts that have
been struggling recently and we got to talk to a lot of people on the streets,
who were open enough to talk a little bit about their lives and even tell us
that things were not so good because people near to them had recently died. It
was a great opportunity to give testimony of the plan of salvation and also to
give them a bit of comfort and let them know that they aren't lost. One young
mother was of course not too sure about meeting with us but she took our card
and said that she may contact when she is ready to talk about such things. But
another younger man whose dad will pass away soon because of sickness, decided
that is would be good to meet with us. Despite the many rejections and
sometimes use outright rude responses of people that we get from people every
day. I am most grateful for the moments that I have to give testimony of Christ
and the plan that the Lord has made for us as we live on the earth.
After what
seemed to be an eternity we made our way to Freiberg to pick up our ganz frisch
trainees. And it was crazy to see all the other missionaries that were there.
We finally got a big group of missionaries into the mission. I got to chat with
a lot of old buddies that I haven't seen in a while because they have been on
complete other sides of the mission. And there were a lot of cool and even
unique new missionaries there. Actually something that is pretty interesting
about our mission right now is that we have about five sister missionaries from
Germany that are waiting for their visas to go to the Salt Lake Temple Square
Mission. Haha so it was fun getting to talk to them for a bit, one of them is
even in my district now. I think after the mission I will go to temple square
just to say hi and because I think it would be hilarious to pretend that I come
from Germany or something and then they send the Sisters I knew to me. Back to
the things that I wanted to share. We also got a couple of other cool
missionaries in our mission. First of all we got the very first Korean
missionary ever to come to Germany, she can only speak some English and not too
much German, so that will be an adventure for her. And then we got another
missionary from Austria who has actually been deaf her whole life but in the
last three years she has received some kind of special hearing aids that she
can now hear!Crazy right! So for the last little while she has just been
learning how to speak in general. I got to talk with her a little bit and she
was super cool. It is great to have her in the mission.
Of course the
moment you have all been waiting for...I finally got my trainee and his name is
Elder Merrell and he comes from Logan, Utah. He is pretty cool and I am excited to serve with him and
to help him figure all this mission stuff out aka the language. Haha but we get
along well and he is quite willing to do the work so I really can't complain
about anything he is just a solid missionary and we will do some cool stuff
together. Actually our very first lesson together we met with one of the new
converts and we gave him a blessing so that was a pretty cool experience. Maybe
it is bad of me but it was fun going first finding with him and seeing his
nervous reactions to that. It was a good thing he didn't understand everything
because for some reason the first couple of days were just met with opposition.
That is okay because once again, when you are diligent and put your trust in
the Lord, he will bless you. So despite all of that unpleasantness we ended up
finding some more people. Even one lady who ended up having friend from the
ward so it was almost like a sign or something. But it was good that we found
some new people to teach because the people we usually teach were either out of
town or unavailable. Also because we were gone most of the week we were all
over the place and because of other circumstances we weren't able to meet with
the Fernandez family. :( But that is okay because we will just get a hold of
them this week!
That is about
all I have for this week, but thanks for tuning in! I wish you a wonderful week
and I hope that you are experiencing wonderful weather and I pray for you daily
and I love you!
Tschüss,
Elder Foster
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