Moin moin!
Hallo meine geehrte Damen und Herren! Wie geht es euch?! Habt ihr mich vermisst? Wahrscheinlich nicht meine Briefe, weil die so schlecht sind. Aber vielleicht mein Gesicht. Na ja! Ihr habt genug Bilde von mir.
Okay now starts the real letter. And this week I have some good news to say the least. Because last Saturday Paul Gogula was baptized! Woot! It has been a long time since I have seen one of those things. After much hard work and many blessings we have seen the first fruits of success here in Bremerhaven. And actually that is not all! If everything goes well, we will have another baptism in two weeks! Definitely exciting times to say the least. Really I am just at a loss for words it was nice. And it was kind of hard to imagine there for a little while. I still can't quite comprehend that we just had a baptism or that we just planned for one and did all sorts of things that were necessary in order to have one take place. There is certainly a brighter sort of hope that was developed inside of me. Not too long ago in this area it was hard to get 2 or 3 lessons a week. But now we are getting far above that and we are even baptizing people. We have truly been blessed and led by the Lord.
It really is cool to meet so many different while on a mission, and to honestly take a good look into people's lives that normally wouldn't happen unless you were first really good friends. Take for instance yesterday we talked to a guy from Nigeria on the train back to Bremerhaven form Cuxhaven. He had already gotten a Bachelors degree in business and is currently in Germany to learn the language and eventually get a Masters degree. Ha he chose an interesting language to learn that is for sure. This guy also looked like he was 24 maybe 25 and we are just talking to him and asking him about his life and by the way he is actually 33. That was a shock for us. And he was a very cool guy; he was definitely one of the more affluent Africans that I have met since being in Germany. But it is interesting because from what I have learned from the many foreigners that I have talked to in Germany. My opinion is that Germany is the place to get an education and a job but it is the place where your religion dies! Haha everyone that comes here just stops going to church, okay granted they don't always know the language that well and come on who is gonna learn religious words in a new language that would be crazy.....Unfortunately Germany is more oriented towards school and work more than anything else. And as long as you call yourself catholic or evangelisch (protestant) and you have your baptismal and confirmation paper somewhere then that is good enough to say that you have your own faith and therefore need nothing else. We still find the gems in the rough nonetheless. I totally just veered off from what I was originally saying but na ja. But yeah it is just cool to get to know so many different people from so many different walks of life. If only people would open up to us just a little bit more. Real quick of some more examples of people. Frau Antar who is a young native German but who is half African and half Turkish, very interesting mix. She is Muslim but very nice and very open and willing to learn about other religions. She likes to say "whoa das ist heftig" a lot which makes me laugh because it sounds kind of like something a surfer-dude would say. And she says when she goes to church she doesn't feel whole? haha don't know exactly how to translate that. "ich fühle mich nicht wohl." And then there is Chilly Willy who is an American from Georgia who owns a little American-food mini restaurant. He is literally one of the coolest guys I have met and he has blue eyes although he is black, first time I have met someone with that. And he is also hilarious, and we even played guitar and sang summer of 69 with him right in his small restaurant. So here is this guy who is super nice, super funny, and literally everybody in Bremerhaven knows him but there were a few moments when we were with him that there seemed to be a kind of sadness about him......So it is great to be able to meet such great people and really get to know them but not only that but to share something with them that will not only make them happy now but will also help them to overcome any kind of trouble in life. That is one of many things I love about the gospel of Jesus Christ it is truly an enabling force. People who are true to the gospel are not free of trouble or hard times, but there always have the way to overcome them and to be happy despite them.
Okay one last person I need to talk about before I end my letter. So the person that will be baptized in the next two weeks is Dijanna Bsedes from Serbia who is only 14 years old. When you look at her you wouldn't think that she was only 14 though. Even yesterday a member asked us if she was married....and then we had to explain to him that she was only 14. Haha anyways I admire this girl so much. She is only 14 but she can speak pretty dang good English and because her parents can barely speak German or English she is the one who talks to the lawyers and the police because they are foreigners and still don't have their permanent visas yet. She also just got accepted for an internship to become a doctor someday. Basically we love her and her parents and they love us and even the other day while I was on exchange with Elder Germann, the district leader we taught her one of the lessons and she opened up to us like I have never seen before and told us spiritual experiences that she had back in Serbia that I can't relate to even in the slightest and yeah it is just awesome and I am excited for her and so impressed she does so much and has so much responsibility to carry despite only being 14.
Hallo meine geehrte Damen und Herren! Wie geht es euch?! Habt ihr mich vermisst? Wahrscheinlich nicht meine Briefe, weil die so schlecht sind. Aber vielleicht mein Gesicht. Na ja! Ihr habt genug Bilde von mir.
Okay now starts the real letter. And this week I have some good news to say the least. Because last Saturday Paul Gogula was baptized! Woot! It has been a long time since I have seen one of those things. After much hard work and many blessings we have seen the first fruits of success here in Bremerhaven. And actually that is not all! If everything goes well, we will have another baptism in two weeks! Definitely exciting times to say the least. Really I am just at a loss for words it was nice. And it was kind of hard to imagine there for a little while. I still can't quite comprehend that we just had a baptism or that we just planned for one and did all sorts of things that were necessary in order to have one take place. There is certainly a brighter sort of hope that was developed inside of me. Not too long ago in this area it was hard to get 2 or 3 lessons a week. But now we are getting far above that and we are even baptizing people. We have truly been blessed and led by the Lord.
It really is cool to meet so many different while on a mission, and to honestly take a good look into people's lives that normally wouldn't happen unless you were first really good friends. Take for instance yesterday we talked to a guy from Nigeria on the train back to Bremerhaven form Cuxhaven. He had already gotten a Bachelors degree in business and is currently in Germany to learn the language and eventually get a Masters degree. Ha he chose an interesting language to learn that is for sure. This guy also looked like he was 24 maybe 25 and we are just talking to him and asking him about his life and by the way he is actually 33. That was a shock for us. And he was a very cool guy; he was definitely one of the more affluent Africans that I have met since being in Germany. But it is interesting because from what I have learned from the many foreigners that I have talked to in Germany. My opinion is that Germany is the place to get an education and a job but it is the place where your religion dies! Haha everyone that comes here just stops going to church, okay granted they don't always know the language that well and come on who is gonna learn religious words in a new language that would be crazy.....Unfortunately Germany is more oriented towards school and work more than anything else. And as long as you call yourself catholic or evangelisch (protestant) and you have your baptismal and confirmation paper somewhere then that is good enough to say that you have your own faith and therefore need nothing else. We still find the gems in the rough nonetheless. I totally just veered off from what I was originally saying but na ja. But yeah it is just cool to get to know so many different people from so many different walks of life. If only people would open up to us just a little bit more. Real quick of some more examples of people. Frau Antar who is a young native German but who is half African and half Turkish, very interesting mix. She is Muslim but very nice and very open and willing to learn about other religions. She likes to say "whoa das ist heftig" a lot which makes me laugh because it sounds kind of like something a surfer-dude would say. And she says when she goes to church she doesn't feel whole? haha don't know exactly how to translate that. "ich fühle mich nicht wohl." And then there is Chilly Willy who is an American from Georgia who owns a little American-food mini restaurant. He is literally one of the coolest guys I have met and he has blue eyes although he is black, first time I have met someone with that. And he is also hilarious, and we even played guitar and sang summer of 69 with him right in his small restaurant. So here is this guy who is super nice, super funny, and literally everybody in Bremerhaven knows him but there were a few moments when we were with him that there seemed to be a kind of sadness about him......So it is great to be able to meet such great people and really get to know them but not only that but to share something with them that will not only make them happy now but will also help them to overcome any kind of trouble in life. That is one of many things I love about the gospel of Jesus Christ it is truly an enabling force. People who are true to the gospel are not free of trouble or hard times, but there always have the way to overcome them and to be happy despite them.
Okay one last person I need to talk about before I end my letter. So the person that will be baptized in the next two weeks is Dijanna Bsedes from Serbia who is only 14 years old. When you look at her you wouldn't think that she was only 14 though. Even yesterday a member asked us if she was married....and then we had to explain to him that she was only 14. Haha anyways I admire this girl so much. She is only 14 but she can speak pretty dang good English and because her parents can barely speak German or English she is the one who talks to the lawyers and the police because they are foreigners and still don't have their permanent visas yet. She also just got accepted for an internship to become a doctor someday. Basically we love her and her parents and they love us and even the other day while I was on exchange with Elder Germann, the district leader we taught her one of the lessons and she opened up to us like I have never seen before and told us spiritual experiences that she had back in Serbia that I can't relate to even in the slightest and yeah it is just awesome and I am excited for her and so impressed she does so much and has so much responsibility to carry despite only being 14.
Well I hope this letter was something a little bit different
and I hope you now have a little bit better of an idea of who I talk to and the
kind of experiences that I have. Even though I can't even write down a
hundredth of them, or remember that much in this very instant. I hope all is
going well back in the good ol' U.S. of A. or wherever you might be. Thinking
of and praying for you always.
Tschüss,
Elder Foster
P.S. Sorry if the formatting or whatever is horrible the
computer I am using right now, not the usual one, doesn't allow me to make
edits without deleting things all over the place.
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