Verrückte Gespräche im Zug! :-D

Alright let's do this thing! Okay so first off....yeah! I don't know this week was filled with some interesting experiences I guess. Not that they were bad just that they weren't the ones you were looking for. Usually a missionary is looking for the miraculous kind of experiences where lots of wonderful families get baptized and then they refer us to their other wonderful friends who have big big families who also want to join the church and partake in the wonderful blessing of the gospel. Well we didn't get any of that this week but we still had fun while doing it.

 

First and foremost this week was basically characterized by boldness and conversations done in the most random of places. Where does it all start you ask? Actually first, it starts in the most common places, namely on the streets of Cottbus where we decided to ask people some not so run of the mill missionary questions. Usually the favorite questions are: what brings you joy in life or what does the family mean to you, or something along those lines. But after about an hour of finding or so, we were starting to get a little impatient with the German people shall we say. So instead we started to ask them what the word humility means to them and interestingly enough, none of them had any idea what to say. It was actually quite intriguing. We stopped a couple of young guys that looked to be in their mid-twenties or so. At first they see us and you can tell they are kind of making fun of us but when we stop them and ask them this very question, one of them just looks at the other and says yeah ask him, he definitely needs it and then the other guy was just speechless and looked like he was really uncomfortable until his friend finally said look guys we gotta go and then left. We weren’t trying to mess with people or anything but I felt like they had a little bit of a reality check. Once again we were not trying to troll people but it was very interesting to see how they reacted. One lady, after we explained to her that those of humble hearts will receive answers from God, told us at the end of the conversation after taking our card, yeah when I am humble, I will get a hold of you. That was also pretty funny comeback.

 

Anyway, let us get to the other ways that we talked to people this week. So on Thursday we had a Zone-Conference in Leipzig, we took a long train ride with everybody in our District, which of course is fun but that is also the problem. Usually when you start to get bigger groups of missionaries together, all they want to do is talk to each other and not anybody else. So the whole way there we talked to each other and that isn't necessarily a sin or anything but just time lost for doing missionary work. So we get to Leipzig and we have our conference and of course that is good and it was nice to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while. On the way back the train was more crowded, so we weren't sitting very close to one another. But after a few stops and after a few more people got out, I stood up to go see if any spots cleared up over where the others were sitting and to my surprise no not really, but I decided to talk to my good buddy Elder Schulte. I just stood there in the middle of the aisle. There are people all around us and there is this girl with headphones on and I can tell that she keeps looking at me and because the mission has made me crazy than ever before, I just kind of wave at her and smile which causes her to take out some of her headphones to try and find out if I am trying to say something to her. I tell her that it wasn't anything really, I was just excited. And then I went back to talking to Elder Schulte in the middle of the aisle. After a couple of minutes, she asks me whether or not I wanted a seat. And of course I am not going to decline the offer. So she and apparently her two other friends who I didn't even know where her friends moved some of their bags and made a seat for me. So to shorten things up a little bit, we had a nice conversation and talked about why I was in Germany and everything. Now there were seats opened up. So I go get my companion who was still sitting in another part of the train and bring him to where we are. And this is where the cool part comes in, we were all sitting in the same area but we weren't sitting right next to each other like we were on the way there. So there were people amongst us. And to my lovely surprise, the Elders from Forst started talking to a lady across from them, my companion started talking to a lady across from him and then after a few minutes, I started talking to a lady across from me and because I was sitting right next to the sisters they joined in on the conversation. So it was really cool, we were all talking to people on the train and it was great and the time went by a lot faster. And in the end we even teamed up and ended up giving a lady a Book of Mormon. One of us talked to her on the train to Cottbus and then when we all got off in Cottbus and the Forst Elders hopped on another train to go to first this lady also got on the same train, so we told the Elders to go sit next to her and give her a Book of Mormon if they feel moved to by the Spirit. And guess what it totally worked!

 

So the very next day we were also in train again on our way to Lübbenau, where some members invited us over for lunch. And because of the success from the other day I took it upon myself to risk the awkward and talk to some more people, which led into me hurrying to get someone’s number before getting off the train in a few seconds. But on the way back it was a completely different experience. We sit across from this small Asian girl in the train, who was sleeping and her head was even bobbing. And I told myself okay if she wakes up then I will talk to her and of course like ten seconds later she wakes up and I'm like oh well okay. So I kind of startlingly say hello to her which causes my companion to laugh and because of that I start laughing so there is me and my companion just trying to stop laughing but failing miserably at it and in the meantime this lady is probably thinking these guys are rude for laughing at me because I was sleeping or something like that so it just made it even more awkward but as I said before I am crazier than ever before and so I went ahead anyways and talked to her and I come to find out that she is from Madagascar, who would've thought that? And I am just asking her simple questions, but she is just getting more skeptical by the second and even asks me why I am even asking her questions but the conversation continues and she is even asking us about our church but in the end she basically just rejected us like we were crazy or something but the best part was the very end where we were back in Cottbus and the train is packed so we have an entire audience standing there listening to us and seeing all of this go down and yep we basically kept talking just to share our beliefs to all the people who were listening whether they wanted to or not. It was definitely one of the more awkward experiences of my mission. But you can't always have perfect experiences.

 

Okay so i quatsched a whole lot haha, but i just want to say a couple more things before ending this letter to you wonderful readers out there. You truly never know the effect that you will have while you are on a mission. I still don't feel like I have had a very big effect but then week while talking to other missionaries at Zone Conference. I found out a couple of things. First, remember back when I was in Bremerhaven? Where Alex the 21 year old German was baptized? Well, Elder Pilling and I had our worries about him but he has been keeping strong and not just that because of his joining the church and the effect it has had upon him. His grandma is going to get baptized! So woohoo for that! And also I heard something else crazy, so when I was in Weimar and Erfurt for that very short period of time, I got to know an Iranian student named Amin and I love that guy and I am still in contact with him even up to this day. When I knew him he was still living in Weimar but now he is in Dresden continuing his schooling there, I thought he had lost contact with the missionaries in Weimar quite a while ago or shortly after I left. But when I was in the tram on the way to the train station in Leipzig and talking to the Dresden Elders,one of them just happened to be a good friend from my original MTC group and as I was talking to him he started telling me how they had an investigator that wanted to transfer over to a school in Utah, in particular to BYU. Right then and there I asked him what the investigators name was and then he said Amin and I literally laughed. He has been meeting with them and with the sisters and even came to church a few times and yeah it was just crazy to have that happen. I am the one who got him interested into coming to BYU or at least to Utah in general. I will tell you what kind of conversation spawned this desire in him if you ask me when I get back home from my mission. So the moral of this story is yeah once again you never know what kind of effect you can have. So don't lose courage and always remember that you can always do something more!

 

Well I love you and I hope you have a wonderful week! Woo! I'm out!

 

Tschüss,

Elder Foster

 

Größenwahn!

Was geht ab?!

 

Alright, alright, alright lets get this letter going! Well this week went by pretty fast to say the least. As per usual I can barely remember it. But I will just start going off on stuff and we will see what happened from there. So I don't remember if I ever told you before but in this ward they actually have a choir, yes not too common around these parts, or at least in the areas I have served in. But the ward here takes their choir stuff seriously. I mean every single Sunday except for fast and testimony meeting, they have about two musical pieces per meeting, usually one from the choir and one from their mini "panic-orchestra" which consists of three old men, one on piano, one on cello, and one on the organ. Except they are all pretty deaf to an extent so really it is just hilarious but cool. When they actually have missionaries with real musical talent they will usually do something every once and a while too. That is why they loved my last companion because he could play the piano and could also sing. Anyways on Tuesdays we have choir and basically the only ones who are singing tenor is me! I love their excitement for choir!

 

On Wednesday I got to go on exchange with Elder Chadwick. He just barely got to Germany a couple of weeks ago. So I got the wonderful opportunity to corrupt him from the get go! Mwhaha! No I am just kidding. But it was a good time with him and he will be quite a nice addition to or district. Anyways we had a good time and for some reason every time I go on exchange here with somebody, lots of cool stuff happens. So that by the end the missionary that is with me, says that they don't want to go back and that they would rather stay. Haha not sure why that is but I am glad nonetheless that they have a good time while they are here in Cottbus.

We found a couple new people of course. One of them being a Canadian of all people who is going to school here in Cottbus and the other is actually a professor from the university of Ghana. So pretty interesting all around if I do say so myself. Although our problem is age-old in that we find people but then they have no time to meet.

Actually that reminds me of another random experience that I had this week. So I think it was a couple of days ago right after we got done having a lesson in the church and we were just about to get ready to go and then I get a call on our phone and it is from somebody who is assigned under as an investigator. And this is how the conversation goes....."hallo hier spricht Elder Foster"....."Hallo, do you know who this is?"......checks name on phone...."yeah is it Housam?"....."oh yeah it is, where are you?"...."uum we are in the church"...."Oh are you praying?"....."uuum yeah, i mean no, but we do pray"....."oh okay, well i will let you go now."....."wait, did you want something?"...."No, I just wanted to say hi"...."oh okay....are you sure?"...."yeah i just wanted to say hi"...."well alright.....did...did you want to meet up?"...."uh yeah sure why not".....Haha so it was probably that most random conversation I have ever had in my life on the phone but nonetheless we now have an appointment with him tomorrow so hopefully it will go well.

 

The last thing I can think of that I experienced this week that was somewhat interesting. Was that I went to Berlin for a mission leadership training meeting. Haha first thing I see when I walk through the front door of the church in Tiergarten is literally a few missionaries and a man in a trench coat, who at first look, seems as if he is not wearing any pants...don't worry he was wearing some kind of shorts. And he is wearing a red baron type hat and he is just going off about how he needs to give a key to his bishop and the other missionaries are just trying to get this key from him. After a couple minutes of discussion the guy leaves but he doesn't leave without leaving a little something something behind. That being a big puddle of urine on a chair and the ground. This happened before anybody talked to him though so it wasn't graphic or anything but nonetheless, the missionaries in Tiergarten now have to worry about whether a crazy guy has a key to their church or not. haha woo that is Berlin. Back to the actual news though! Which really isn't anything, it was just a really long conference for the leaders on the eastern half of the mission. Afterwards however the President hugged me and told me that I was very diligent today. Haha which i didn't understand because I maybe raised my hand once and all the other times he just randomly called on me, or I was called up by someone else. Well I guess you can't complain too much when someone says something nice to you.

 

Anyways I have one last thing to say before I finish up this letter and that is....do your family history and talk to your friends about it! It will change you! Okay a little background to why I say that. So I had an aunt that served her in Germany who also actually served in Cottbus as well. And just last Sunday when we were at a members house eating lunch with them, one of the members brought out a journal where lots of entries of missionaries were written inside and as we were flipping through the pages. I found an entry that my aunt made. Haha so naturally we were all pretty excited about that. And it fit perfectly with the spiritual thought that I wanted to talk about which was namely family history. You never know how you will effect your family in one way or another. And when we look at our own forefathers we will see the influence they have had upon us and that there really is a binding between us that goes beyond time. There is a special spirit about this kind of work and simply helping others to get excited about their own family history and to start doing it can have an effect that will bring them closer to Christ. Those particular members were definitely excited to talk to their friends about family history after that.

 

Well I hope you all have had a wonderful week and I wish you yet another wonderful week. And as always I pray for you and hope that you may also have peace in your lives.

 

 

Tschüss,

Elder Foster

Alles was du wissen musst

Hallo willkommen zu meiner Welt!

Ah glad you could join me in this fine moments. I will now tell you the fine details of my daily life here in Germany, Cottbus to be even more specific. If you were to look at this city through the eyes of an everyday german citizen. You would probably only see grey and lots of memories of the DDR. Haha but in my eyes it is not too bad, although it can be a tad boring in the worldly aspect because there is literally nothing to do on P-Day. In case you are wondering we mostly just walk around and do some window shopping or if you are my companion you are buying every piece of clothing you can before you leave back to America.

This week we have a little bit more on our agenda to talk about, unless my short attention span or short term memory kicks in then all will be lost...mwhaha. Anyways first thing I want to talk about is....the devil is real! Don't go messing around with that stuff!
Because I am the District-Leader I hear everything that goes down with the missionaries here in this area because I talk with them every night. And last week I heard some pretty borderline creepy stuff. I am glad this didn't happen to me but it is still only a hop and a skip away. But this week I heard the story of a lady who basically invited the Elders over so they could cast out an evil spirit out of here. I know what you are thinking, sounds really sketch and it is. Even President said that we need to take this stuff seriously and be ready in case something crazy goes down. Anyways a little back story to all of this is that this lady got into weird spiritual energy stuff or whatever you want to call it but spiritualism. Hoping you know what I am talking, I am not sure how to explain it but it is not uncommon.
She got into it because of her aunt. And then as she got deeper into it and met this guy and they were doing this stuff together, and then one day the guy calls hers and tells her to lay down on the floor and that he was going to send her this spirit though the phone, and she even described the wavy feeling coming up her back and that ever since then she has been having split personalities and she will wake up and have scratches on her body and other weird things. So yeah really creepy, but in the end when the missionaries met with her she was really excited about the gospel and she really thought it would be a good direction for her life and that she needs to put some more light into her light because there is a whole lot of shall we say bad influences around these parts. But after hearing all this I even had a weird experience the very same night and yeah I didn't sleep to well.
Haha but all is well now. I just wanted you all to know that this stuff is real and that you shouldn't mess with powers that don't come from God. Even if you may think that there are good things that come from it. Satan still has the power to duplicate wonders. But I know there is one thing that he can not replicate and that is peace, only God can bring peace to your life, so put your trust into the right sources, namely God and Jesus Christ. And I have an example, which actually really surprised me when I heard about it. So there is this lady in the ward, and we visit her and her husband at least every other week because they invite us over to eat. And they are some of the most sincere people you could meet and really great members, they are some of the very few german members that really try to do missionary work. But anyways amazing impression of them right? Well I come to find out that this lady has/had schizophrenia. And that she would do weird things sometimes and proclaim that the book of mormon isn't true and give random people blessings and stuff like that. Which totally surprised me right? Because she is just an outstanding member.
Then I heard a little bit more of the story and so this lady was also into this spiritualism stuff or one form of it or another and had the pendulums and everything. And the only thing that stopped this behavior of hers and stopped her from being schizophrenic was....drum roll.... the gospel! Because she reads in the scriptures everyday and comes to church and prays and does all these wonderfully simple things from the gospel. She is completely normal now and doesn't even take any medications anymore. For me that is a miracle and witness of the power of the gospel. You never know what kind of sicknesses are influenced by the Widersacher. Trippy stuff!

A couple other random things to note, is that we are as of last week now teaching a priest from another church. Haha pretty interesting right? He is pretty open so that is good but we will have to see if he is willing enough to do the things that we ask. He has already said that God and Jesus Christ are first and that the church is second, so at least he has the right mindset, hopefully he is humble enough to change churches if the Lord tells him too. haha Also after many tries at trying to contact this person we talked to a while ago on the street. We finally met with Eleanora, a Russian student here in Cottbus. She is pretty cool and I am glad I finally convinced to just sit down with at a cafe and talk with us. Have no fear though! Because we won! Which means we will definitely be meeting again. Someday I will send you pictures of the people that I have day to day contact with. And even more news one of our other investigators his name is Obada, he has decided to quit smoking! Woo! I don't recall whether I have said a lot about him or not but he is basically our 20 year old syrian buddy that we teach and sometimes got to American Diner with here in Cottbus. Refugees really do have quite a hard time here in Germany, I am pretty sure most people are completely unaware of their situation that they live in. It would make me go crazy that is for sure. Not to mention you have the majority of German looking down on you and hating you because you are a refugee. It is good that we can do our best to be a good influence on him. We will get him to church someday! haha

Oh yeah haha this week we had an exchange with the zone leaders and both of them stayed and worked in Cottbus because it would take to long to go all the way back to Freiberg. But what is funny is that it was hardly an exchange because we basically went to visit President Kosak the former mission president. Not just to go hang out but because he has two slipped discs in his back so he has not been having a good time as of recently and we wanted to go and cheer him up. Haha fortunately and unfortunately it cheered him up a little bit too much and we spent way too much time with him and sister Kosak. Haha going schwarz with the zone leaders. Haha no not really but even President Kosak sent us a text later saying sorry that he kept us for too long and that it really did cheer him up and that the pain went away while we were there.

Anyways I could keep going with the fine details of this week and I even forgot to mention a few other cool things that happened this week. Na ja I can never get a 100th of the things that happen during the week into these letters. Well I hope you enjoyed my rants and interesting experiences. And I wish you a wonderful week and pray for your well being. Love y'all!


Tschüss,
Elder Foster