Ludwigsburg - Week 10

Hey ya'll!

Montag 20 Juli

Alright, so today was swell. We started out by studying and going shopping. We then came back and cleaned up the place. It's looking good. We had a lesson with L, our little 11 year old girl who is in the part member/less active family. We asked the baptismal questions and she was really sharp and ready to share her knowledge and testimony, it was awesome! We were talking about the baptism a little bit. It's so discouraging because she wanted her grandpa to baptize her and we had it all set up so that would work out, and last week he had a minor heart attack and is in the hospital now with his left arm totally paralyzed. All together, we don't think it would be right to go forward with the baptism while grandpa is laying in the hospital recovering from heart surgery. So we're waiting until he gets out so he can at least attend. But, this also leaves no worthy members of her family to baptize her. We gotta find someone new to do it, but someone that's special to her. The family is also going on vacation for 2 weeks coming up here, so we're looking at beginning-middle September for L's baptism. Yeahhhh. We had emails after that. Emails were great. I got to talk to a lot of friends around the mission and at home. It was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we came back home and planned. Today, I started the 13 week P90X3 block again. Tonight was the Total Synergistics. That was fun. I'm beat! Going to bed.

Dienstag 21 Juli

Today was an awesome day. Elder Sorensen and I got up at 5:30 and went down to the soccer field. We played soccer for a little bit and threw a football around. It's a good thing to get the brain going in the morning. At about 6:30 we came back. I did the Agility X workout which is a fun one. That was tiring. After all that, we had studies from 9-10, and then at 10:30 we took the train down to Stuttgart for District Meeting. It takes about 10 minutes to get all the way into the Hauptbahnhof there. It's also under heavy renovation and construction which they hope to finish by 2021. You wouldn't believe how crazy that place is. There was a missionary last transfer that got pickpocketed there. His year card and wallet, gone. Oh man. But district meeting was great. We had a decent one. I could have personally planned for it better. That's ok though. We had lunch afterwards at Milaneo, Germany's biggest shopping center. It's huge. It's like a girls dream. After that we had Austausch planned, so I went to Heilbronn with Elder Gappmayer and Elder Sorensen and Elder Bliss stayed. Elder Gappmayer is in his 3rd transfer and desperately trying to get comfortable communicating with people and adjusted to missionary work. I'm glad I get to work with him a couple days. We went to Lauffen, which is just outside of Heilbronn, first. We were dooring there and this guy answered and I told him about the restoration and he was like, 'Wow, this really makes sense!' He took a Book after a nice little lesson on the doorstep. Then another guy invited us in to talk. We talked with him for about 45 minutes. It was a great lesson. It was cool to see. That was pretty much our day. It was 100 degrees again today, so I'm just drained. I'm out!

Mittwoch 22 Juli

Well, as I was sleeping last night, we got a text from Church HQ, a referral yay! We were doing studies and an electrician came over to fix some stuff. He got outta there so fast. Then Elder and Sister Bos, the Ehepaar, came to inspect the apartment. They hadn't done an excellent cleaning job, but it was fine. They took us out to lunch afterwards, (aren't senior couples the best?), and then we came back and finished studying, when the breaker box started going haywire. We would flip it on and it would work for about 2 minutes, then blow again. Turns out Mr. Handy Dandy Electrician Dingus was in such a hurry to get out of there, he did his job wrong. Wooo way to go buddy. So we had to wait for him to come back and fix it. After all that, we jumped on a tram and took it for about 15 minutes to go by on a guy they had lost contact with. On the tram, I sat with 2 girls from Australia, who were with their grandma from England. They were so cool. They were just on vacation, but I told them I was from Utah and of course, they don't know that, but you say Las Vegas and California, people know. So I said California and they were super interested to hear what it's like. They were so cool. They were like 17 or 18. We had a lot of fun just talking for 15 mins. Australia seems like the place to be. I'm not coming home, I'm just going to Australia. But yeah, we went by on this guy and turns out, he's in Hamburg. What the heck. So we doored the area without much success, then came back. We still had about an hour, so we went dooring again! It was so frustrating though. The building was 4 floors high, so we're hitting the doorbells from the outside of the apartment building and you ALWAYS start top to bottom. It's an unwritten rule. So we start on the top floor, and the first guy lets us in, we walk up 4 floors and he slams the door. So we got back out, do the next guy, he lets us in, we walk up 4 floors, and he slams the door. Haha all the way down to the first floor. I hate stairs. The next building I doored a guy on the top floor and he leaned out his window and I started talking to him and he told me he would be ashamed to go door to door soliciting a religion. I shouldn't have, but I responded quite sarcastically, and it turned into a little bit of an argument. I told him I was having fun doing it and that nobody could make me stop. So he decided to spit his tobacco down at us. Ooh, now it's on... He told us that he was Christian, but didn't associate himself with any denomination. I told him that he wasn't acting very Christlike and that we could help him with that. I was being a little bit too sarcastic. I just can't help it sometimes. It's a bad trait of mine. He told us to go away, so we stayed there and doored his entire building while he sat up there watching. It was quite joyful to see the anger in his eyes. We left with a little wave, and he said he was going to call the police, and I told him to go ahead. So he did. The fuzz roll in, and ask us for our Geistlicher Ausweis, which is just the papers that prove we are allowed to proselyte in Germany. So we show them and they let us go on and I think that made the guy the most mad, that they couldn't do anything about it. It was fun. After that, we Tausched back, and went back to Bietigheim. We looked at our referrals notes on the Internet and it has a note that says 'Ich möchte auch gerne Mitglied werden!' or for you English speakers, 'I'd like to become a member.' Yes. We will go by on him tomorrow and see if it's real, seeing as we get fake referrals all the time. Hope it's a good one! Tonight was the Yoga workout by the way. Yessss. It was fantastic.

Donnerstag

23 Juli Wow man, today was a busy day. We woke up and after studies and lunch we were out the door. We had a lesson with R and T. We worked through the preparing to enter the holy temple book with them and showed a video and shared our thoughts together about it. It was really powerful and we did great. R's baby was in the hospital earlier this week, but doing better now. T is still struggling through family tragedy. She's doing better though. After that, we went by on our referral. He was getting out the door to work and so we gave him the book, he told us he wants to be a member, and we set up an appointment to come by on Sunday. Sweeeeeet he wasn't a fake!! We'll get him on Sunday. After that, we swung by a member to give a Serbian book to her to give to her friend. She wasn't home but we left it in the mailbox. Afterwards we went over to the church to send the ward email and emails to less actives and investigators. Got that done quick. Then went over to U, a friend of ours who had a baptism date, then was told about the Holocaust victim baptisms for the dead, and since his grandfather was one of those, it got him. He got online and found some anti stuff and poof it was over. But he's awesome. Friends with members, and really nice. I hadn't met with him before tonight. He made us dinner and dessert and we talked a lot. He has some really really cool WWII stories and what not. We talked about the church and his standing with that. He asked some questions and we told him we'd be glad to come by next time and talk about it. Then we came home. On the way home, we experienced a typical German summer night. Hundreds of people gathered in the city doing karaoke and dancing and eating together. Right with the river running through the city, sun setting, band playing at the fancy restaurant, hundreds of people just walking around having fun together. It's so cheesily romantic. Way typical European. I love it. It just feels so European, and it makes me romantically trunky. (: super fun day though. Tonight the workout was The Challenge, which is about 7 rounds of as many push-ups and pull ups as you can do. That's a fun one!

Freitag 24 Juli

Today was weekly planning day. We had to go over to the Ludwigsburg apartment because there was people coming to read meters and check up on things, and we're the only ones with a key. So after personal study, we left and went over there. We were there for about an hour while people checked things out. Afterwards we headed back and had lunch and started weekly planning. After 3 hours of that, your brain just gets hammered. I was dying I tell ya. The first 4 weeks of his transfer, it's just been me planning, making all the phone calls, while my son reads the area book. Today, he kept throwing the phone at me telling me to call people, and I would throw it back, tell him he was big enough now to call people. I think it scared him to death. I wasn't making another phone call until he made a few. He wasn't happy. But he tried a few which is major progress. I set up the lesson for our dinner appointment, and then we went off! We went to the Zelder family. It's really cool, because Schwester Zelder's maiden name is Klemm, the huge wonderful family from Landshut. She's the daughter there. Long story short, the Klemm family was taught by Elder Garrett's mother years ago, and many years later after not knowing what happened, the Garrett family met an Alicia Klemm serving in the Temple Square mission. She's the daughter of Horst Klemm, the man taught by Elder Garrett's mom. He was baptized after she left, and their 5 kids along with it. She had no idea about it until that point. It's such a cool story. Elder Garrett got to serve in Landshut, with the family his mom taught. I had a Family Home Evening at the Klemm's house in Landshut once. It was the one where Bruder Klemm thought I was avoiding my Sausage when I really was just saving the best for last, and so I pounded down 7 of those suckers just to show him I really loved them. He still talks about that to this day. I impressed him. (: but the Zelder's are awesome, they have a 5 year old daughter named Hannah. She was so scared of us at first, but I asked her about her bunnies that I saw outside, and she realized that I'm just about her age at heart. We got along just fine after that. We had some Schwäbisches Essen that was really good. Knödel meatballs in sauce along with potatoes. Super super good. It was awesome. Afterwards we had Tiramisu, and turns out at Elder Sorensen had never ever heard of Tiramisu before. Weird. It was really good. She used an awesome cocoa powder with it. I shared the lesson from the August ensign (it's awesome to have iPads). It was a kids story for Hannah. It was really good. I think they really appreciated it. With our GML Bruder Westrich, we've talked about going to members houses, and making absolutely sure that we make relationships with the kids to show them that the missionaries are cool so that they get this picture of missionaries as role models in their heads. It's been really fun. (: they live on an old American military base, so afterwards we walked around, all the streets are named after states and it's kinda funny. There's also a golf course that we found. We're going for PDay no matter what Elder Sorensen says. Then we came home. I did the CVX workout tonight. Good workout.

Samstag 25 Juli

Today has been pretty good! We had studies this morning and afterwards we decided to go into downtown Stuttgart to visit a less active in the hospital who said he needed to see us personally. He and I have become fast friends, so we were excited to see him. We didn't really know where the hospital in Stuttgart was, so we were free balling it. We took the U Bahn a couple stops then tried to walk up, but the sidewalk on the super busy street suddenly ended and turned into a 2 foot wide curbing. We figured the sidewalk might start again a little ways ahead, so we kept walking, until an old man drove past blaring the horn and using fingers that no old man should ever be using. Then we figured we might turn around. So we did, found the right way, hiked a mountain of vineyards (literally) and found the hospital. Yes finally, we found it. Walked to the information desk, he checked out yesterday. Gah. Fine. The whole trip may have been worth the pictures and adventure though. It was awesome. I'll attach a couple from it. After that we went by on a family in our ward who got into a really brutal motorcycle accident on Monday. That's interesting because he was supposed to be our joint teach on Monday, but didn't show up and I felt like I should call, but shrugged it off. DON'T IGNORE SPIRITUAL PROMPTINGS. He broke his thumb in the accident and she was thrown off the back under a car which rolled. Miraculously, they're both doing really well, and just sore. I would love to drive a motorcycle when I get home, but that's just scary. So we took them chocolate. Because chocolate solves all problems. They weren't home, which means they still might be in the hospital. Hope they're doing alright! That was our day though. Just a couple things that took really long to take care of. Workout tonight was The Warrior, a military one. It's fun! 

Sonntag 26 Juli

Today was good. We had church and it was nice. We had 2 investigators there, so I feel like things are progressing. Afterwards, we had a lesson with the referral. He is doing well. He has finished the Book of Mormon in 3 days. Can you believe it?! That was super cool to hear. He wants to be baptized, so we will start meeting with him more often. (: that was pretty much our day. Our district did really well this week.

P-Day!