This week was pretty decent. It went by really quickly which isn't weird. All the weeks seem to go by really fast now. Last Monday for P-Day we went to Kiel and went to eat as a District. We went to this Italian place called Vapiano. It was really good and I attached some pictures as well.
On Tuesday we had an appointment with a guy named Hamdan. He is from Lebanon but has been in Germany for 20 or so years. It was actually a really sad appointment. Years ago he got divorced and in the separation he lost the kids completely. He went into a huge depression and is now a chain smoker and spends all his money at the slot machines, or as he calls it"throwing away money". He also has no job and receives all his money from the government which he then spends almost immediately on the slots or cigs. He then has almost no money for food or anything else for the last three weeks of the month. For example, on Tuesday this last week he had a grand total of €5 for the rest of the month, which he told us were for cigarettes (a pack costs exactly €5). He even told us that he often has to go to farms and steal food from the fields just to survive. It is so strange to see someone who was in such a hole and has know knowledge of how to get out. We were very blunt and told him "Hamdan, your life is absolutely terrible." He just laughed and said that he knew it. We offered him help and told him that if he puts his trust in us and more importantly God, he can be happier, he can get back to the happiness that he had and more. He told us that he really wanted it and that he was willing to try. We're definitely going to keep up with him. We also went on Thursday and helped him fix and build a bunch of walls at a Garden House he is fixing. He just has basically nothing and wants to be happier so we'll if we can help him help himself.
On Wednesday Elder Casper had a leadership meeting in Hamburg so I got to spend the day with Elder Frost who is serving in Flensburg. We helped some members, the Leideckers, chop some wood and stack it and then they fed us. We then went by on some contacts
and got stuck in a rain storm. Elder Casper and Conley got stuck in Hamburg because all the train workers have decided that its cool to keep going on strike. They had to catch a bus and ended up getting to Neumünster around 8 so they had to spend the night in our apartment again. They had spent the night the night before so that Casper and Conley didn't have to wake up so early. It was a cool sleepover.
Thursday we had District meeting in Kiel like we always do and then we went to Bad Segeberg to meet with Hamdan to help in the Garden. We helped him put up a bunch of sheetrock. That took a lot of our day and after that we came home.
Friday was a little bit longer just cause we didn't have any appointments or anything. We spent some time organizing some of the old contacts in the area book and then did some finding and went by on some of the contacts. You might have noticed that we go by on contacts a lot. Basically what that means is that over the years missionaries build up big lists of "contacts" or "potential investigators", people that we received contact info but for one reason or another never became investigators. The problem is certain missionaries are very sloppy with entering them into the lists and it turns into a massive list of scattered people that live all over the area, sometimes in other cities. These lists are almost impossible to use effectively unless they are somewhat geographically organized so in almost all of my areas I take some time to organize these contacts one by one and list them by where they live. That way when you want to stop by on some of them you can go to multiple that live close to each other. This makes our job easier because then instead of mindlessly wandering around knocking on doors( which I rarely do) and talking with people on the street hoping to find interested people, we can go follow up on people who have already showed interest and we can talk with people on the way to and from the contacts. I find that it gives us more purpose and keeps things interesting. But after a while it still gets a little old;)
Saturday was pretty similar to Friday but we also had to take a Language assessment on the computer for our German abilities. This was the second part. We took the first part a couple of months ago and now we get to see if we've improved! With any luck I'll have gotten worse.
Yesterday at church we had the Sacrament and then immediately watched the Sunday Afternoon session of conference. It shows at 10- midnight here so they always show it in church in the following weeks. I listened to it last P-day during emails but its always cool to here it in a different language. There was also a returned missionary named Robin Lohmann in the ward. He just got back from the South Africa mission this last week. He seems like a good chap. After church we had an appointment with a man named Herr Norbert. He is a schizophrenic but is living at a clinic right now and undergoes treatment. He is actually "all there" but is just very slow because of the medication. He doesn't suffer from hearing voices anymore and we felt pretty strongly to keep teaching him so we will. On the way home from the appointment it rained like the dickens. We were absolutely soaked all the way through because we were on our bikes. Naja, the perks of being a missionary right? ;)
Tonightt we will go play some Fußball with some members and active and less actives so that should be pretty fun.
As far as stuff for Christmas goes I'll have to think about it and see if theres anything I actually want. I'll try to let you know soon;)
Well I hope that this email was a little bit longer than usual and that you got some decent infos from it! I love you guys and hope that you have a great week!
Elder Trevor "Longbow" Bone
Little Child of the West Winds
The Duke of Awesome
Sent from the tablet that I wish I had...
Just the pics I was talking about! I also found a funny sticker that I thought you would like. Germans love to make weird stickers and put them everywhere. I also made some pro status pancakes. I don't why I included a picture of our miniature bathroom but now you know how small it is! ;)
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