Hello, readers! This week we would like to present you with
a short, but sweet, piece of non-fiction. It is a German tragedy from the age
of Elder Spaulding.
Anyway... I don't think that I'm every going to get a normal
P-Day here, but this week it didn't only extent to P-Day, but to the entire
week. I'll give you a quick run down on the craziest happenings of the week.
Which is a lot.
Things started going down on Wednesday, when our washing
machine broke. We called Bruder Seidel, the man in charge of missionary
apartments in our mission, and he said that he would bring us a new one on
Monday. We had an urgent need of clean clothes, so in the meantime we washed
our underwear with the sister's washing machine.
Thursday was Thanksgiving, and with interviews the next day,
our Zone decided to eat Thanksgiving dinner together. We were asked to bring
stuffing, which, thankfully, Elder Neale knew how to make. We had a crazy day,
though, and we're only able to start at 9:00. Little did we know, that was the
start of an ordeal. Long story short, Elder Neale mostly knew how to
make stuffing, and we ended up putting way too much broth in. We cooked it for
about 3 hours (until about 2:00) and just set an alarm for every thirty minutes
and tried to get as much sleep as possible. Sadly, both us and the stuffing
were wrecked the next day.
Interview day is always an exhausting logistical nightmare
as a Zone Leader, so that was mostly that. BUT we had Tausch planned the next
day in Neubrandenburg, and were planning on staying in an old empty couples
apartment with one bed and two couches. We brought an extra mattress with us,
so that the four of us (us and the Prenzlau Elders) could all fit.
During interviews, one member of our zone got permission to
be approved to drive a mission vehicle, and Elder Neale was asked to show her
the ropes with German traffic laws and whatnot. The long and short of it is
that all of our gas got used. After the long interview day was over, we didn't
even have enough gas to make it to a gas station. We know this, because we
tried to. We ended up running out of gas in an intersection. We ended up
sending the Prenzlau Elders to get us gas, and ended up home very late, where I
slept on a couch that was way to small to try to use as a bed.
The next day, due to a little bit of bad planning and a lot
of bad luck, was mostly just sitting around. The appointment that we had
planned the Tausch around fell out, and the street display we wanted to do
didn't really happen.
We then came home just long enough to throw the mattress out
of our car into our apartment so that we could fit Zach (Our main investigator,
for whom we have received permission from president to drive) and drive to an
appointment. That actually went really well! we went through the baptismal
interview questions.
Afterwards, and just to have some extra crazy something
happen, we had some mechanical difficulties and spilled our Christmas initiative
cards all over the wet ground. We got that mostly saved, though, and then went
promptly to bed.
Sunday morning, I was asked to give a talk, and Elder Neale
ist temporarily in charge of teaching a mission wide Persian Sunday school
class. Because of that, and the crazy previous things in the week, I got to
give the least prepared talk that I have ever given on a temporary Austausch
with a member, while a different member was with Elder Neale teaching the
Sunday school class. The talk went pretty well, though.
After the crazy church, though, we found out that we somehow
left our keys in the apartment door, and there is no spare key! We worked out
with Bruder Seidel that he could grab our extra key in the mission office on
the way up here, so we ended up sleeping in the church Sunday night.
#twoCouchesInThreeDays Also, because our car keys were in the apartment, we had
to cancel all of our appointments that day.
Today we got to have our own little sacrament meeting!
Because of the Persian class, we weren't able to take the sacrament. We have
permission from president and from our bishop to do so, because we will be
missing most of church for the next four weeks or so. Bruder Seidel showed up
around 11, and due to the messiness of our Wohnung (it was actually pretty
sanitary, just disorganized. Previous missionaries have also been very unkind
to our apartment. Also, due to our barely being in the apartment, I
haven't even been able to finish unpacking.), we ended up cleaning our
apartment all day today. I haven't even showered or shaved yet. I'm actually
really happy, though, because they helped us to fix a lot of the damage that
was there from previous residents.
Anyway, that leads me to now.
This is officially the most "The actual heck" week
of my mission, thus the title. We are going to go sleep on the floor
tonight (Our old mattresses don't fit our new bed frames, they will be bringing
us new ones tomorrow morning). But, all is well in Zion! I am alive and
well, if more than a little tired, and I am looking forward to another week!
Miracles are happening, and things are going well!
Liebe Grüße,
Elder Austin Spaulding
