This week Elder Mayer and I were both sick, so we tried to
keep ourselves inside as much as possible. Unfortunately, you can't really do
missionary work inside, so we spent a lot of time outside anyway.
Now I want to tell you a story about Jagnesh. So, he hasn't
been to church the last two weeks, even though he really wanted to. I’m going
to tell you why. First of all, when we got into contact with him again, one of the
first things that he told us was that he was going to be at church on Sunday.
We met with him two days later and he told us the same thing. We were super
excited, but on Sunday he never showed up. We couldn't get ahold of him for a
few days after that, so we assumed the worst... he wasn't interested in meeting
anymore, or something happened, and he was just done. I mean, we had just got
back into contact with the guy and we already couldn't reach him again... we were
really sad. But then on Tuesday, we got a phone call from him and he told us
that his neighbor, who doesn't speak any English or German, had some
complications with her pregnancy. He had gone with her to be a translator for
the brunt of 5 days. Poor Jagnesh leads a crazy life. After this we worked on
setting him up a ride to church with a member who drives by his apartment, just
to make it easier to get there.
We had been planning a trip to the temple, so once we had reestablished
contact, we invited him to come. The way we buy tickets, his only cost 5€, but
we left at 9 in the morning and returned at 8 in the evening after only
spending one hour there. It's kind of a big trip. However, he said that he
would love to! We had an amazing time with him, there is a pair of sisters
stationed there to do little temple tours, and they did an amazing job. They
really helped to clarify to Jagnesh what the purpose of temples are.
When we got home at 20, we were trying to set up a ride home
for Jagnesh, but there was a concert of some description in Bernburg, so everyone
we called was unable to pick us up. Jagnesh said that there was a bus coming in
an hour, and he needed to do a little shopping at a store by Bahnhof anyway, so
we were good to go. So off we went.
At church the next day, the members showed up without
Jagnesh. They told us that they had waited and waited, and called him three
times, but he didn't come out. Once again we had lost contact, and he wasn't at
church! Thankfully it didn't take nearly as long to hear from him this time, he
called us that night and told us that his bus hadn't ever shown up, so he had
to walk (poor man told us Freiberg was the first time he had seen snow and it
was cold that night), he ended up getting home around midnight. When he got
there there was a big party going on, so he couldn't really sleep. After a
couple of hours this party escalated into a fight, in which the police came,
and several people ended up in the hospital.
We're really hoping that this week we can once more get
Jagnesh to church, the poor guy. It's really hilarious, but hopefully his life will
smooth out eventually.
In addition to travelling to the temple, we also traveled to
the temple! On Tuesday, we had Zone Training Meeting with the Temple zone all
the way down in Freiberg again. Due to bad weather and some other unforeseen
circumstances (apparently there was some kind of bomb from WWII found somewhere
around Leipzig, I can't research as a missionary, but if anyone decides to,
send me some details!), the train connections and whatnot were absolutely
awful. We had tons of trains fall out, too, so I spent the better part of 25
hours on trains this week. It was pretty rough.
Anyway, other than the events, this week was uneventful.
That's usually how it goes. So for now, much love, and pictures.
Elder Spaulding
