Thursday, January 19, 2017

Week 15 - Life in Bernberg Week 10: Freiberg and Back and Back and Back

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

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