Liebe Angehörige,
This week we had a continuation of our mess ups,
misfortunes, and strange happenings in general, but it was all taken much more
in stride. It's kind of becoming a normal thing. I'll tell you about our
interesting happenstances in 3.... 2.... 1....
So, after we wrote you all last Monday, Elder Neale and I
went and collapsed in exhausted heaps on mattresses on the floor in the living
room of our apartment, just happy to be sleeping under our own roof. The whole
circumstance with Bruder Seidl (proper spelling) was actually a huge miracle!
1. We got into our apartment without needing to call a locksmith, which could
have costed up to 500 € (they make a killing here). 2. Because he collected our
spare key from Berlin, we found the other spare key which we can't make a copy
of. Our key is a special kind of key which opens both the front door of the
apartment complex, and our personal apartment door. Because it is set up like
that, it is very expensive to make copies of these keys. There was,
however, a spare key a long time ago, which had gotten lost. Somehow it ended
up with the mission office. They had two spare keys to our apartment instead of
just the usual one. So, now we have a spare key!
Tuesday we got to continue working on our apartment until
about 2. The Seidls came back with new mattresses, sheets, the works. In the
process of installing stuff, though, Bruder Seidl found several problems with
our apartment's water supply and connections, leading to our only sources of
water in the apartment for the last week being our toilet and our shower. Thank
goodness for those two things, though. We could still use the bathroom at our
leisure and shower every day! We could also wash our dishes in the tub XD
(Thankfully, as I type this, I'm sitting in my apartment watching the repairman
install two new sinks!) After the Seidls left we did the necessary P-Day
activities that we hadn't gotten to do. I.E. Shopping and whatnot before
teaching Englisch class.
Wednesday was actually pretty chill. We got some really good
finding time in to spread the word of #DerWeltEinLicht. We did meet a few
strange people and a few mean people, but nothing out of the ordinary. The
Schade thing, though, was that we had been planning an Austausch for the next
day with the Rostock, and also planning on visiting their district meeting.
That all fell out when we found out that Hausverwaltung (basically the
apartment repairman) could be coming, so we couldn't leave the city. And then,
the Rostock elders took the wrong train and ended up over 5 hours away from us,
so we ended up canceling our Austausch.
Thursday ended up also being (kind of) chill. We had a bunch
of things to do, which was why we wanted Rostock's help to manage it all, but
one by one almost everything fell out. It ended up just being kind of a waste
of a day because we were waiting around on people to be able to do things for
them, but then didn't get to do much. We did, however, get our car all cleaned
out, which leads into tomorrow.
Friday we got to go to Berlin to drop our car off. The
mission is putting #DerWeltEinLicht posters on the sides of all of the mission
cars, so we will be without a car for about 11 days. We went and cracked out
the bikes, bought a new helmet, and headed on our way to Berlin. We got to take
part in a weekly leadership meeting in the car thanks to our new smartphones,
so that was interesting. We then had a large scramble of events where Elder
Neale ended up doing a translation in the car of the office elders in the Ikea
parking lot, and then we scrambled to get home in time so that Elder Neale
could do yet another translation appointment. The day was pretty exhausting.
Sunday was pretty normal, all things considered. Elder Neale
is still teaching the Persian Sunday School, so we didn't really take part in
church, but we did work out a way that the sacrament could be brought to us, so
we didn't need to do a separate sacrament meeting. We had an eating appointment
as well. (I love German Food!)
Today was a little bit of a bust, it was still really fun,
but we didn't get to go on any adventures. We spent a large chunk of the day
waiting on Hausverwaltung, but now our Wohnung works! I'm so pumped to have
sinks and be able to wash my clothes again!
We will have another crazy week in front of us, but I'm
excited for it. I hope that you all are having a great time as well; I have you
love!
Liebe Grüße,
Elder Austin Spaulding
