Allan, Landon PT

Hallo alle!   A week of adventures that's for sure.   We have met with our friend Rosa a couple times this week and she is preparing to get baptized in just about a week or so! She is so fun to hang out and talk with, so we always look forward to meeting with her. She is actually from Holland but is studying here in Aachen right now. She really does need some prayers now though because the closer it gets to her baptism, the harder Satan tries to pull her away!    In the past week I have grown to strongly dislike public transportation. I have been fine with it for my whole mission so far but the past week has been quite the adventure. Let's just say we did a lot of running. There was one time where we were late for an appointment and so my companion said "quick let's get on this bus! It will take us to the same place but faster", so we sprinted to it, got on, and after being on for 5 stops, he said "im 80% percent sure that this bus goes to the right place...

Hallo alle!   A busy and crazy week to say the least.   On Saturday, we did a district finding activity in Wuppertal. We went into the main walking part in the downtown part of the city and just went around talking to people. The people of Wuppertal were NOT having it that day. One other elder had some more success, but all the people I talked to in the span of two hours except for 1 person, were completely unwilling to talk. I often got the iconic "German hand". If you start to talk to them, they quickly flick their wrist up with an open palm, "talk to the hand", and they speed off. I find it interesting how many of them don't even skip a beat or flinch. Don't worry there are also plenty of nice people who say no really nicely. Me and another Elder also got stopped by two guys advertising a new store that opened. Long story short we spun a wheel and got 20% off a tooth whitening service! It taught me a good lesson about patience though. Christ was rejected ...

Hallo alle!   A good week, as always. However, not a very normal one.   On Friday and Saturday we had some splits, and Elder Nelson from Wuppertal came here to Duisburg. Elder Nelson is awesome and we had a lot of fun. We also went over to the Werners on Friday night, which was also a lot of fun. She invites us over for dinner so often, and always makes the BEST food (in Germany, don't worry mom, yours is still the best in America).     On Sunday it was Vishnu's (a young adult in our ward) birthday, so we had a little surprise party for him. The sisters gave us a cooler with food and a banner and blankets and we walked to a park and set up a picnic. Then the sisters went on a walk with Vishnu without him knowing that they were leading him to us. It was sorta funny because when they showed up (like 30 minutes later) we had given up trying to string the banner up on trees, so we were just sitting back to back in the grass with our heads down. Sorry, I am bad at su...

Hallo alle!   I will get right into it! Hey last week I hit my 9 month mark! Nothing too special, but it is really crazy how fast it is going by.   This week we were allowed by President to do splits with leadership in our ward. So Elder Breinholt and I actually split up, and I went with a member of our Elders Quorum presidency Brother Tramp, and Elder Breinholt went with our stake president (this is his homeward and he lives right next to us so we are pretty close with him). It felt so weird not being with another missionary, but it was a lot of fun. We tried to visit a couple less active members, but none of them were home, so Brother Tramp said "why don't we try visiting Andrea Tramp'' and I was like "ok sure!" And then once we got there I realized that he was making a joke and was talking about his wife, so we just went inside his house, took a break, and all talked for a bit. It was really good, because although no one was home, I got to know him better ...

Hallo alle!   Wowww was für eine Woche!! This week was pretty crazy. Over the weekend we just did some normal finding and talking to people, but the past couple days have been pretty busy.    On Monday.... we helped with FOUR moves. Yeah that's right. We started at 6:30 am helping a member who lives right by us, and we ended at 6:30pm. Since they are all friends, we went from apartment to apartment with the moving van and helping people move apartments (everyone just moved to different places within Duisburg). Let me just say however, going up 5 flights of stairs with a couch is not fun. But don't worry, I only dented one wall. On the bright side, IKEA college-student furniture is such a blessing because of how light it is. It's not like moving back home to Virginia where we need 8 people on one dresser because it's "real cherry wood". I'm sure actually some of you guys remember moving that monstrosity. It was so fun hanging out with everybody all day and ...