Beethoven, On The Streets, And The Nightmare Before P-day

Hallo alle!

What an interesting week, to say the least. Just tread to the end. This email is an interesting one...

Well our District got moved around and we became part of the Bonn district. We had our district council on Friday and so we had to travel a total of about 2 hours to get there, but it was worth it! Bonn is a pretty city, and it was Beethoven's HQ back in the olden days, so that's cool too. After our meeting we got some lunch, and people were just playing music in the streets and it was awesome weather. We stopped this one guy and talked to him before getting on our train, and we got talking and he is totally into NFL and American football. He even played for a team here in Germany. Him and Elder Reid got along real well because Elder Reid was a big football guy back home. So we got his number and we are going to stay in contact!

We are getting ready to invite our friend Treasure to be baptized! He is such a cool guy, and honestly so ready for the Gospel. We weren't able to meet with him this past week, but we will be meeting him on Saturday and probably ask the big question! Hopefully he will say "I DO!... want to be baptized". Keep him in your prayers!

Elder Reid and I have been out on the streets a lot lately (no we're not homeless) just talking to people. Elder Reid, being a new missionary, has so many new cool ideas and it is really refreshing. We have been talking to a lot more people, and although we haven't found anyone interested yet, we have been really trying to spread that message of Jesus Christ! Our goal right now is to Love others, Share what makes us happy, and Invite them to try it out! It's hard to show people love that you just meet on the street, but we try our best by listening to what they have to say and what they have experienced in their own life, instead of just trying to shove religion down their throat.

Here's probably the weirdest day of my mission so far.

On Tuesday we went and did some service (a better word in this case would probably be servitude) for a member. He is a bit of a collector and his house was filled with stuff ranging from Nazi knives and war medals to cookoo clocks. When we first walked into the backyard I was looking at this solid green box, when something moved inside and I realized that it was a fish tank covered in algae. I think he is breeding the next Marvel super villain there. The backyard was also filled with stuff, including multiple bins filled with ancient rain water which had staThere were a lot of, well, smells. But anyways we helped him repair his fence for about 3 hours while there were chickens and ducks running around our feet. At one point a city inspector stopped by for a visit and essentially told him he has to register the chickens he has. After we were done with the fence, we thought we were done and then he just says "Jetzt müssen wir die Hühne vom Schlafzimmer holen" (Now we have to get the chickens from the bedroom). Now here is what went down.

Elder Reid: "Did he just say we are getting chickens from the Schlafzimmer?"

Me thinking he didn't understand: "yeah the bedroom"

Elder Reid: "No I know what Schlafzimmer means, that is not the problem I had with that sentence."

We got up there and the foulest stench that has ever entered my nose hit me. The air was... thick. The member hands Elder Reid a cage of little chicks from the bedroom and I was like "oh that's easy". And then I walked into the bedroom and saw a huge cage of about 25 chickens just stuffed inside. They were going crazy and the member said "alright you grab one side and I grab the other ''. It was at that moment that I contemplated all of my life decisions.

I was on the back end of the huge cage so I was going backwards down the CURVED, SKINNY, GERMAN stairs and the chickens were sliding toward my face, and just going wild. I think my life flashed before my eyes, so I said a prayer just hoping it didn't fall on me, and the second we got to the bottom floor the cage broke, we dropped it, and the chickens went wild. They started running everywhere, the member was shouting at us in indiscernible German, Elder Reid was stressed out because he couldn't understand anything the member was saying, and for some reason I did not freak out. Long story short, we got the chickens back in after chasing them around, got them into his backyard, and then he said we have to go get the other birds. So I'm just thinking "what more could he possibly have in that bedroom". We go back upstairs and he pulls a huge, colorful, exotic, wild (and illegal) Asian bird, and then hands me another small one by the legs. We got them all outside to the cage in his backyard and Elder Reid just looked at each other thinking "what just happened". Afterwards the member hit us with the "Soooo, can you guys come back in a couple weeks to help me move the birds when the inspection lady comes back again?".

Needless to say, we will not be returning. At least I can say (unknown to me at the time that I was committing a crime) I was a part of chickens and exotic birds on my mission!

But we survived! I hope I didn't get any infections or Bird flu from the chickens!

Anyways sorry for the long story! But it was an exciting (and slightly traumatic) week.

Love yall and talk to ya next week!

Landon

Sorry if the pictures are out of order!

1. The ducks

2. Fixing the fence.

3. The escape of the chickens. I am still traumatized from that

4. Chaos. Not depicted: german commands being shouted in the background

5. Medals

6. Me back at the Lindt factory. Not surprising.

7. Fixing the fence part 2. You may not have taught me much dad but you did teach me how to use a drill.