So we had a fairly boring week this week. (not our fault however) On Monday after doing our emails, we went shopping. The store we were shopping at was across the street from the church and we noticed a car in the parking lot so we went over to see if it was someone cleaning the church or something so we could help. It was a member there calling lots of plumbers and church people because the water pipe had busted. So we sat around for about an hour talking and waiting until finally we left. Later on he came by our apartment to get our keys cause he locked himself out somehow lol so we gave him our church keys.



On Tuesday we had district meeting at a members house. Their name is the Slatetons and they are way awesome. Sister Slateton made us all spaghetti and garlic bread. She has two younger sons who we played with and ran around with while two of the other elders and sister Slateton made the food. It was extremely fun and we got to have an awesome district meeting. It is way fun since we have Elder Anderson (who was in the MTC with me), Elder Woodruff (who is way cool and funny) Elder Mildon (my way cool and funny comp) Elder Mallot (who is our cool DL) and his new golden Elder Perske (who is german). It was a pretty fun district meeting and afterwards we all went back. For the rest of Tuesday and Wednsday Elder Mildon and I did various things, such as go by people, talk to people, and stuff of that nature.


On Wednsday night however we took a trip up to Stuttgart and we got together to celebrate with my MTC group for their 3/4 mark, my half way mark and another missionaries 1/4 mark. They all burned some pants and the other elder burned a tie. Then we ate some cheap pizza and everyone went home afterwards. It was a good time getting to see everyone and eating together. On Thursday we met with our ward mission leader. We had to prepare a presentation for Sunday for the new Pass-along-cards. We talked about who would do what, what we wanted for the members to understand before we left, who would bring what (we brought candy because we are awesome). I got the job of describing what is the purpose of the new cards are and we called the bishop and committed him to hand out a card before Sunday. He was willing to do it and so we had a success story that we hoped we could share on Sunday.


On Friday we had weekly planning and Reutlingen came over to help us make a cake for a member’s birthday on Saturday, kind of a double birthday thing since Elder Mildon’s birthday was the day after. The cake took about 3 hours to make since it was the huge fancy weird french cake thing. Lol. Seriously, I have no idea why actually it took so long cuz I didn’t make the cake. After all that the other two left and there was not much time so we got to only go by a few more people before we came back home.


On Saturday we went by Sister Espanosa's. She has two sons named Uri and Yari. Her husband left her a long time ago. She used to be less active till about a month or two ago. She loves the missionaries. I don’t know what the missionaries before did but she loves all missionaries now lol. We went on a walk, watched uri and yari play some old school video games while we talked to sister Espanoza (I don’t know how to spell her name sorry) and we ate some awesome cake and dinner. Afterwards we were waiting at a bus stop and we noticed somebody was throwing away a new brief case. So we were playing around with it and stuff and some guy from down the street was hanging out his window watching us and laughing. I went over and talked to him a little. He thought we were funny and I asked him if I could give him a card of ours and he told me he wanted one and so I gave one to him and talked a little about it. He was serious when I talked about the card but was still a really jolly sort of guy and just was smiling and looking totally happy. He was pretty cool and told us he might call us just to talk to us and so we could entertain him some more and talk about the church.


On Sunday we gave our presentation. I gave my intro part, The bishop had given out a card and had an awesome story to go with it about a family he met on the bus and the first time he tried to give the husband and wife a card they kind of laughed at him but he explained why he was giving them a card and talked about family home evening and if they ever wanted to do it they could just take some time to be with one another or if they wanted to do it with a family who did it every week they were invited to call the number and get in hold with the missionaries and the members. They took the card then. It was way cool to hear about a member who was alone and speaking in a native tounge (he is American he was talking to Germans), got rejected and still persued lol. Its more than a lot of missionaries do so it was way sweet to hear that story even as a missionary who hands out cards everyday.


Elder Perske (the german) kind of took over after that. He took his companions and my companions part as well, they weren't complaining though they didn't mind if someone else wanted to do it lol. After that we went to a families house for lunch. They are an older couple named the Dornhausens they are both converts and Brother Dornhausens was a branch president five time here in this area before he started going to the Tübingen branch, they closed his old branch. We talked to them about genealogy and New Mexico (they thought it was cool since they have never met anyone from there before lol). After dinner they took us to the train station so we could catch a train back to Tübingen since they live about an hour out.


The train was pulling up and we were running up to it. Elder Mildon went to go buy our tickets and I went to go hold the door. Unfortunately this train is stupid and decided it hated me so the doors did not stop while my body was in it and since my backpack was pointed inside the train I was kind of stuck going into the train so I got to watch my companion laugh at me as this train pulled me away from my comp I was without a ticket, or the phone (he had it). I got off a couple stops later at the next big train station in case the next couple trains skipped the little towns this train was stopping in. I found a phone booth and called my comp. The cell phone temporarily did not have service so I left a message and told him I was getting on the next train to Tübingen. I bought my ticket and got on the train and luckily enough he was there too. It was all in all a pretty funny experience. I can only imagine though if I was a golden and didn’t know any german or how the trains worked lol it could have been way bad.


After we were home, a member came by and brought some cake for Elder Mildon. We played a game of uno with them and then we all ate some cake and they left. Then it was pretty late so we went to bed. Today we don’t got much going on just emails and shopping. We might go play some basketball with a less active but we're not sure yet. Mom you asked me about if my shirts were holding up and if they are still white and every thing is good the only thing that sucks is I have been dieting and exercising everyday (running with our non-member neighbor) and gaining weight! lol i know that is not your question but yeah my shirts are fine. Our ward is big. There is about 4 or 5 American families. The Porters are one, and I did talk to bro porter about his article, they also had their last sunday here yesterday. He got a calling and now they are going to go to international branch but he thought it was cool that I had read his article, thanks for sending it mom. I got to translate for him and his wife during sunday school and so i talked to him a little about it then. We are teaching a lady named Claudia who should be getting baptized soon and then a few more people that they have been teaching forever. Mom: I was sad to leave Heilbronn, not Offenburg (that was before Heilbronn, don’t you know where I am/was?) lol but that was because it was such short notice and mid-transfer because of the new German missionaries we got. My comp is way cool and I love this new area a lot so it is all good. Don’t worry, I am really happy.


I have to give a talk in two weeks for about 10-15 minutes. I had to give a twenty minute talk when I left Heilbronn and I prepared it the morning of because I had short notice about the transfer and talk and we had to do stuff the two days before, it went good. I went over my time because I was supposed to talk about lesson 4 from PMG as my talk topic and so I made a ton of bullet points for each commandment and only got through the first three and noticed i had been talking for about 20 minutes so i ended it there. Its hard to think of jokes on the spot in a foreign language for a church talk though I can say that lol.


Well I love you all and hope it is going well with you all. The Church of Jesus Christ is on the earth again and the great message of that is a wonderful thing to share. If there is one thing I have learned recently it is that missionary work is not at all a burden or hard. It is extremely fun and there are people out there ready to learn about this message!


Love you all


Elder Hargett