Another Week Gone Fast

hey hey. Another week gone like it didnt even happen. It went so fast in fact I dont even know what happened last week and what happened the week before. So we did do an exchange this week with the Reutlingen elders who are also in this ward, just in a different city. So I went with Elder Persicke. He is a new golden out here ,this is his first area, but he is German so language isnt really an issue for him. He is super into finding while his companion is more into less active and former investigator work. So we did an exchange and him and I just did finding pretty much. We went out to visit someone they had an appointment with. We still had about 2 hours before the appointment so we went to where they lived and just did doors in the area. At first Elder Persicke said that he prefered streets because you get to talk to more people quicker, but his opinion somewhat changed by the end of our dooring session. We only did 14 doors.
The reason being, two of them let us in and heard the first lesson and made a return appointment, 3 more people talked to us for about 20 minutes on their doorstop and took a book of mormon and said if they were home when we came back they would let us in, and the rest either talked to us for a little bit or at least were very friendly, some jewish guy that couldnt speak any german or english even gave us a brouchere for his church in stuttgart. It was kind of cool cause on the back it had 13 articles of jewish faith lol.
Elder Persicke was extremely excited and was way happy with it. The person wasn't there that we tried to visit so we made our way to the next appointment. It was a young kid named Tobias. He is way cool. He explained at the beginning that his dad didnt want him meeting with anyone from another faith anymore though. We were outside so we just gave him a book he requested and gave him our number in case his dad ever changed his mind, or wanted to talk to us. Then we asked if we could say a prayer before we left. He said he would like that. So Elder Persicke was about three words into the prayer when some crazy old lady that was watching us across the street comes running out of her house and screams and yells at us. It was way awkward. Then her friend runs up as well shouting at us as well all just stand there not able to hear elder persicke. He kept saying the prayer though so we just waited until we heard him say amen so we could get out of there. Then the lady starts yelling into this kids house telling the dad that his kid in participating in a mormon cult prayer. I was surprised she even knew who we were. Then the dad came after we finished and Tobias had to go. The ladies just kind of hissed at us. Either way it was way awkward and intense.
After that we did streets for about 2 hours in the middle of reutlingen were all the commotion is. Elder Persicke is extremely straight forward with people. I knew it was German custom to kind of be direct, but he wastes no time. He just walked up to people and started telling them about adam and eve and where we go after this life. It was good and all and the only reason he was having trouble was the same reason a lot of new goldens have trouble. He was scared to talk to young people. Even though since we are young, and we know that other young people might judge us kind of hard, they are the most open and are the ones we are adviced to talk to. I mean the germans are extremely prideful and the old people will almost never listen to younger people about anything out here because they believe they know everything.
So Elder Persicke talked to about a few hundred old people who were about the same attitude as the lady we had seen earlier. While I talked to the young people he skipped, after a while he noticed it and started only talking to the young people lol. He is a super gung-ho missionary and it is interesting to see. It was pretty fun. On the way home we talked to about everyone as well. We ran into an old lady about 2 minutes from their apartment. She was pretty awkward but Elder Persicke is super excited about anyone who listens and so we talked to her for about 30 minutes. We somehow got volunteered to go help her in her garden the next day. She was extremely odd and no doubt not completely mentally there. She kept looking around even though no one was there and whispering her address and stuff. The next day we took an hour trip out to this place and walked about an extra thirty minutes to find her address. It was a run down house with stuff growing on the front door and looked as if no one had lived there in five to ten years. So we went to the bus stop and right as the bus was getting close we saw her. So we missed our bus and went to talk to her. Apparently she did live there. So we went back and helped her build a metal shed. She had all the parts but like everything it looked like it was probably built during the cold war. We were there building it for about 3 hours. This lady did not once stop talking the whole time we were not able to get a word in during this whole time. Luckily someone stopped to ask for directions so she was off talking at them for a good twenty minutes which gave us a break from her.
At the end we told her we had to go catch a bus cause there was only one left going that day. She then admited that she didnt live out there but in Reutlingen. We were way confused and she whispered a different address at us. We went back and exchanged back to our companions and I left her to the other elders. The day after we went by on a bunch of former investigators but yet again, no one home, no interest, etc. We did meet with our investigator Claudia though. She came to the church with her friend Stephanie. Stephanie went on a mission to Greece and loves to help teach Claudia, Claudia has been an investigator so long though instead of us teaching her, she got a preach my gospel and we assign her a chapter or lesson and she studies it and teaches it to us lol. She even gave a talk in church about two months ago, before I got here.
The day after that we did another exchange with the companionship in Ludwigsburg. I went with elder Blomquist to a member him and elder Asay meet with every Saturday. I had gotten to meet him when I was back in Heilbronn. He is really nice. We got to talk and eat some awesome food (he likes to cook a lot) He is a vegatrian for health reasons so we didn't eat any meat, and I normally love meat. But he made this way awesome sauerkraut meal and it was awesome, didn't even miss the meat. Elder Asay and Mildon went to visit a family that just moved out of our ward. Kind of sad to miss that but they set up an appointment for us to go meet with them as well, since they still live in the same place, just have moved to the international ward. On Sunday Claudia came and brought her cousin she has brought for the last two weeks and he even wore a suit this time lol. We had an investigator class and Claudia and Stephanie pretty much did a good amount of the teaching.
Afterwards we got invited to a family to eat. They are the Wietmans. They are way cool, it is just an older couple but they are way funny and sister Wietman is a way good cook. She made us a five course meal lol. It was intense. I ate it all though and was actually kind of still hungry afterwards, I am afraid I have become too german..... She even fixed a parts of my pants that were brocken while we played with legos lol. She bought her grandkids a lego castle but she couldnt set it up so we did it for her. They are way nice.
On Monday we just went by on some more people and wrote our letters to the mission president. We are having our pday today and we are going to visit a member and celebrate their kids birthday. We will probably get him a present lol.  Mom, I won't get that package you sent to the mission home for probably another 8 weeks, can you send me a package here with some contacts?  I am all out and have been wearing glasses for the last two weeks.  Thanks for keeping a pair back when I first went out and then making me take them cuz otherwise I would have nothing to wear.  Also, I didn't have enough room to take the green chili and all with me on this transfer but really would like some more.  It was fun to get all that stuff and make a Mexican meal for our one investigator, could you send more again too?  Thanks. 
well hope you all stay happy love you all.
Elder Hargett