February 23, 2015

Hey Everyone,

The Polar plunge sounds awesome! I loved the videos and pictures you sent me. The one of the guy who could hardly swim was hilarious!  Dad sent me the video of the guy in the cape. That was funny!  I miss Red Robin. We ate at a sports bar the other day with Gustavo and it reminded me of Red Robin. That stinks that no one has gone snow machining.

How does Mosiah 1:7 sound as my favorite scripture? That sad that the Nye’s got released as sport coaches. They are awesome and the best!  Today for our p-day, we are going to Gera to play soccer. Gera is right next to Jena. It has been pretty warm here lately. It only snowed once but I am not sure if that is weird or not.

Playing soccer with guys in the Zone

 The mission is not really what I expected. In Alaska they don’t really do doors or anything. Here in Jena, we have been trying to make friends and do doors a lot. We have our English class so we can make friends there and then we try and teach them if they are interested. Basically, you just try to befriend people. We might start up a soccer day where we invite everyone to play soccer and try to find people that way. My companion called it sport contacting and said his trainer had two people baptized from doing sport contacting. It is weird doing missionary work at first but it is good and I love it. I would say the worst part so far was all the time I spent just sitting in the MTC. The best part though is meeting new people (especially the crazy's) and showing people how much better their life can be with the Gospel. 

Well all has been going good this week. Hannah has been busy still and that family never showed up to church which is a bummer. Not too much has happened. We helped a member from China move to a different apartment building. We got a new old couple in our ward and they are pretty cool. So now we have a Branch President now. We did try meeting with one lady we gave a heart to and she was a bit crazy. We went to her place and rang her door and she didn't answer so we called her back and she said come back in an

Jena

hour.  We did go back and she was there and said come by in 30 min. So, we came back by and she looked through her peep hole and said go away because there was two of us. She said we could try later with just one of us. That was really annoying because we waited around for an hour and a half and then she told us to leave. We went back a day later and I waited around the corner and Elder Anderson went to talk with her and she told him to come in but he couldn't because I needed to be there and so she wouldn't take a Book of Mormon or anything and told him to leave. He thinks she may have been Russian. Sound familiar Adam? Anyways not much else happened this week.  

Love you all Devin.

Got stuck in an elevator for over an hour.

February 16, 2015

Hey Family!

So I will start off by answering dad’s question. We got invited over once for dinner I think I told you about it, and we went to the wrong city and called the lady and she was giving us street names that we could see but we couldn’t find their house and it took us hours to realize we were in the wrong city. Anyways, that is the only time we have been invited to dinner. Mostly we eat out, cook pasta or cheap store bought lasagna. We get up about 7 am on P-days, because we play sports later in the day so we don’t have to get up and shower and stuff.

A market place in Jena

So the work has been a little slow here because it is finals week for a lot of people but after this week it should speed up a ton. Hannah finally got back to us.  Hopefully we can meet with her soon.

Funny story… The missionaries before us had a street display they had set up and there was some dude that started to sell porn over the table they had set up (not good). They told us this guy was super mean and crazy. The other day we were going to meet with Pricilla and we had Gustavo with us. We went into the store waiting for our train and we saw the guy. Gustavo knows him and now he likes us and we always say hi. We also gave him a valentine’s card.  He always sits on his bench and drinks. It is sad but we are glad he likes us and that we made friends.

Handing out Valentine Cards

Another funny story…. There is this German couple who do clean checks and they thought they made an appointment with us but they made one with the wrong elders. So they called us and told us they were at our front door waiting for us and we told them we were busy and they said they would be back in two hours. We finished up what we were doing  and then we went home to clean and they were at our front door waiting and so we snuck in through the basement and cleaned our apartment really well and then we snuck back out and went to the front door and they were there thinking we just got home. So we went up and they were super amazed at how clean it was. We even had little house slipper for them. They hardly checked a thing. Elder Anderson was telling me how strict they are and how they check everything. I have even heard stories of her going around with a black light. Haha. They were super impressed because they thought they caught us off guard and it was super clean. Little do they know? hahah

I am so glad aunt Jean is doing better. Tell her to be careful and take it easy.

The Valentines we handed out

Hey Abby the Language is okay. I can sort of understand some people at church when they talk slow. My companion is cool. He is leaving the first part of April to go home. That is awesome you beat the Ak Elite Black Team.

There are only two of us in the apartment. The other two have their own apartment somewhere else. There were sisters in our apartment before this so that is why we have to separate apartments.  The light here is normal it gets dark around 6:00 pmand gets light sometime before 6:30 am.

Well I will try to put some pictures up. Sorry my letter isn’t too long.

Bye! Love

Devin

February 9, 2015

Hey Family!

Sorry I forgot to answer your Questions. I forget because your emails get really long and it takes me forever to read them. Anyways, I have gotten a few video clips. The one of the fireworks and one of you guys at the cabin a few weeks ago.  There are four of us missionaries in Jena and then there are 6 in our District. The two from Weimar are in our District.

Snow Storm in Jena

70 mph wind gusts in Palmer… that’s crazy! I kind of of miss those super windy days believe it or not.  That’s funny that you keep checking out Elder Anderson’s blog. The funny thing about that picture of us playing soccer is that we took it and then someone noticed on the wall in the back someone had spray painted a bad word in English on it. I think one of the Elder’s mom must have photo shopped it out because there is just that big empty brown space on the wall now. haha.

My Companion used to be in Nuremberg. I think I may be here in Jena for a while but I am not sure. Maybe grandpa and grandma can call my mission president and see if they can come and say hi when they are here in Germany.

No Mario and his family didn’t show up, and we have had no luck talking to Hannah again. We have found a Brazilian lady named Pracilla who has meet with us. We brought Gustavo with us and we had a good time. I think we are going back this week to meet with her again.

The other day we went to this place to do doors and the door was locked but a pizza man was coming so we figured we could just get in behind him. He got in and then shut the door behind him real quick so we couldn’t get in. So, we tried going to the next building because there are fire escapes that we could crawl through to get into the other building. At the next building, we ran into a lady whose door we knocked on earlier that week and she wouldn’t let us in at first but she finally did and then we went to the next building through the fire escape. Elder Anderson was looking out the window and said he saw a cop car pull up. It wasn’t illegal for us to do doors but we figured we didn’t want to cause a scene so we went out the back door and got on a train.

In English classes we have played Pictionary and Catch phrase. All the people who show up know English pretty well already so we haven’t really taught a real class.

A big parade for the soccer game.

Yes Abby, I have tried German Chocolate. It is super good. They have all sorts of different kinds. I just had a s’mores chocolate the other day.  Well all is going well here in Germany.

Love Devin

February 2, 2015

Hey Everyone!

It sounds like your having a blast snowmachining and what not. Oh the Seahawks! I bet they are mad that they lost the football game. There is a kid here that is crazy about football and I am sure we will here all about it tonight at FHE.

It’s been about 32 degrees F here in Jena, so it’s a little cold but not bad. Yes, the stair step looking building is our building and it’s nice because we have the train right there and we can just get on that to go do doors. It’s nice not having to walk many places.

Well Hannah said she was sick this week so we didn't get to meet with her.  Also, we have a very interesting new convert named Gustavo from Colombia. He hangs out at McDonalds all the time with these 17 year old kids. He is a very interesting guy.

We found a lady from Argentina (I think). Her name is Pricilla and she said she would meet with us again too. Also, we were in the church, after church, making flyers for our English class that we teach and a guy and his two kids walked in and he said he was coming to church next week with his family. It was crazy cool. So I hope they all pan out. All is going good we have just been knocking doors and it’s a little weird but fun. Yes, I did a door all by myself. I did just the beginning and then Elder Anderson helped me out. They all talk so fast here and there are still a TON of words I don’t know. German is a hard language.

I just got an email from Grandpa and Grandma and its 1 am there. haha.  Anyways, sounds like everyone is doing well. We are going to play football after this so I once again forgot to bring my camera but that’s ok because I didn’t take too many more pictures this week. I will make sure to take more next week and send them all in the drop box again.

Devin and other Elders playing soccer.  None of the Germans
wanted to play because it had snowed. It didn't stop these guys.

I didn't hear about the east coast getting a lot of snow. We don’t get much real world news so I had not heard about all the East Coast storms. We have zero snow here in Jena. It will start snowing super hard for a minute or two and then go to sunshine. It does that about two to three times a day.

We had nine people in our ward this past Sunday not including the missionaries. In second hour we had me, Elder Anderson, a guy named Renne, some stake guy and the teacher. It was weird having only four people in class.  

I went on my first spilt this week. I got to go to Weimar with Elder Robbinet. He is a nice kid. Weimar kind of stunk.  We tried talking to a few people and they all just kept walking and said no.  Not even nice enough to stop and say no thank you.

McDonald’s does taste the same except there Sprite is a little different and there ketchup is kind of gross. We walked through there the other day looking for Gustavo and some kid called us some not so nice names. He is lucky I didn’t understand him. haha It amazes me how rude some people can be. Well I don’t have to much more to write about. All is going well,

Love Devin