January 7, 2013

I am now in the wonderful city of Kassel! It has been awesome so far! As I first arrived, I was so suprised at the size of the apartment, it's HUGE! It is actually meant to hold 4 Elders (maybe that will be happening in the near future?), but for right now, there are just the two of us.In Kassel we just have our own little corner of Germany all to ourselves. It takes about an hour (by normal slow trains) to get anywhere. If we get permission to take the FAST trains, it only takes about an hour to get to Berlin or Hannover :) There are hills everywhere! It's so different from the very very flat parts of Germany that I have seen so far. I have asked some of the members where we should go or what we should do for P-day, and EVERYONE has said that we need to go see Hercules! It's a statue/memorial with an amazing story behind it... google it? So one of these p-days we will definitely be going to see Hercules! But until then... we will be using our P-days for cleaning our giant apartment... It really needs some work. I am pretty sure that the floor in the kitchen has not been cleaned for years... I have already started on that project and now we have a multicolored floor (the dirty-dark blue, and the light-clean blue from where I have cleaned it!) We already cleaned all of the windows (they were disgusting) and now there's so much more light let in! I'm really not a "germ freak" or a "clean freak" or anything... and you all know that- so you know it's really bad. I will attach some photos to show what I have been talking about :).
Elder Jeff Daugherty from Cache Valley, Utah is my new companion. He is now in his 3rd Transfer. He's a pretty quiet guy, but is smart and willing to work hard.
This week has been a little bit hectic, we had District meeting, a district leader meeting, and district finding. bah. Too much travel. Especially because it takes so long to get everywhere. It's so expensive, too!
We have a couple investigators who look like they will be making a lot of progress in the next transfer. There are going to be so many baptisms in the coming years! :D I love Germany!! anyways... It is a University city, so we will be having an English class (starting on the 15th) and Institute (starting on the 17th). There are so many ways opening up to find new people to teach. Our GML (Gemeindemissionsleiter)(Ward Mission Leader) is super awesome! Bruder Habermann met with us yesterday to discuss our goals for the new year. We have some great goals and amazing ways to meet those goals.
The celebration from New Years and Christmas is alllllmost gone! :D haha. there are still a few remnants of the Weihnacht Markt... but other than that, everything seems like it's back to normal. OH! There has been a big modern art exhibition here in Kassel, and there are cool/wierd statues everywhere! for example: giant Transformer statue! boom! it's like 20 feet tall and is super legit. other example: a statue of a giant naked fat-guy on a ladder peeking into a window!... hahaha. artists are crazy ;)
I feel like my attention span is really suffering... haha. My topics are hopping around like frogs onto a piano...very sparatic. haha. sorry. I may have gone a little bit crazy, but just a little bit :)

my new address is:
Elder Braden Thorkelson!

Untere Königsstrasse 50
34117 Kassel
Deutschland

y'all can use the Ö!  or if you want you can write KOENIGSTRASSE. woah. are the Koenigs German?? hahaha. I just noticed that. Koenig (König) means 'King' in German :) hahaha. ahhhhhh. my brain just exploded.

Everything is going really well! This is going to be an awesome transfer, I'm super excited.

Ich wünsche euch alles gute!
Aller Liebste Grüße!
Elder Braden Thorkelson