February 18, 2013

Hello all! I am doing great! This last week has been a good one. Elder Spackman is here and we are going to tear it up. He speaks decent German and is talkative! woot woot! The ward is really excited to have him here, and I am too! Elder Spackman is from St. George! woot woot! and he's the youngest in his family (he has a twin brother who is 30 seconds older than him). We have been doing a lot of work this week!

We have been working a lot on organizing our contact forms so that we can be effective when we go and try to get in contact with everyone. It takes so long and is so boring... but it's for the greater good! We have worked out a system organized by street name, so that we can just pick a street name, and find all of the Contacts, Investigators, former investigators, and members that live on the street. It will be so good when we finally finish it. hours and hours of time are sadly wasted in just labeling people on maps, and finding where they live... It would all be solved if we were given ipads or iphones... and it would be so much more effective! :D Or if we were simply allowed to get our own and use our own tools for missionary work. I literally use my camera to take a photo of our map so that I can refer back to it and know where all of the contacts are. bah. Isn't there an APP for that??

So anyways... With the resources that we have, we have been spending a lot of time working on that. It is just so nice to have someone who is able to answer the phone and speak German! ahhh. man. It really makes me appreciate the simple things...

Yesterday we got a call from our GML, Bruder Habermann. GML-Gemeindemissionsleiter (ward mission leader). He told us that soneone from the stake presidency called him and arranged an interview with the Kassel Zeitung (newspaper!) So in the next 3 weeks I will be polishing up my german for an interview! woot woot! It's pretty exciting! This Thursday we will have a video Konferenz with the Stake Präsidentschaft to talk about what the interview will be about and what questions I should prepare to answer. Isn't that so cool? :D I'm way excited. I just hope that this excitement doesn't turn into anxiety... ah it'll be fine. I just have to pray about it and it will be fine.

I'm super excited to be here. I am loving every minute of it! even though a lot of it is paperwork....ahhh! haha. It's good.

Love,

Elder Braden Thorkelson