August 17, 2015 (today’s blog is a combination of e-mails to parents and one
handwritten letter received in the mail)
I am enjoying my mission and I love
being in the Lord’s service. I meet lots
of interesting people every day and I am learning more and more German every
day. And honestly, I didn't even realize I passed my 7th month mark this past
week, time just flies by in this area. I
was thinking that I have moved 6 times in the last year and 4 of those times
have been on my mission.
I love the city that I am in
(Rheine)-- it is so beautiful and the people are so nice to everyone. (mom
note: Elder Fisher is assigned to the Bad Benthiem branch but he and his
companion live in the city of Rheine—about 17 miles away). The language is like night and day here. Imagine speaking to Cajuns one day and then
the next day you speak to Californians that surf all day. That would be the
amount of difference in the accent between eastern Germany and here--it is
ridiculous. My trip on the train between
Annaberg-Buccholz and Bad Bentheim took longer than planned. It was supposed to only be about 7 hours but
there was a 3 hour delay so it was a much longer ride.
I am enjoying my new area. The branch has about 25 active members and
70-80 members altogether in the area (I think) so it’s really not that big. We pretty much eat at all the members’ houses
and we eat at this single sister's house every Tuesday and Thursday on her back
porch. She is from the Dominican Republic and has 5 kids. She makes really good
food and she made us a cheesecake last week that was just beyond good!!!
We have members that live in
Rheine (where we live) who are less active but we see them all the time. Rheine
is in the area we assigned to but it is still a half hour away from Bad
Bentheim, that is how spread out our area is.
Besides Bad Bentheim and Rheine, we visit Schüttorf, Ochtrup, Ahaus,
Lingen, and Nordhorn. There are a lot of
farms and small towns but we still work hard and have pretty good amount of
success I think. We do meet Dutch people
and we talk to them in English. The Dutch
people like to speak English with us because they speak it better usually and
they do not like the German language usually. We tend to have more appointments
in western Germany than I did when I was in eastern Germany. We have a car and it is an Opel Corsa, Opel
is what GM's company are called so these Opels are everywhere. It is a
hatchback type of car that is pretty nice I have to say.
My companion and I get along
pretty good. My companion does the
cooking and he was actually a cook at a restaurant before his mission so it is
really good food and I have no complaints about doing the dishes.
We play basketball every Friday
for finding at this one place and 3 guys asked if they could come and join us
and of course we said yes, they also happened to be drunk. But we played with
them and afterwards, they asked why we were in Germany and especially in
Rheine, so we told them and they said that is pretty cool and they will come
play basketball again next week but sober this time. It was a pretty fun
experience.
I’m glad my letter arrived. It only took a week because I got priority
stamps for free in my last city because the lady that worked there liked us so
I was able to use the stamps because I still had some.
Scripture for the week 1 Corinthians13:8 "Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall
fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge,
it shall vanish away"
Quote for the week "Each of
us should read and reread the parable of the lost sheep found in the fifteenth
chapter of Luke, commencing with the fourth verse:" teaching of the
president Howard W. Hunter.
Love,
Elder Fisher
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