Party in Hamburg!

Hey Everyone!

Well its weird Iv already been in Germany for 2 weeks! The weeks go way faster here in the field than at the MTC. Plus its way more fun! Alright so today!! Im in Hamburg! Yeah buddy! Our district decided to take a trip down to hamburg to do some sight seeing! We went to some bar here called sams bar. I guess one of the beatles first gigs were there. So that was pretty cool! Yeah but, Hamburg is huge! I love it! Hopefully i can do a transfer or something here! That would be way awesome! I think were gonna go to the docks sometime today. Just really enjoying the German culture so its way cool!

Alright so news this week. Really not much happening! haha We dont have many investigators. Glückstadt was dead on arrival! So we do alot of street contacting and knocking on doors. Its been taking a bit to getting used to it. Like I was way out of my comfort zone when i first started and yah i still am hahah, but ya know itll come around Im not to worried. Im starting to understand people here! Its awesome! My first two weeks here I couldnt understand anything. It sucked! haha but now i can start to pick things up and speak a little. Supposedly i dont sound like an American when i speak German so thats pretty cool! A couple of Germans on the street have told me that haha. I did have someone tell my companion to go back to America and then he looked at me and was like go back to Mexico or wherever your from! hahah I guess i have a darker skin tone? I dont think so but Oh well! That was way funny! haha Were still walking like 20 miles a day. Some serious mileage! Like my feet are toast at the end of the day! The good thing though its really green here and there is alot of shade here! Otherwise, I would be dead already! lol.

Okay so funny story! Yesterday we had a sunday afternoon eating apointment with this old lady named Frau Stoll. I dont think i have ever ate so much in my life!!  So germans, they dont bring out all the food at once. They bring it out like if you were at a restraunt. They will bring like a soup out first ( hers was a chicken dumpling soup), then the main dish, then 2 deserts after that. So her soup was really heavy food, like I would be used to just eating that for a meal. Then we fill ourselves with the soup and then she brings out the main dish, and its like white rice with the sausage balls and like some funky tasting white curry sauce. So we started eating that and everytime we would clear our plate she would put more right on our plate. Like she would watch us eat then she would put more as soon as the last bite was done. Neither me or my companion could understand her because she had a weird dialect to her german and slurred it. So we couldnt tell her we were full because she didnt understand. Needless to say we finished this crazy amount of food. Then we were like sweet we conquerred this.....and then she brings out this like log of ice cream probably equivalent to 2 quarts of ice cream. and we had to eat the whole thing. I tried so hard to eat everything it was so hard to finish that ice cream. Then she just gets up from the table and goes back into the kitchen and my companion and I look at each other and were like OH NO... Out walks this massive Cake/Pie I dont know what to call it. At that point I thought my heart was going to stop beating from so much food. haha So we ate one slice of it and couldnt take anymore in... so she just packaged it up for us to take home. I seriously thought I was going to die! haha That was a fun eating appointment. You are always suprised what the Germans will bring out of the kitchen for you to eat! So the moral of the Story. Pray for help before going to eating Appointments!! haha.

Im so excited for this coming Saturday! I get to hang out with Ben for a while! Its gonna be so fun. Me and ben are really only like a hour away from each other so maybe we ll do something for p-day together one day! Well Germany is so cool! I am constantly seeing things that are way cool to see! Im like that dog in the movie UP... Squirrel!!!!.... hahah everything here is awesome! Alot of history and alot of really old churchs that have been bombed out and restored! so its really cool!

All is well here just chugging along. Starting to get the hang of this missionary stuff. Like some days it hits me like, WOW im in Germany, than other days Im like Oh dang! Im actually on my mission lol. Its cool though. So my apartment is really awesome! Supposedly we have the biggest apartment in the mission. Its 2 storys so yeah its pretty big! I love it. but, yeah im having fun. Some days are better than others but, I try to make the best of everyday. My motto is there are only good days and great days. Never bad days.. So i strive to have a Great day but, occasionally you get those good days lol.

Well Thats all here. I hope all is well back at home and my brothers around the missions. Kyle I hope you got to Russia alright and dont get freaked out about your first couple days in the mission. If you cant understand anyone dont worry itll come. Im starting to get there! haha Everyone goes through it. Ben Ill see you monday or talk to you on the phone. LOL. Trev, derek, tanner, Nate, Pdog, Tmoney! Hope all is well in the field. and Jakey 3 more weeks left buddy!

Alright love you all
Tschüss!
Elder Popp

Glückstadt!

Hey Everyone!

 

Alright so this is my 2nd email im writing! I totally wrote a really long email and than and the bottom I went to press send and instead I pressed discard. So yeah i took 45 minutes writing that so it sucks hopefully i can remember everything.

 

Alright so i got my first area a town called Glückstadt. Its up north outside of Hamburg and in between Kiel. Tiny little town like smaller then Logandale. So probably about 15k people or less. haha So yeah its really cool. The town reminds me of the movie Italian Job because its got the tiny little cobblestone roads and house, appartments, stores all lined up on the road. Its really cool. since there are tiny roads that means the sidewalks are huge haha. More room for people to eat at restraunts that are outside and also people park their cars on the side walk. So this week in Glückstadt was Matjes Woche. Matjes is a dish they eat here in Germany but it started here in Glückstadt. Yeah so i had my first nasty eating experience. Matjesbrot. Is basically a sandwhich but you have the fish in it and the fish is completely raw. haha and its is completely disgusting haha You could litterly taste all the fishes bones and ugggh... Yeah enough of that. No more Matjesbrot for Elder Popp. lol

 

Alright so my companion is Elder Weitzel. He is from New Mexico. He is pretty cool. He walks super super fast. Like i jog to keep up with his so called POWER walk lol. He is rediculously fast. So i do my best to try and keep up. He is completely fluent in German, Im so jealous. I wish i could talk with people because he is kinda awkward when he talks to people. I actually feel kind of awkward when he starts talking to people. So to all my friends, he is basically like Jon Clark from school. Really nice kid but doesnt really know how to talk with people. So he has been a year out, so hopefully he can help me with my german so i can help talking with people. I love the guy tho, he is really funny!

 

The train stations are so cool here!! I literally ride a train everyday. They are so fun. We cover two citys Glückstadt and another town called Itzehoe. We go there alot more because it is bigger and we have more contacts and people to talk there. But yeah pretty much I got here and We have no progressing investigators, let alone investgators. No appointments. Nada. So we literally are finding every hour of the day. I probably walk about 20 miles a day. No joke. we have a walking measurer and we walked like 22 miles yesterday. So yeah good exercise. I went into the MTC weighing 206 and now I weigh 191. So im doing good Iv lost 15lbs! Yeah buddy! haha The first couple days here i had a mixture of Jetlag and i never had walked so much in my life. So it was rough but everything is smoothing out. Im started to understand people more everyday and am having fun.

My first door approach was so scary haha It was my first door approach and first slammed door! After I was like YEAH!! my first slammed door haha. but now i dont like it because I want to teach people.

 

There is a ton of tagging here. Like people are randomly spray painting pictures or signs on buildings. Its crazy and the government doesnt clean it up so its everywhere! Some of them are really cool though. Besides that Germany is really clean. Hardly ever trash on the ground its pretty clean. Know whats way weird here. The girls. seriously you can totally tell that they have blonde hair but have dyded it black and that they paint there nails black. they also wear tons of dark clothing its so weird. Id say about %50 of the girls here are like that. Its crazy. So i thinks its safe to say I will not be finding a Wife here in Germany hahahha. There is just alot of ant-nazi stuff here.

 

This coming week looks pretty promising. We actually have 2 eating appointments ( Its a Miracle lol.) and we met this guy at the train station named Farhan. He is from Afghanistan and has been in Germany for about a year now. He is really interested so we taught him the first lesson yesterday. He is really excited about the gospel and wants to bring like 4 of his other friends to the discussions. So im so excited. He speaks persian and English and he is trying to learn German. So we are teaching him german and he is teaching us some persian! haha so cool!

 

So we did have one teaching class. We teach English to the Germans here at the Church haha Alot of people come and we just talk about anything they want to learn about in English. So yeah we talked about Las Vegas this week. I wonder Why? haha So that was cool

 

Alright so best news of all. BEN and I are in the same zone!! So i called him like 2 days ago! It was so fun to talk with him. We caught up on everything and next saturday, We have zone interviews so i get to hang with him for a while! Im so excited. I get to see one of my brothas!!

 

Well Germany is so green! Like tons of meadows, trees, plants. Its just flat out green! Its amazing! I love it. I having fun here. just going to take a little getting used to walking, knocking, and talking with people. Ill be speaking german in no time though. Im learning at a much faster rate than in the MTC.

 

I love you and miss you all! I hope all is well!

Bis Nahste Mahl! (Till Next Time)

Elder Popp

First Week In Germany!

Alright I made it in Germany! After a total 21 hr flight so im pooped! It is awesome here. Very Green! Think of maryland but 10x more! Its kinda weird to see everything in German, but ill get used to it. I think im going to like it here. We arent doing much on the first day just checking in all of our stuff. Just took a nap but about to go take our stuff to the hotel and then tomorrow we are going to be sent to our new areas to meet our companions.. So i dont know where ill be yet in germany but we will see. Alright well just letting you guys know i made it and am safe. a little nervous but best way to do thing is to just jump into the deep in. So im ready. Well I love you guys and ben i look forward to seeing you soon my brother!! Tschuss

Elder Jonathan Popp Week 8

Houston We Have Liftoff!

Here we go!!

Last week of the MTC has finally come! Im so excited! The time here has just flown by its rediculous. So i got my flight plans to germany! I will be flying into JFK New York on the 13th, Monday and will have a 4 hour layover! So ill be able to talk for a little bit on the phone! So ill be calling around like 2-4 pm. So be ready!!! After New York we fly straight to Berlin! so we got awesome flight plans! Im really happy!

Alright so 2 weeks ago we got new german missionarys! I think i forgot to mention that haha If not, oh well you get to hear it twice. lol. But, its pretty cool. The older german missionarys like to help the younger guys. I always go in there and help the other elders with german... When they first got here we only spoke german to them haha it was so funny because they all had blank looks on their faces! haha It reminded me when I first got here haha and Ill probably have that same look when i get to german because im sure they speak really fast german. My german level is probably about a kindergartener's maybe 1st grader's (thats pushing it lol.) but its coming along i know itll take a while to learn the language.

So we talk 3 days out of the week only german now. Gotta go the whole day with only speaking german! Its pretty cool because you find out how much you can really speak. So thats a cool experience. Best way to learn a language is to speak it! Iv been working real hard on just speaking german as much as possible.

So dad you should be proud, I got 2 goals in soccer the other day haha Im improving! We have 2 british elders in our zone and they told me im good at being the goalie though because of the volleyball experience. I dont know if its true but hey ill take a compliment. I do have to say I have not been scored on yet haha

Lately, Iv been doing alot of studying outside. It is really soothing. I really like being outside i'v decided. Its nice and quiet and you can just think. Its really cool.

Yesterday was fast sunday. So i got up in sacrament and bore my testimony in German because it was basically our last sunday. I like bearing my testimony it sounds so sweet in German. haha German is such a cool language. I know without a doubt this is the mission for me! I feel like a secret agent speaking in German lol. Its legit!

Well, im starting to slowly pack things up. Not much happening, bout to go do laundry, write some letters, ect. All is well here! im really enjoying this so far. I can't wait for germany. Im nervous but, Hey the lord is on my side. Thats all i need. Well, I love and miss you all!

Tschüss,
Elder Popp