Week 6

Always on the grind. I can't believe it is p-day already, it seems like I just had it yesterday. Mostly because we had a big surprise this week. Last week my Mission President wanted to know the status of our (the Turkish-Berliners) German language skills, and wanted us to begin learning German in the MTC. So with no warning at all, we were told on Thursday that 1/2 of our classes would be in German and 1/2 would be in Turkish. All of our German is pretty good, but we just don't know very much church and gospel vocabulary. We are able to skip around the German lessons and just focus on the things that we have forgotten or needed to review, but at the same time the rate at which we are learning Turkish in class hasn't slowed down -- as in we are still covering the same amount of material just in 1/2 the class periods, and then on top of that we have to learn german vocab and review the grammar. It has been a very busy week and we are all working very hard. I have been praying for extra diligence and efficiency in my studies  and have felt very blessed. Both languages are coming along well, and we had some of our very best lessons this/last week. 

This week has been a little crazy in our zone. Last week we found out who got to sing in General Conference Choir and who didn't which ended up causing some drama, but thankfully we are all past that now. But we also had quite a few other things happen this week. Sister Clark, one of the Berlin Sisters, had to to go the ER at 4:00 in the morning because of a kidney stone. The normal Germans leave in 5 days now (next monday) and so she was really worried that the kidney stone would prevent her from flying to Berlin -- but she just got her results back today and she has passed 1 stone, but still has two more. The doctor says there is no way to tell if they will pass anytime soon or not, but she is cleared to fly. It was a great blessing to her, because she was getting quite worried and anxious. We also had a few other instances, we had a badly rolled ankle which result in a trip to the hospital. A cut on one of the Elder's elbows got infected with something really nasty and swelled up really huge, and he had to go the the doctor to get antibiotics. And we also had a sister that was badly dehydrated and passed out right before class as well. So it has been a pretty crazy week as far as that goes. 

Here are some pictures of our zone. The first one is all the German and ASL Elders and Sisters that are going to be leaving on Monday next week. I am super sad to see them go. After they all leave it will be 3 Turk Elders 5 Albanian Elders and 6 Fharsi Elders (they are brand new coming in later today) in our zone. So 14 Elders! But then the following week after the Germans leave we will get another huge set of Germans for a bit before I leave. 

The other one is the whole zone before the Hungarians left (ya me and my Turkish Companions aren't in it because we were finishing up interviews with the Presidency so we didn't make it in time for the picture :(