Tough Week!

Hey Everyone -

This has definitely been the longest week of my mission!  Elder Arts was transferred and I got a new companion, Elder Dean. Elder Dean and Elder Bishop overnighted at our place, and since they weren’t from the area we had to pick them up from bahnhof. We picked them up after they had been waiting a little bit, and we took them back to our place only to realize Elder Dean forgot two of his bags right in the open back at bahnhof. Well it wasn’t even an hour we were gone, but we went back and they were gone. Everything that allows him to be here legally was missing, along with his debit and credit card as well as his church debit.

We had to travel to Frankfurt Sunday to get him a replacement passport.  When we got to the US Consulate they would not let me go in with him so I walked home by myself.  That was weird since I’m always with a companion!

So, everything worked out and we had a decent Pday yesterday. We couldn’t do emails because we had the bus ride back to Koln.  We were waiting on the other Tech Elders to let us in to the apartment and to swap train cards since they gave us their monthly pass on accident. Well, they got stuck in traffic. We ended up getting a text from the bus company telling us the bus had been delayed. The Elders came home and we swapped and grabbed our stuff. I asked Elder Dean if he grabbed everything, and he said he did, so we prayed before we left. We got to our bus finally after looking and looking and we made it by just a few minutes. I took a well-needed nap on the 2.5 hour bus ride home, and that was great! When we arrived it just felt like home. This place is like my new home. I love just about everything about it, and it just felt so good to be back in it. We took the street car home, and then out of nowhere this girl asked us for help in English. She needed help getting to somewhere in Bonn, which is not in our area, so I did my best and told her how to get to the main station in Bonn. We then got on the topic of religion, and she wants to come to our ward on Sunday! So maybe we will see her. We got her number and everything. Feeling great, we went up to our place where I said, ok you have the keys! Well, he didn't have the keys. They were in fact still in Frankfurt at the apartment, along with all the passport information we had just gone down to get. Locked out and the night drawing to a close, we called the Zone Leaders because they have keys to everyone’s apartment. Right? Well they happened to be missing one key haha. Can you guess which one it was? That’s right, ours haha. So they drove 45 minutes from Düsseldorf to pick us up and then took us back to their place to overnight. We ended up getting home a little after 12, and since we hadn’t eaten all day they fed us some really good leftovers. So finally, we got to bed...at 1 am. The ZLs both agreed we would all sleep in until 730 since all of us have had several rough nights lately. Things are looking up now. We had a great Zone conference in Düsseldorf, we have a hilarious story to tell, and we went on a split so Elder Dean didn’t have to come back to Köln for another day. As Elder Nelson and I came home, we checked the mail and there was a letter from Deutsche Bahn, and it said that they had FOUND HIS STUFF. We haven’t been able to go yet, but we will be certainly be going down as soon as possible. I called Elder Dean and he was soooo excited!  The both of us are good, but a few boring days would really do us good! Haha.