Our car is fixed!

 This week was crazy.  We were all over the place.  We helped the elders in our district who were getting whitewashed carry all their bags, then we got our car from the shop.  I'm starting to drive now and at first it was scary because the roads are so narrow here, but now I'm getting the hang of it.  We also went  to Kiel for a street display with the Neumunster Elders and I got to see my old companion Elder Miller, and meet his trainee who is a pretty cool kid.

 Us and the Pinneberg Elders with a member in Pinneberg.  I served in Pinneberg not too long ago, so it was nice to be back.

We did meet with a couple of people this week.  One of them is a less active and his nonmember girlfriend.  They are a little hard to teach.  The man has a tumor and has challenges mentally.   But in the end he comes to church.  We have a lesson and he won't agree with everything we say.  Like scripture study is actually a commandment and that we should follow all the commandments.  Then we asked him what commandments he is going to work on this week, hoping he would remember scriptures.  He said..... the ten commandments...  But when we ask if he is coming to church, he always says, "auf jeden fall" which means, of course!

We were going by on less actives who live around a small town called Rendsburg.  We went by this guys brother first, and he was like. "what the heck, why do you keep coming?"  And long story short, he is probably going to take out his records, yeah pretty sad, but surprisingly he was really nice.  We explained that the Rendsburg Branch closed a year ago and that's why we went by on him to tell him about it.  We also went by on the guys brother and talked with him too.  We knocked on his door and talked on his doorstep about things, then we asked him what he does and he said his job, then he was like, "But I have a hobby and it's collecting and selling Star Wars toys."  So we were like, "Cool, can we see them?"  He says, yeah sure, he first shows us a display case full of them and I've gotta be honest right here, cause I've never seen Star Wars.  Like I've seen parts of certain movies, but never the whole thing, so I was kinds lost lol!  And then he starts telling us how much some them sell for and some little tiny figure sold for $7,000! What the heck!  Then he opens up a room and it's full of them and at that point he's like, "Well it's a little more than a hobby."  But the guy was so chill, he even has a John Stockton jersey!  Sadly we didn't see that.  We talked with him a while about religion, he's way smart.  Gee its kinda sad, some people in Europe actually think about religion and they are so smart, but they have to have logical proof for everything.  He kept talking about upgrading religion, for example changing the church to conform to society more.  At the end we invitied him to pick up a Book of Mormon and read in it, which he hasn't done since he was a kid.  He said in October his Dad will be there and his Dad is a member, so we will see him again hopefully.

Well I'm out of time again.  We need to plan a lesson for FHE tonight.  The bottom pictures are of Husum, it's a huge tourist city and really pretty.

Elder Spangenberg

Wacken

Zone Conference with Area Seventy Elder Charles and his wife.  He taught in Berlin and Hamburg.  This is the Hamburg Zone Conference.

We met with probably the most famous investigator up here in the north.  She is Polish and she loves to cook food for the missionaries.  The bad thing was that me and Elder Glissmeyer were in Hamburg just before because he had a doctor appointment and we decided to eat there.  So we weren't really that hungry.  The other elders that were with us each weigh about 130 pounds so neither of them can eat that much.  I'm happy to say that we did finish th soup and all the polish dish that she made.  But that was probably the most food I have ate in my life!  She is a really nice lady and funny fact is that she absolutely loves Cuba.  She goes there once a year.  This time she brought back a shirt of the Cuba Rebel for my companion.  It looks pretty funny but it's pretty much a shirt supporting communism, so he needs to be selective when to wear it! 

Stacey and Elder Glissmeyer, he goes home this transfer and we had a killer exchange!

We have driven everywhere for appointment, exchanges, and all that.  However, bad news for the car...my companion ran into a smile pole and it totally bent the axel to our car in in the auto repair for  a week.  That was sad.  We did get to go to Wacken.  For those of you who don't know, its a little town of less than 2,000 people.  But it's also home to the world biggest outdoor heavy metal concert.  75,000 people come to this place every year, it's nuts, everyone knows about it.  It had been going on for 24 years now and tickets for next year are all sold out.  So we had to stop in a shop and get some t-shirts there.

 We taught a couple of people this week.  One of them is really making progress and we are working on getting him to do the basics, ya know, scripture study, prayer, and coming to church.  Church was fun this week...nobody was there and I gave a talk and played the organ.  We also did a lot of service for some members and afterwards they fed us some good German food.

Elder Spangenberg

                                 This is the Berlin Zone that I was in a month ago.

I got Blitzed!

 Me next to a Lamborghini tractor.  Yes,  they exist, who would have thought!

Craziest mission week so far!  On Monday, we went to Berlin with other missionaries and were having a great Pday.  We were at the Berliner Dom, which is a ginormous church, just chilling there when the phone rings.  My companion pulls out the phone and turns out, our Mission President was calling!  We were outside on top of the dome looking at the city and it was super loud.  So my companion told President that we would call him back and President said, "Okay, just do it within the next 30 minutes.  I'm freaking out at this point thinking of all the possibilities that it could be because you don't get a call everyday from President Fingerle, so it must be pretty important.  So we rush out of the building and my companion calls him back and he talks with him for like 5 minutes.  My companion saying, "okay, yeah, I guess" with the most surprised look on his face.  I'm about ready to pee my pants at this moment.  Then he finally gets off and is like, "Well I can't tell anyone but my companion", so we go over in the trees and this is what he tells me, "Both of us have to be in the mission home at 8 a.m. on Thursday.  You need to bring your suitcases, but I'm coming back.  We will be meeting our new companions there."  "Oh, and we aren't allowed to tell anybody."  Like literally, I have never been more confused, disappointed, or sad in my entire life.  I had only been at this new place for less than 3 weeks!

 So after that we go get ice cream (I was needing a little cheering up!), then the AP's call and they are like, "Elder Spangenberg, are you ready for your transfer call?"  I say, "What the heck is going on?"  They said that I will be going to Heide and they can't tell me why and that's pretty much it!!  I couldn't believe what they just said, that means that I will be going back to the Neumunster Zone for my 4th time!  It felt like a total joke because Heide is the only Ward or Branch in this zone that I have not been to the church or the apartment!  I think I might as well just live up there, because I can't get out!

So yeah, I had like 2 days to pack and I pretty much just threw everything in my suitcases and then whatever else I had I just put in plastic bags.  Because Heide has a car!!  Yay!! My first area with a car.  I didn't have to ride the train from Berlin to Hamburg with all my suitcases for like the 4th time!  It's actually ironic because the office has been nagging me all the time about finishing my driving record papers and I've kind of just not worried about it because, one I've never had a car, and two I go home in 3 months, why bother.

I did say goodbye to some close members.  I hated to leave Frankfort Odor.  We met with the Egyptian family the night before I left and that was great.  They fed us Egyptian food again and they were so nice made everything great. But I promised them I would come back after the mission and visit them!

This is Ola.  She and her husband are members from Egypt and also teach Arabic to some missionaries learning it.  They are definitely some of my favorite members!


Thursday, we went into Berlin and stayed overnight with the elders for like the 5th time in 3 weeks.  I said goodbye to Elder Thompson and then I met my new companion, Elder Williams and we had a 4 and a half hour drive to Heide.  Road Trip!  Heide is pronounced High-duh.

This area is actually pretty cool.  I'm gonna be honest, I have heard this place is literally the worst area in the mission, but that was when they didn't have a car.  We literally just drive around and knock on doors the whole day, which sounds awful, but it's great because it's so peaceful and beautiful and the area is gigantic!  The dorfs (cities) are so small, the biggest town in our area is 20,000 and we live in Heide, which is 18,000. (Microscopic compared to Berlin!)  The branch here is super nice!  We all ate together on Sunday, so I met all the members pretty quick.  It was really funny cause they walk into church and they are like, "Wait, you aren't the other missionary, what happened?"  So we had to explain to the 40 members what happened, because the missionaries weren't allowed to tell the ward before they left.

Quickly, this is what happened.  In Turkey a civil war is going on so they took out those missionaries and brought all 15 of them to Berlin Germany.  This is because Germany has the second highest Turkish population in the world.  They are not anticipating it to be a long time.  My old companion was studying Arabic and my new companion's companion was studying Turkish so these missionaries were asked to be companions with the Turkish Elders.  The reason for the secrecy was because it needed to be announced by the LDS church newsroom before we let it out.

My new companion is from Arizona and actually went to the same high school as Elder Miller, one of my last comps.  He goes home one transfer after me so we are like one of the oldest companionship's on the mission.  He also loves dub step and electronic music, which I know nothing about but he is "culturing" me about it, lol.
Have a great week!

Elder Spangenberg

Finally 20!

Berlin Zone

This is a memorial for all the Soviets that died.

Hey everyone!  First to start off, thank you for all the birthday wishes.  I'm finally 20 woohoo!  This week was pretty eventful.  We were in Berlin a ton this week.  Zone training meeting was on Tuesday and we had the whole meeting in English.  It was really weird but I guess they were trying it out because normally all the meetings are in German.  I think it had to do with the fact that there are so many new missionaries in this zone that don't speak German yet.  But the meeting was really good and we learned about how we can use the Book of Mormon more to help our investigators and ourselves.

We are finally starting to get a teaching pool here.  We met with the one lady who is super cool.  She used to be a hard core atheist, but she had an amazing experience, she didn't really specify what happened, pretty much she said God saved her in the hospital from a near death experience and since then she totally believes in God.  Anyways she knows the Book of Mormon is true and believes this church is true.  She is waiting for baptism because she is still a little sick and she wants to be healed before she gets baptized.  She feels that she got an answer that she can be totally healed.  I was able to give her a priesthood blessing so that was really cool.

So I don't know if everyone has been hearing what is going on, but there have been a couple of terrorist attacks in Germany this week.  The first one happened just right outside our mission in Wurzburg.  Apparently a guy had an axe and just started hacking people on a train.  It's pretty gruesome to think about but nobody died from that as far as I'm aware, and the second one happened a couple of days ago in Munich.  Some 17 year old kid just opened fire at a McDonald's and killed 10 people including himself it's pretty sad.

So we had originally planned to do a street display in Berlin, but we had to call that off because there was actually the gay parade going through the streets of Berlin and there were supposed to be 750,000 people in that, yeah crazy right!  That day we saw rainbow flags all over the place.  And we decided it would be better to reschedule than to chance it, because the Munich attack happened the night before.  But nothing happened in Berlin, so all is well.

Other than that, it was pretty much my companion doing his Arabic class.  We were out of our area for a big chunk of the week.  But my birthday was pretty good we didn't really do anything cause I had to speak the day after in church.  But the Egyptian family found it was my birthday and they immediately invited us over and we had a really good Swedish cake.  We had a couple of appointments fall out, gosh dang it, but you know that happens.  One of them was our fault because we thought she lived in a different city, but now we know!

I gave a talk on my favorite scripture this week in Moroni 10:32 "Yea, Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God."

I  love this scripture because it really explains what we need to do, which is deny ourselves and serve God and that still isn't enough.  We truly have to accept that without Christ's grace we couldn't do it.  It would be totally impossible.  I know that Christ heals us and that he walked the path before us and showed us the way.  If we follow his example and come unto him, then he can help us reach our full potential.
Have a great week!
Elder Spangenberg

Berlin Dome

I Love Long Bus Rides:(

Life in Frankfurt Oder is pretty good.  This week was actually pretty busy and it was great!  We had exchanges and I went to Marzahn, which is like the most populated area in the mission (part of Berlin).  We had a pretty memorable exchange to say the least!  First, we were meeting with this family and all of a sudden one of the friends of a kid in the family told us he wanted to be baptized!  We were like, "Uh, Wow, okay!" That's pretty great, cause that never happens!  So the Marzahn Elders will be working with him, we set a baptismal date without him even being an investigator, if you can even do that!

We also met with a drunk guy at about 11 in the morning.  Yep, it's pretty sad, he went off on rants about how we need to write in our journal.  That guy was all over the place.  But that's definitely not the first time I have met with a drunk guy, but 11 in the morning that's nuts!

One of the lessons we had this week was really good.  We met with a college student who was actually born in Germany but lived in France.  He just asked us questions about our church and what we believe.  It made sense to him and he said that we could come by again and talk more and he lives like right by us, so we will be going there again soon.

Well, now time for the explanation of the title.  So normally we take a train to church from Frankfurt Oder to Eisenhuttenstadt, which is where the church is.  Well Deutsch Bahn ( German Train System) decided to close that, so now we have to take a bus to get there and normally it would take 30 minutes to get to the church, but now it takes over an hour.  It's a pretty big pain especially since the buses are so hot and have no A.C..  Actually nothing here has air conditioning.  I'm surprised I'm still alive!

Besides that we went to a baptism in another area because the girl comes to our ward every 2 weeks.  That was a really cool experience.  I also knew the missionary that baptized her.  He actually came back after his mission to baptize her so that was sick!  Since we live in the boonies and are still part of the Berlin Zone, we are staying overnight with the Marzahn Elders twice this week.  So we are barely gonna be in our area this week!  But life is going good.  The church is true!  Read the Book of Mormon, it will change your life.

Have A Great Pioneer Day!
ElderSpangenberg

Hello from East Germany! (Border of Poland)

 My New District 

Well I arrived safely in my area.  So far I really like it! Actually it's a pretty cool town and it's a lot different from what I have seen.   I like my new District, this one has sisters in it and they are cool. One of them is a crazy German, but it's good.  Don't worry, I haven't shrunk, we are standing on a hill so I look short.

There is a college in this town so we hear English like all the time because that's the only language that everyone can understand to talk to each other.  My first day we went and got a Doner, and wow it was so different from what I'm used to.  First off, it was only 2.50 which is like dirt cheap and in the west they cost over 4.00 and don't taste as good.  Everyone always said things here in the East were different, but I never believed them until now.  We hear people talking about when the Soviets had this part of Germany.  I can see Poland like everyday!  But I'm not gonna go there because I don't want to be sent home.

The branch here is super small like I heard but they are all super nice.  There is this one old lady who does so much for the missionaries.  She asked us if we needed anything sewn or if we needed shirts ironed.  She also said that in the past she used to clean our apartment, but she can't do that anymore because she doesn't have a car.

This week we actually had ward conference so there was about 50 people there instead of the normal 12, but it was cool to meet everyone.  There were members from every ward in the Berlin Stake except Spandau, I was pretty disappointed because I really wanted to see members from my first area, but that's okay.
One cool thing is that my companion is learning Arabic and there is a family in this branch that is from Egypt and they teach him and the other missionaries every week.  They are super cool, like probably some of the coolest members I have met.  They fed us Egyptian food last night and they are just so funny and great.  They speak English and German as well so it's easy for us to communicate.

My companion and I are pretty different, but I hope we will be able to work well together.  He went to an on-line high school and wants to go into computer programming or video game programming.
Our laundry machine is broken so we are doing laundry today at a member's house.

Elder Spangenberg

We had to carry all our suitcases (6) from the back of the train to the front.  It took like 30 minutes and was exhausting!  We filled up the room with our suitcases, it was nuts!

Some nice German on the train took a photo of us.  I will miss these guys!

All 3 of us had the same tie!

We had district plus Lubeck area last week for the 4th of July, it was pretty fun!

I'm packing my Bags for the 8th time!

Singing in the Rain??

          This is what our faces looked like after transfer calls! 


 Yep, I'm being transfered again.  I  really wanted to stay with Elder Miller one more transfer, we had a lot of fun working hard together.  But I am headed off to the east.  I'm going to a city called Frankfurt Oder, it is right on the Poland Border.  It's a decent sized city just outside of Berlin.  The missionaries with President Kosak were able to go into Poland on Pday sometimes and teach if they found someone.  But President Fingerle has changed that and said that the next missionary that goes to Poland will get sent home.  It is in the Berlin zone so we can go to Berlin on Pdays and that will be great.

This will be my first area in the DDR (the part of Germany that the Soviet Union had when Berlin was split). I have always wanted to go to the deep east and now I'm going there.  It's a tiny branch with 12 people and I have learned to love the small branches.  There is also a university with about 6,000 students from all over the world, so that will be cool. Actually the city where the LDS church is, used to be called Stalinstadt, so it's super DDR.  I'm excited but also sad.  This ward has been fantastic, I have never been to a place where they were so welcoming and it was great to be serving in Young Mens.  You best believe I will be in tears on Wednesday when I leave, but I'm definitely coming back after my mission.

This week was exchanges for half the week.  We helped the zone leader with a street display in Kiel and that was really fun even though it rained us out after only a couple of hours.  We were able to have some good conversations and schedule some appointments to meet again.  We also met with the Catholic guy, he loves talking about polygamy and how that's not from God.  He knows so much about the scriptures, he would just quote like nobody's business.

I won't be district leader anymore, that was bittersweet. Our whole district is like best friends and now we are all getting split up.  Elder Vasai the elder from Samoa and Alaska is going to Spandau!   Me and Elder Miller both loved that area.

Now I guess it's time to return to the tough part of a mission and come off of the high like Elder Holland said.  Don't worry about me, I will be fine.  I'm just kinda sad, it seems like every area I have loved and had great companions, I'm only there one or two transfers.  God really does have a different plan for us.  Looking back in the past, I remember how mad I was that I was getting transfered from Pinneberg to Neumunster, but it turned out to be the greatest blessing on my misssion.  I needed this area to gain strength back.  And I have faith that things will keep getting better.  But man, I'm going to miss Elder Miller, we were like brothers and best friends.

Germany just beat Italy in the European cup for soccer so everyone has German flags, it's awesome to see them all show patriotic pride.  They play again on Thursday against France and if they win, they will be in the final so we have our fingers crossed!

Elder Spangenberg

With our 2014 German soccer jerseys

Pictures after our exchange with the Flensburg Elders.  This is the cover for our new album!??