Trouble with Russians

During this past week, our "investigator" we had been teaching revealed that he was really a teacher, surprise, surprise.  We all knew that it was coming.  Now we have two teachers acting as investigators and we practice teaching almost every day now, and they will be adding more "investigators" in the coming weeks.  Sometimes the practice teaching can be frustrating, because it is hard to understand what anyone is saying, and sometimes my companion and I don't understand each other.  Other times though, things work out well and we feel confident about how things went.  We also had our first TRC lesson, which is when you meet with members who speak your language and give a lesson.  It wasn't too bad the first week, because the members would just talk about how their children are currently on missions or how much they love Germany, so not too bad.

We have had some trouble in the residence area during the week with missionaries living down the hall from us.  We call them the Russians because they will be serving in Russia.  Anyways, they started to pull pranks in our bathrooms, and some of the pranks got pretty disgusting.  We ended up telling our branch presidency about it, and it seems like for now that things have calmed down, but those Russians sure are a rowdy bunch.

On Sunday, my companion and I got to bless the sacrament in German, that was an interesting experience.  There are no microphones for you to speak into, so you have to speak loudly saying words you don't really know.  For the devotional in the evening, the BYU Men's Chorus came by.  I was able to spot a few familiar faces in the chorus, including my cousin, Paul Stephenson.  I forgot that he was in the choir, so when I saw him that was a nice surprise.

I was also able to get a pocket sized German Hymn book this week, they finally got them in stock.  It's interesting because the Hymn book is smaller than the English version, because it's missing a few songs.  It also has a few songs that the English version doesn't have.  On P-days I go to the temple in the morning, do laundry and write emails, and then we have the optional gym time, which of course everyone goes too. I don't really care for gym time though, four square and basketball isn't really my thing. Then in the evening we go back to class after dinner. The food here is what it is, I find myself eating an apple almost every meal time now.  Its nice to have food be provided for you, but I am looking forward to getting to make my own meals and trying out German food in Frankfurt.

Easter should be an interesting time in the MTC, and I will let you know how it goes next week!