More Pictures

Here is the weekly pic update


Here is the sign for the knife shop we went to
. We went to the shop for pocket knives, shaving knives, etc., but they also have one for kitchen knives...


some knives...

more knives....

and more knives....

some big knives....

The döner guy. He's pretty cool. He like missionaries, because they all come to his shop for the best döner.

Here is cow. It's on a spit, but it is vertical, and the meat is shaved off. kind of like shaved ice, only there is a heater in the back that slow cooks it.

Here is the chicken one. it's not as good. All of the meat is according to hallal standards, though. So it's Muslim Kosher.

2 pics of Remscheid, The city we contacted in. Lots of leadership members, but everyone who isn't a member, usually wants to stay that way. I saw a funny graffitti thing written in English on the train that day. It said: "Eastside? Westside? REMSCHEID!" Pretty good, huh? There is a lot of cool looking graffitti here. A lot of it is artwork. Some communities have paid graffiti people that come in vans filled with tons of different paints

cloudy day

I don't know if you can see it, but this van's back door is totally broken. A garbage truck backed into it, and glass shattered, interupting our morning study. The guy didn't seem too mad, but I didn't think to get out my camera till he cleaned up the mess and was driving away...

My comp on the phone

Pics

A graveyard we tried to contact people in. I must say, graves are much better taken care of in Germany. The graveyard in general seems like a mixture of Paganism and Christianity...but it's interesting.

WW2 graves

A close up of a WW2 grave

some random 10 ft (or 3 meter) tall cross

awesome sunset @ our apartment

2 of my comp during morning study. He is a slight insomniac, so I forgive him. :-)

Here is one of the church. the chapel is off to the right.

And this last one is a picture of my new Solingen knife. It cost a pretty penny, but it was worth it

Pictures

A German version of the musical "Wicked".

This was a sad picture. So apparently, Subway has an All-you-can-eat deal going on.....only on Sunday. Lame!

Capri-Sonne. Here, they have coke flavored, vitamin enhanced, and cherry flavored varieties...at least that is what I have seen so far.

Our District...sorry its blurry. someone else took it.

A bug that resembled a miniature cotton ball. And it had wings...really weird

Me and Elder Miller on our Golden Split! More about that day in the next email.

Letter

This week was cool. I went to my first Zone conference, where we review our goals and find ways to be better missionaries. It was really good. Mission Presidents attend every ZoKo (as we call it), so I got to see President Ninnow again.

I also went on my first Golden Austausch on Saturday. Elder Miller and I went to do service at Sister Gross' house (a recently baptised elderly lady). When we got there, we found she had brought a friend, who was interested to hear our message. We found out she had heard a lot of bad things about us, but that didn't make sense since our church helped Sister Gross quit smoking, and we were going to help Sister Gross with her garden. It reminded me of a similar situation that Paul encountered in Acts 28 with some Jewish leaders. They said: "But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that every where it is spoken against." This lady was very open with us, and despite the fact that were both Goldens, we managed to teach her the first discussion (with the help of Sister Gross) and set up a return appointment. We also offered to help her enter the "quit smoking in 7 days" program that the Wuppertal Elders were trying. She loved the idea. This experience was a testimony to me that God qualifies the weak and simple for missionary work and that the gospel is a principle based on faith and not necessarily on a large vocabulary.

In other news, I got cussed at for the first time. I had no idea what the guy was saying, and he wasn't really yelling, so it wasn't that bad. My comp. told me afterwards that he said some bad words, and some bad things about our church, the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith. Oh well.

We are going to check out the Solingen knife shop today. That should be interesting.

As far as food here goes, people eat a lot less meat. For that I am grateful. In fact, the first member meal I had a few weeks ago was completely vegetarian. It was cool. I think I will be eating less meat here than I did at BYU.

They do have this Turkish thing here that is super good. It's about as popular as Hamburgers in the US. It's called Dönner (pronounced dooner). It is similar to mom's fallafel wraps, but it has 3 sauces in it, and it is made out of lamb or chicken (your choice) instead of breaded vegetarian stuff.. They put in vegetables, sauce, and saurkraut, and then wrap it in some Turkish bread.

I will take some pictures when I get one today (according to all of the elders I have met, the best dooner shop is right around the corner from where I live).


There are also a lot more crazy people here than the US. Schizzophrenics are fairly common. Germany has really good medicine research, and is a healthier country in general (minus the smoking) than the US (because medicine is expensive, people have incentive to stay healthy- and the food is fresher), but many people are not mentally well. It is kind of sad to see. I think part of it has to do with the alcohol and drug culture that has control over people. It's scary how many are afflicted with it.

Thankfully the Atonement is there to help these people, and most of the members here have overcome at least one WOW addiction.

That's all for now!

-Elder Schuetz

Letter

About the ward:

The ward is pretty cool. I think most of them like me for the fact that my last name is German. There is this one guy named bro. Köster (pronounced coo-ster). He drives us to church every week. Everyone thinks he's super weird. But from the moment I arrived, he was my friend. He speaks decent English, so he translates for me, offered to give me a haircut, and says if I ever need anything to let him know.

There is another guy named brother Mass (pronounced moss). He has hair similar to Ludwig Beethoven. He is super passionate about the gospel. He taught a priesthood lesson, and it was great.

And of course, the Brauns, who I talked about in my pic emails.


That's pretty much all I've really met so far. Names are different here, and I am not good at remembering them. As for the meetinghouse, we meet here in Solingen at a church building, but the ward bounderies cover many cities. For example, the Brauns have a half hour commute to church each week....It is slightly easier to travel, because of the bus and train systems, but people have to really want to come, to come....if that makes sense.

The stake center is in Düsseldorf, which is about 25 minutes by train. However, that is a different area with different missionaries, so we only go there for district meetings and zone conferences.

More Pics

My companion studying...

These next few pics are at brother Braun's house. He has a large house for German standards, and he built it himself. His cousin stuffs roadkill he finds, so I took some pics for Sam to see.... There is also a fish pond with fish, which I thought was neat to have in your backyard.

Pictures

I started a bottlecap collection, since I need to do service every week, I might as well pick up trash. Once cleaned up, they are pretty cool. A Sunny Day....

This next one was funny. I was waiting for some people to buy train tickets and noticed this. It's a "No Smoking" sign next to a vending machine for cigs....hilarious

These next few are at an inactive's house. The guy's name is Domingo, he is officially a midget, and he collects random stuff like witches, paintings, etc...

This was over a bridge while we were on a train.

I decided to start taking pics out the window every day. Here is a: Cool Sunset...

Rainy Day...

More Pics

The first one is a pic of a city I was passing on the train...
the second is a church visible from my bedroom window....It says 'oh land, land, land! Hear the Word of the Lord'. I thought it was cool
the third is our shower, which is visible to an entire parking lot. Until the window fogs up, you get no privacy....
the one after that is a hooka shop...right next door to us. Everyone smokes here. you can buy cigs in a gumball machine. And I have seen kids as young as 10 that smoke.
the next one is a token to get a shopping cart. you lock them up after your done....I finally figured out what those weird tokens are actually for!