Elder Wipf

Dear Everybody,
   This week was an adventure. On Tuesday, I said goodbye to my good friend Elder Bingham, who will now be serving in Bernburg. For the next two days, Elder Young, who is also training in our zone, and I went to work. Then we got up bright and early at four-forty in the morning so that we could catch our train to Berlin. That was a wonderful three hour train ride. There I met Elder Wipf, my new companion, straight from the England MTC. He is from Canada. German, is not his native language. Sort of.
   His family belongs to a group of people called the Huterites. Long story short, they ended up in Canada, and they practice a type of religion similar to that of the Amish (I do not know how similar or different are, it is simply a comparison that helps to understand). They have preserved a lot of old traditions including the use of Sütterlin Schrift in writing (some of you will know what that means; it was really cool for me when I found out) and a medieval dialect of Austrian-German that is mixed with English words. He was treated as a native speaker, but English is really his native language. He left the colony to get an education, met the missionaries, joined the church, and came on a mission. His pronunciation of German is Austrian and his pronunciation of English is Canadian, but sometimes they mix. It is going to be a really great transfer.
   In addition to having Elder Wipf, Sister Norton is also training a new sister, Sister Bollwinkel. Also, not German. She is from Arizona. The two of them together are... indescribable. It is going to be fun to work with them.
   Since Thursday, we have not had a normal day of missionary work. Friday was... interesting. Then Saturday we had weekly planning and General Conference. Sunday was also General Conference. And today is P-day. Hopefully, tomorrow will be normal. Some normal finding, some lessons. That would be good.
   General Conference was wonderful, so far. I still have not seen the last session. We will be watching it next Sunday. It was very weird to watch General Conference here. The Saturday morning session was broadcast at six. We watched Priesthood on Sunday as a recording and then watched the recorded Saturday afternoon session before watching the live Sunday morning session at six. I know that I was spiritually strengthened and uplifted. Let us follow the direction and council that we were given.
sincerely,
Elder Perez


Elders Perez and Wipf with President and Sister Kosak
 



Trainers April 2014