Work continues...

Wow, glad you remembered to write me, meine gute! Haha, althought I'm sure the weekend was busy but worth it, oder? I'm so happy you got the package! Gah, I thought it would take forever to get there! I don't think I need anything from home, so when you have time just the SD card will be fine. Any pictures of home might be cool though! :)

BBBIIIIGGGG congrats for Jordo and Justin this past weekend! Woot woooooot! Justin will thank you and dad for making him get his Eagle when he's hunting for a job or needing a scholarship, both which will be gleich um die Ecke! If I was a sister missionary, I'd totally show up to do building tours, they're so much fun, and like the one dad and I went on with the Elders a few summers ago, they lead to some very spiritual moments. Sisters, especially here give our souls to our kleine Zweig. For example, we teach English classes to members/friends and we host a weekly ping pong aktivität because Präsident Heitbredder thinks we need one, so poof! We host ping pong now, but we have a handful of high-school aged investigators and new converts, so it's like a mutual activity for them to get to know each other and such. Hey, ping pong is fun, and Germans are pretty pro, so it's all way fun. Even some of the adults show up, but they fudge the rules a lot, especially Manfred our 77 yr. old "new" convert (he was baptized 3 years ago).

Chanrith, our baptism candidate is getting a few extra weeks to prepare because we haven't taught him everything he needs to know before the big day--and since English isn't his first language (he speaks Cambodian) we want to take it a bit slower so he understands just what he's about to promise, and he doesn't freak out anymore. So he will hopefully be baptized early February.

We've been doing a lot of dooring by student wohnheims lately, and meine gute, what fun. They are either very open to learn or at least very polite. As a full time student, I don't know if I would read a "strange" book given to me by missionaries on top of my studies, so it shows how much faith or interest they have! And we always manage to run into people that have already seriously gotten a Book of Mormon before! One girl went to English classes held by Elders in her native country and we'll be meeting with her this week, how random can you get? It shows that missionaries all over the world are doing their job! :P

Biggest miracle of the week: ELEVEN investigators came to church yesterday! HOOOOLY meine flippin GUTE! It basically literally doubled our numbers, with 11 members, 11 investigators, and 3 Sisters. What a dish. We brought Mariyuri (teen investigator from South America), Jeffrey (from Kenya) and Chanrith, and then 3 Arabic-speaking friends of Jeffrey (they all live in the same Ausländerheim I think) were waiting for us at Eisenhüttenstadt, plus Florian, Danny and Bianca--Danny and Bianca live together with 3 kids (Roman, Florian and Lea Sofie) and Roman is the priesthood holder and new convert who came with us on our joint teach last week. The last two are a couple that I haven't taught yet but I think are close to baptism. The "dad" coming to church and Florian coming to church was a big deal, so we three Sisters were having a ball yesterday! I hope we can keep pulling it off! :) Our GML (eh, I forget the name in English, but we meet weekly with him and go through our progress reports of our investigators) is Ahmed from Egypt so he sat in the back translating from German to Arabic, and then Sis. Lanctot and I translated for the English speakers, and yeah, we also played the musical number (Sis. Lanktot played violin and we sang along--they only have an organ and no piano) AND we taught Relief Society! What the flip!

Sunday was also Sis. Lanktot's last day, and so that's why she played violin, and we had a REALLY delicious eating appointment at Ola and Ahmed's--they made Falafel, which yeah, not sure what's in it, but it was tasty. I think in essence it's veggie burgers on top of pita bread with a spicy sauce, but it was fried so it tasted way good! I think it's mainly made of chick peas, whatever THAT is. But that was waaaay fun! They had this "fire" sauce that they forbade us to try, but had it for Hany, another Egyptian member but when an Egyptian says something is "fire hot" THAT means it could probably melt through metal or something. Hany put some on his Falafel and his voice was so dry and he was sweating (kinda like dad does) and he had a TALL glass of milk. Haha, but he says it'S worth it!

Other random news: I finally have a Visa! I can live here now, woot! They have a new system where they require a finger print, so I had to do the whole process myself, because in the past, the mission office would take care of it for us. It was complicated because I started the process in Cottbus, and because the offices are DUMB, they wouldn't transfer everything to me in Frankfurt Oder, so on Wednesday I actually had to go BACK to Cottbus for a few hours (JUST a few hours) to pick up my Visa and sign a few papers. But was a weird experience! I was there just a few weeks ago, literally! It was a nice sunny day, so it was cool to go back, even for a few hours. I even ran into some of my old investigators! I still left my heart in Cottbus, so it was kinda hard leaving, just because I was thinking of all the members I wanted to say hello to, but my favorite FAVORITE members live in Spremberg or Hoyerwerda, meh. So yeah, random, oder?

Big news: one of our new converts is going to serve a mission! She totally rocks my world. She originally wanted a patriarchal blessing and is going to get it soon, but she also got a blessing from the Branch President and he told her what she said she already knew--that her next big step is to serve a mission and she's ALL for it. Totally rad. She's basically going to do the papers and go as soon as they'll let her--right in the middle of her studies and everything! Can I hear an A-MEN?

Something I just thought about--everytime we come into Berlin (we came to Berlin today to "kill" Sis. Lanctot, or Lanc-TOT) we come into the Zoologischer Garten Haltestelle, and I'm 80% sure that we were there when we came to Berlin for Thanksgiving in '04. It looks so familiar!

So yeah, today, we killed Sis. Lanctot, and she held it together very well, she like didn't even cry or anything, but she says that it hasn't hit her yet--she feels like she's going on Tausch or something. But she was a really good companion--she and Sis. Neukomm are my "soul Sistas" (Sis. Neukomm likes to call us that in her Swiss accent) and we worked really well as a dritt--it's different, but there are some things that dritts can do that others can't--dooring multiple apartments for example! So now it's just me and the Swiss and she's the senior companion--she's a transfer older than me in Germany but I've been a missionary longer because she was only in the London MTC for 11 days, not 9 friggin weeks--and she's been here in FFO for a transfer already, so that decision was a no-brainer. She shares her Swiss chocolate with me and I share Reese's (which she LOVES) so we have lots of fun. She's the kind that knows how to work hard but really be silly and fun. Plus she studied art for a bit, so that totally blows my mind.

The hats as far as I'm sure are VERY warm and totally fine with the rules, kein Angst. They're pretty handy right now because today was our FIRST DAY OF SNOOOOOW. It was pretty weak-sauce, but the fact that it FINALLY snowed and it's cold enough to do so is sort of depressing. Nope, not really, but it means probably another layer. Right now I wear like 2 layers of socks and thermal nylons with leggings (and a skirt), three layers of sweaters/shirts, two scarves, a hat and two pairs of gloves. I look kinda like I'm serving on the North pole, but it keeps me going! The fact that I can run to all of our Bahns is a miracle--running in the summertime should be a breeze! That's the funny thing about Frankfurt Oder, we do a lot of running and our members feed us atrociously healthy food. I hope we get more meat now that Sis. Lanctot (the vegitarian) left! Haha, slightly joking. But seriously, a member fed us a salad (with the most sour grapefruits auf die Erde), pumpkin soup (which I actually like! I know!) and then a plate of mushrooms, brussel sprouts and POTATOES. Meine gute, what kind of lunch is that? But I finished it all, natürlich. Blech.

As for headaches, I don't know what to tell you--I talked about it to Sis. Lanctot and she said she had the same problem--a big migrane every Sunday. She said that it happens a lot because there's just so much stress for us that day--I mean juggling 11 investigators and making sure there's time for the members, too--and just all that German, it just really fries the brain. I drink a lot of water, but seeing how Germans don't believe in public restrooms, I try to be careful, too. I had headaches before in Cottbus, and really the only thing that worked was just taking medicine during church and just work through it. But I'm always sensitive to light and smell, and usually I feel sick when either of the two bother me. For example, going through stairwells that smell like smoke and kitty litter just ugh, makes ANY normal person sick. But I'm trying to take care of myself, trust me--I don't like being sick on Sundays! But you remember I had Sunday headaches during the summers at home, too, so I don't know what the deal is. Sis. Lanctot says it wears off eventually, but yeah, it's every Sunday and I usually notice it 1/2 way through church--every other day of the week I'm totally fine. I think everything from the week just catches up with me or something, not sure.

Well well, it was fun hearing about all the fun things you guys are up to, and I'm glad everything's going well at home. Keep on keepin' on! I love you all!

love,
Sister Whit