Loving the work...

Woop woop! Hallo Familie!

So this week was (kein Witz!) pretty insane. We are working on Spring Cleaning in our apartment because you can tell certain things just haven't been cleaned in forever, and it's a good time to get it out of our hair! So our apartment's lookin pretty fly right now.
We've been having random blessings this week, mainly with Finding. For one thing, on our way to an appointment we found this cool French guy who was pretty interested and talked to us for quite a while, and then after the appointment, we took the Straßenbahn and talked to an Italian girl (both people are students here) in the Straßenbahn! It was a big deal for me, because it's just the German way to NOT talk to people, especially in public transportation. It's just something they do; just sit by themselves with headphones in or whatever. So that was basically my first experience of teaching on a Straßenbahn, and probably the last, mal sehen.

Something random--in my personal study time, I'm studying Jesus the Christ, because I figured this will be my only chance to have the time to get through that beast, and so far it's pretty rad. Sort of reminds me of reading for school because of the way it's written, but there's a lot of cool stuff in there. I've read the first 13 chapters so far, and if you've looked at that thing before, it's still a long ways away before I finish...

Random cool story--so Germans don't really greet each other on the streets, either--but we always say "hallo" or "Guten Tag" to be friendly if we don't have time to stop people on the street--and we said hallo to a lady waiting at the same Haltestelle as us, and a minute later she said with a smile, "Are you always so friendly?" And we were like, yes--yes we are! She ended up taking just a card, but I like leaving good impressions.

This week we got to go to the temple! Soooo what I've been needing and it was great. A major blessing because who was there? Two ladies from the EHS Zweig! It was a dream come true, and they were all like, "of all places to meet up again!" and they let me know how the ward was doing. It was a treat for sure. I feel like it's a sign that the Lord loves me. But yeah, we went to the little store and I got a nice picture of the Freiberg temple, a Buch Mormon case and a WDR ring (Wahl das Recht!).

But we're not doing so bad here--we will finally have a baptism for Bennet, a 20yr. old German here on June 16th! I'm BEYOND excited, even though he's being a girl and says I can't take pictures and he doesn't want music, the talks or really anyone but the bare miniumum to be there. Sorry, kid, you're getting pictures and prelude music, dangit! But Tan is also getting pretty close to setting a date. We promised him that if he feels good about the answers to the Taufinterview questions, then he is ready, and he said he will talk to his wife who is still in Vietnam right now. Woot! He looks like the kind of investigator Jordo would teach.

CHRISTIHIMMELFAHRT. Probably the craziest day of my life. It's supposed to be a Catholic holiday to celebrate the day that Christ went back to heaven after his resurrection, but here's it's like Abe Lincoln's birthday--where people just get out of work and school, Catholic or not, AND it just so happens to be the same day as Vaterstag, or Männertag. Which is so unbelievably ridiculous, because Germans drink openly on the streets every flippin day of their lives, but they STILL have a holiday to drink! And they think Americans are lazy? Dude, we WORK! People drink here on the government's dime, really. But it wasn't a very fun day for us, because there wasn't anyone on the streets--either on bikes or drunkards. We tried to keep ourselves busy so we wouldn't be stuck trying to spend hours talking to people, but it was sad to see people already drunk and you check your watch and it's 11am. Meine. Gute.

But zum Glück, we had another miracle! Georgi, a street contact ran into us the other day--or we ran into him--either way, the 3rd time we've seen him and the 4th time he saw us, so we finally made out an appointment; the other times we would see him while we were rushing to a bus and so we couldn't stop and chat, but we got a hold of him! He gave us his number but he like most people, don't answer, so it was way cool. You know the Lord's up to something when you see the same guy 3 times in a big city.

Like Jordo, I too had my share of photos this past transfer! We have this huge Karl Marx head in our stadt and finally broke down and took pictures by it. This thing is HUGE. We also did some OYMing and less-active searching in the more dorf-parts of Chemnitz, so lots of gorgeous views. I'm sort of in the country, kind of like our views out the window going from dorf to dorf to visit the Allreds or heading to Landstuhl with the marshmallows all over the place, and these huge fields of yellow flowers--we think they use it for cooking oil or soemthing.  Or tea. But it's been pretty this past week. It did hail for 5 minutes in Freiberg, but all is forgiven.

But mensch, we had lots of teaching this week! P day is always MY Tag der Ruhe because we always go from place to place and I need a day where we get groceries, write emails and go home and write letters---I got a letter from Anna at Präsident Interviews so I gotta write her and see how she's doing. It's nice to still get mail from people! But I gotta write them all back so I can keep getting more! :)


Again, way cool to hear about all the stuff you guys are up to--people keep telling me about the new temple--AS IF I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT--but yeah, it's fun. Also, I hope Nicholas had a fun birthday!! Sounds like he celebrated right. Also, nice to know that Mac has good taste in Brats--although we've never really had pets that eat "normal food" but no one can top Ingebor with her love for joghurt. Or Zelda trying to recover from whip cream. haha, die Arme.

Was sonst noch? Miracles happenin' every day. And it's trying to stay warm here, I sure hope so! Germany's on fire up in here wegen all the soccer games coming up--perfect opportunity to buy cool Germany shirts. If I need to send some home, let me know!

Ich habe euch lieb! Til next time!
love,
Sis. Whit