Busy week...

Liebe Familie--

My, my, my, who'dda thunk that planning a Taufe would be so much stress, but ooooooh so worth it???

Yup, we have officially a baptism this Friday! AAAH! We are meeting with Bennet this evening for a usual Termin but he's getting the big official Taufinterview today as well, and then after that, gehts los!

This week it was nice seeing lots and lots of German flags on the balconies and on the cars and such. It's the big EuropaMeisterschaft thingie here, and there was a big game, Deutschland gegen Portugal and Deuschland won, (we get sweet updates from Stefan) and even still, we heard the fireworks just before going to bed. So it was a good week for the Deutsch. I heard there was another game the same night, Danmark gegen Sweden I think. Whoever it was, Danmark won! Naturligt!

This week we racked up 20 lessons, our big goal or mission Standard for the week, which made me pretty happy. It looks like we'll do it again this week, too! The Elders have every right to be jealous of us, because they get happy when we refer them to go visit a less-active ancient Schwester in the ward. Meeeeine gute. So far the ZLs know what's up, but if soemthing goes south, I usually open my mouth and tell them to cut it out. Whatevs--they got permission from Präs. to watch the 13th Pokemon movie today for Pday, and i'm sure that's the most ridiculous thing that Präs. has had to give his permission for. Naja--we've got letter-writing on the brain today which is much needed and a bit of souvenir shopping. There's a big Karl Marx Kopf here and Sis. Schneider, the Schweizerin wants a little statue of it. It looks more like a shrunken head to me, hahaha.

Our big miracle of the week, new investigator! She's a random contact that i found just calling through the phone and she's from Portugal, and friends with Carla in our ward, from Chile, so that was flippin awesome. It's great sometimes getting to teach ab and zu auf Englisch!

We also met with Edeltraud, a less-active lady and she came to church. That usually doesn't happen that often, but she said, "thanks for coming, and I expect to see you at church!" Aye aye!

We found two other solid apps that we will be meeting with next week. It's funny because we always talk to people and naturally expent hessitancy or something, but with both they were like, "yeah, I want to read this book and know what it's about." One of them is a young female German student! That combo does NOT happen very often here. We generally teach more men, because women if you can imagine don't want to set up appointments with strangers, especially over religion. But Sabrina sounds pretty cool, we're excited. 

We had a cool meeting with Xiao this week. We taught her not only a cool lesson, but she wrote our last names in Chinese. Our name Olsen, when written in Chinese, means "sacred forest" Auf Deutsch I'd call it a Heilige Hein, which is to say, sacred grove? Preeeeetty cool, oder? "Schneider" is made up of three characters, one of them meaning "german" and "patience" and the third some sort of sign used as a formal title like "sir" so it's like, "I'm a gentlemanly yet patient German" and in case you're wondering, that's quite a rare find here!

Frau Neugebauer is doing amazing. She will fast with us this week for an answer over the Book of Mormon, but she still goes to church in Görlitz and still reading frequently, if not daily. It's super! I hope to be planning her baptism soon as well!

This week for Chor the director told me that the pianist wouldn't be able to play next Sunday and asked me to accompany a song for Sunday. He said, "what can you play?" "Erm, 'I know that My Redeemer Lives'?" "Perfect, let's practice!" So I played it for Chor and then on Sunday with relatively no practice. For me, a person feat. Danke Sis. Carson! 

We had another miracle at church--our investigator, Tan aus Vietnam came to church with 3 friends visiting him! One of them is actually an investigator in Dresden so I think they helped each other come to church yesterday. So far Tan has brought the most friends to church! :) He came in late and Carla came and tapped me on the shoulder and said, "there's a ton of people here for you!" So that's flippin amazing.

We also had an interesting appointment with Annis, from North Africa who's a Muslim. He had the Quran in multiple languages and we met him on the street and said he had the Book of Mormon in German but not Arabic, so we brought one for him and talked about it. You could tell that he wanted to read it more as a study rather than to know if it's true, but you can tell he respects and studies the Bible as well. We told him that God wouldn't want to lead him astray and he can't lie, so we challenged him to read, ponder and pray about the Book of Mormon. He seemed pretty willing to do that, but then he gave us a counter commitment--so basically before we meet with him, I have to pray about Islam! I told him it would be a lot better if I read first and pondered before praying about it to be equally fair, and that we are missionaries, but I told him I would do my best. He still thought we were pretty "schlau" and said he looks forward to our next appointment. You have to admire the guy, he's really a Profi at what he believes and studies. :)

As you can imagine, we're pretty excited for this Friday. Bennet doesn't really want a lot of people there, but we're making him have music and the talks and such like the formula no matter if he doesn't want it or not. He just wants to get dunked and get the Holy Ghost with no extra pizzaz. It sometimes feels like an Anti-Bridezilla; rather than working with someone who wants EVERYTHING and everything to be perfect, he wants NOTHING. So with the Bischofschaft backing me up, the kid's getting an opening and closing hymn, dangit! Sis. Laubaugh and Schär who were the Sisters before us are coming from Hamburg side of the mission to see the baptism, so it'll be interesting. 

Was sonst noch?

Of course. Mail. I don't know which way is faster with mail, but eigentlich, both addresses are fine. If it will get there before my birthday or on my birthday with my apartment addresss, then cool. We have a Zone Conference on the 22nd, and so if you send it to Berlin, I will get it days after. But that's if the mail only takes a week or so. Yikes. It might be safer to send it to me, but like I said, it depends on how fast it'll get here. If I get it on the 22nd, then of course it's fine, (everyone likes getting big packages at Zoko, heehehe) so sorry for the "es ist bei mir egal" answer. I'll just say the apartment, so if it takes longer i don't have to wait for the next next Zoko.

I hope that's about it! Gaaah, my birthday is in 4 days, what the HEEECK! 

I love you family! I have a picture of you in my German BoM and show it off to everyone. It's how we do. 

Ich habe euch lieb!
Whit