Awesome week...

Halloooooo Familie!

 

Every day this week has been crazy ridiculous with the weather. It starts off being relatively perfect weather--a bit cool with some sun. Then it gets dark, humid, and just unbearable. Then it rains and everything cools down, or in worse cases, it gets MORE humid. I've been praying that Heavenly Father will send you our rain! It's hard to plan how to prepare because it's too hot to wear a raincoat and it's dumb to carry it around. Na ja, some days are lucky where it rains and we're inside teaching.

 

So Andrea--is like the most amazing person that we met with this week. She is trying to decide where she should move so she can have a better pay but also just be happier in general (people here REALLY don't like Germans! Even after the weird looks I'm still pretty cool with Germans) and Sis. Schneider said she had some connections in Basal that she could suggest to her to see if she can work in Basal and she was suuuper happy. Mainly she needs a better job to support an OP for her mom in Portugal still...poor girl. But she's been pretty upset about it the past week and she said that she decided to just read a random chapter in the BoM, y'know, no help from US and totally found some verses that spoke to her. AMAZING! We also shared a talk for her the "forget-me-not" one and we printed it out for her in Portugese and we talked about it. It's like, to share a message but also strengthen her testimony in prophets, and she loved it. We also talked about priesthood blessings and she was like, "if you think it would help, I'd really appreciate it." More on that later. But she's awwwwwesome. Gah, what a blessing.

 

Want to know what I did for 4th of July? I wore 4th of July colors, red white and blue, baby! We mainly visited members that day, Stefan and Carla (best friend of Andrea) and she cooked Chilean food and stuff. We then visited Schwester Härtig and helped her pick Johannesbäeren, or however you spell that. She let us try a few and they're pretty stark and good. She got for me this old milk pail or some retro milk-container-thingie and tied it around my waist with a rope so I had TWO free hands! Kinda felt like an extra for the "Restoration" DVD. But it's really peaceful work and we did it at the end of the day, in the most gorgeous dorf in the area with the sunset. I took a lot of good mental pictures and enjoyed the wonderful weather.

 

Thursday was Tausch and a pretty interesting one, too. I had Sis. Martinz with me, and she's from Österreich, so still with a German speaker! Chemnitz was actually her Golden city, so she loooved being back on Tausch. It's also her last Tausch because she goes home at the end of the transfer...so I had to find something else to talk about so it wouldn't be awkward. We taught Manuel with a joint teach, a JAE in the ward which was pretty cool, except the investigator totally called him out for having a war video game and called it "not so Christlike"! But he stayed like an hour after our appointment to keep talking with Petrik the joint teach, so we call that SUCCESS!!  We then visited Sabrina and taught her a short lesson. It rained like HECK outside and we weren't prepared with umbrellas or jackets, but it was so DANG HOT that when we went outside it felt like mercy. We ran to the next Haltestelle and splashed in the puddles while no one was looking. And our day STILL wasn't done! We still taught Englisch and sang in the Chor--which was cool for Sis. Martinz because a lot of people in the ward attend so she got to say hello to quite a few people she hasn't seen for a year. It was back to normal and we were by then all dry (except our shoes) so we found some last-minute miracles on the streets. Pretty sweet.

 

Then came the big zone conference! I have to admit, it feels really weird having a new mission präsident, but Präs. Kozak is great. He really likes to wink and sing in Russisch! You could tell they were nervous I suppose, wanting everything to be a good experience and all, but it was wonderful. The guy knows his scriptures and I already think he's great. There is a NEW blog, called germanyberlinmission2012-2015.blogspot.com and the old one still exists it just has 2009-2012 in the site address. They plan on keeping up on the blog, don't worry! The Themas though were really great as usual and it was a lot of fun. I've noticed that Sis. Schneider is more happier and says that she really does like Chemnitz--she says that like most everyone else, you complain more than you compliment. And she's been saying, "I need to be a better junior comp" which I was like, I dunno, uncomfortable, I guess. I'm not saying that she should change and think that I'm always right, I just want to work together and compromise like a companionship--because the senior/junior thing bugs me. I don't want to be her boss, but I won't complain I guess that things are getting a lot better. I really would like to stay and stay comps with her, because I feel like there's more that is to be done here that I can hopefully do. Mal sehen what this transfer will bring! People keep reminding me that I'm one of the next ones up for training, yikes!!

 

SAAaaaturday was ridiculous. We met with Annis who is definitely a religious Muslim. We were pretty sure that he wouldn't necissarily progress, but he wanted to read the Book of Mormon and we wanted to teach him what we believe, so at first we thought it wouldn't be a waste of time. But it turned into something more or less where he bluntly said, "you know, I pray for you two 5 times a day, that's most than most of you Christians, and I pray that God will show you the right way--and some prayers require it more than once, so in total, I ask this of God 17 times a day. It just makes me so SAD that you smart girls aren't Muslim!" Mensch, mensch, mensch. I admit it's really cool to always learn about other religions, but it's weird being on the other side of the table and having someone else praying that you'll convert! Of course, we don't meet with people who don't want to change, and we don't do it for our personal benifit, like other religions. It's a little something called charity, that I actually want to help other people because I want THEM to be happy. Aber na ja! He had this water bottle full of holy water that he got from Mecca and let us have just a tiny bit, so that was pretty much an honor, I guess, that he would share something that for him was very precious. But yeah, I don't know if this correlates, but the rest of the day I had really bad stomach aches. Too many Gumi Bears bei Tan!

 

Tan is doing great. Gaaah, he needs to be baptized.

 

SUNDAY BLEW MY MIND. We had 6 investigators at church! A less-active lady, Schw. Grebe brought a relative with her to church that we got to meet, Tan came, ANDREA came, and we have a new investigator, Momodou aus Gambi! He is here on vacation and visiting some members in the ward, but they came up to us and said, "can you teach sunday school in English?" doch, ja! So we taught him and he was like, "yes, I find this topic quite fascinating and I enjoy talking about it." And asked us if we can teach him more this week, at the member's house! The Elders were only THIS (---) much jealous. Hehe. They had their share of success on Sunday, too. As for Andrea, she got her blessing from the Elders after church, and it was PERFECT. Leute, the Priesthood is amazing! I only told the Elders that she needed a blessing and gave her very specific blessings that she REALLY needed to hear. Needless to say, she had tears rolling down her cheeks and Carla was dabei and the just hugged each other and spoke Spanish like crazy, both just CRYING. It was a really moving experience. Heavenly Father knows how to give really direct and personal revelation.

What else happened? Bennet came to church in a shirt and tie and recieved the Priesthood. He looked SO happy. He told us we should find some people to baptize so that he can help us out. Like afore said, cheeky lil' monkey.

Also: since we taught the Englisch class (did I mention that 3 members were dabei because they wanted to practice English?) we left Tan "alone" in the German class, but Schwester Müller, the GML's wife taught the class PERFECTLY and Tan was so delighted that he understood almost everything without help. It was a relief for me!

So as you can imagine, it felt sooo good to be a Sista yesterday. They even had a lesson in FHV about "opening your mouths" and missionary work, and the teacher had them draw a chart where on one side it said, "life without the gospel" and the other side, "my life with the gospel" and it was difficult for me to write anything on the side with "life without the gospel" because c'mon, I'm the daughter of two return missionaries, there's no way I can think about it w/o my brain exploding--so I just think more of how I love my life with the gospel. It's easier that way! :)

 

So that was my week. Phew. We get to meet Andrea tonight so I hope we find a good atmosphere to really get her thinking about setting up some goals for baptism. Super excited!

 

I hope Aunt Michelle got my letter I sent last week--I got a letter from Aunt Marianne and Gilly and i plan on writing back today. Thanks! :) I also got a letter from Rebekkah Bingham, a YW from the Ktown ward and it was super great to hear from her.

 

Thanks for of course the pep talk each week. Chew 'em up, spit 'em out! Haha, not really, that's gross and unfriendly. This week will also be a bit slow with a few people going on vacation (vacation is the bane of every missionary's existence!) but we have a list of less actives to visit, and we have an Ausstellung to look forward to, and transfer calls! Yikes!

 

I love you! Have a fun week and hopefully Heavenly Father will give you our rain, we're sick of it!

love,

Whit