Hey Familie!
Last Pday it was a Zone Sport Pday, which would've made Dad proud at least. We played soccer (guess who got to be goalie??), ultimate frisbee, tag-football and kickball. We were the only Sisters that came so the Elders were impressed, natürlich. I've never played football and I really sort of steered clear of the Elders--yikes! I actually kicked the ball in an Elder's face...na ja...and he's my zone leader... na ja...
On Tuesday we taught Frank and his roomate, George, both from Ghana and they're SO legit. They make us laugh sooo hard because of all the RIGHTEOUS stuff they say! George gave us this "sermon" of bein responsible for your own choices and not blaming others and he said, "It's like going out in the rain without an umbrella and saying, 'why is this touching me???' Go and GET an umbrella! You're gonna be a whiny child your whole life!" You know, it was way funnier there the way he said it of course.
Ingo is making progress--we realized that he has some kind of learning difficulty, just because he reads but doesn't really understand anything he reads and so we have to explain everything as slowly and clearly as possible. But we had a joint teach with Andre, a Neubekehrt who wants to go on a mission so he got some good practice. :)
The big thing for this week was our Annelies--she had her Taufinterview on Thursday and passed, and we also taught her a few more things just before, but also to help her relax and feel ready. We helped her pick out a white dress for it and everything and she was just soooo excited and nervous. Her hands were shaking!!
Gahh, we've met with so many people this week!! Schw. Page, Helga, Ines, Familie Molinas, Adris--so many! Ines is the 11yr. old Neubekehrt so we teach her these simple lessons from the Kinder Buch Mormon and she LOVES us.
We also met with Frau Hahn, our miracle lady. We came up to her door and a neighbor(this is an apartment) came and told us not to klingel her because she should be sleeping and she was sick or something, but Fr. Hahn of course klingel'd us in and the lady wasn't too happy with us. Apparantly Fr. Hahn told her entire block about our visit and how much she freu'd herself over it and the neighbors are really nervous about us. The lady was like, "just tell her hi and then go so she can sleep." We realize that Frau. Hahn probably won't investigate the church as seriously as we like, but she was so happy to see us it was like we were her granddaughters and she gave us this book on hausfrau tips for gardening and cleaning and what-not. She's such the sweeetest thing and we sang a song for her. Gaaah, if only her neighbors weren't so freaked out about us.
Saturday was the big TAUFE! Members came, a few investigators came, and since Annelies speaks English the whole thing was in English--so we had to translate for the Germans! She brought her two young boys and they were sooo fascinated with the baptismal font and one of them was like, "mummy, can I come in with you?" in sooo eine süße British accent. They just wanted to touch the water and see how warm it was and she asked, "After the baptism can they stick their hands in so they will stop bugging me about it?" But our British Bischof peformed the baptism and it was a HIT. We of course took some great photos. And she was just super happy afterwards. I remember yesterday when she was confirmed that she came back to her seat and whispered, "I can feel it! It's burning!" and her boys were like, "you're so warm!" So it was a great weekend for these Sisters. We work hard for our peeps, dangit! Sis. McCappin, a sister that was here before me came in to see the baptism and so us four sisters went out for Döners to celebrate. But for us, our day wasn't done because we still had 5 Termins to go! We managed to have enough charisma and energy to make it through. I blame it on the Geist and the Döner. :P
Two of those Termins was teaching Br. Baumeister and Michael, both from Russia--English. Soo hilarious. I was helping Br. Baumeister read from a Kinder Buch Mormon and Sis. Child was teaching Michael super basic sentences. Br. Baumeister was like, "Sister, you have to be mean and correct me!" I tried to teach him how to pronouces "years" by showing how it rhymes with "ears" and once he figured that out he was super excited and kept saying it. He's really enthusiastic to learn English but he needs to come back to church!
Sunday was pretty interesting. We had an Essenstermin with Familie Persike, and their son just came home from HIS mission in the Alpine mission and so he was going nuts talking about missionary work and how to raise joint teaches in our Pfahl and stuff. I think he was an AP or something because he was talking numbers a lot, like setting goals for the number of baptisms in the mission in a year. He set the goal of 300 and so far they're at 150 or something. That's still a lot of wonderful people, you know?! But he was sharing stories of course, and his mom served a mission in Österreich and talked about her American comps and such. Na ja!
We also visited a less active, Schw. Blecher, who I just met for the first time. She's so sweet and lives in this adorable dorf--we'Re going back to visit in the Winter! :) But she just immediately liked me because I look like her "almost daughter-in-law" that her son was going to marry but didn't. She showed me pictures of my Doppelgänger and said even my voice sounded the same--only her nose is bigger than mine apparantly. It was eerie and cool at the same time. But she really wants us to visit again and with Conference coming up, she's making plans to come.
But something else pretty cool--the Bishop's son came home from a 2 week mini mission in Kiel and reported about it. i don't know if you know what a mini mission is, but it's like those two minis that came to us in FFO--they live like missionaries from a week or up to a transfer to get a feel of real missionary work before actually going on a real mission. He talked about how daunting it was to have to talk to everyone and how he had to do a lot of finding which he didn'T FIND all that fun, but he talked about his own "conversion story" of how he at least converted himself while on a mission, because he had forgiveness issues with himself. Na ja, Jordan, you and I are called to do some pretty insane work, and the Lord called you to that Stadt because He knew you could schaff' it. It's sad that you had to be Blitz'd out, but they better let you go back for the baptisms, you SOOO deserve it! I'm sending you your planner and a letter this week, so more on that. But the Lord needs YOU and he's not going to leave you stranded, you are entitled to his help and when you do what you know you need to do, you're going to see miracles.
also, BIG NEWS. It's super official: PRESIDENT MONSON IS VISITING GERMANY!!!!! In October, we're having a special missionary conference in Hamburg and we will hear from Präs. Monson himself. WE ARE SOOOOOOOOOO BEGEISTERT! Mission tour! He's coming to Hamburg, Berlin, München and Frankfurt, so he's visiting the members and the missionaries!! How coool!!! So yeah. Phew!
My email seems unreasonably shorter this week, which is odd, because we taught TWENTY SEEEEVEN lessons this week. But I told you all the amazing-ness that is Bielefeld. We have another Double Taufe coming up October 14th! :) Who's freu'ing herself? This Sista!
I love you guys! I look forward to next Monday already! ICH HABE EUCH LIEB!
love,
Sis. Whit
About Me
- WhitMissionBlog
- Wie geht's! As a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Berlin Germany mission, I'm bound to have lots of fun experiences!
Monday, September 24, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Busy, busy....
Hallo Familie!
So Monday was pretty rad; we saw this random Laden selling skirts that looked long enough for us, and they were pretty cheap--so we went to try them on and realized that they're way TOO long---as in for Muslim women. Na ja, it was pretty funny. There are actually quite a lot of Muslims here which is interesting. But what was more exciting was seeing the big tower they have here in Bielefeld--it's like on their logos and everything. They used to have this old castle on a hill and it got bombed during the war and this one tower survived. We went up there to eat lunch, take pictures, and we even paid 2€ to see the lower basement stuff--it's where the soldiers lived, where the baker made his bread, and it was pretty neat. We were in this little interesting tour with two American girls (one translated for the other) and this group of Germans with their friends from Australia--so everyone was translating for each other--and one of the German guys who told us about the tour offered to translate for us. There's this phrase "pech gehabt" that people use all the time sorta like, "tough luck." Well we figured out where the meaning came from! They have this entry way for servants and soldiers that was heavily guarded with random traps and stuff for people who tried to break in. Well they had this slanted slit in the ceiling where they could pour Pech out on unwanted enemies--like boiling animal fat with birchwood, something or another and it was so hot and sticky that they would pretty much die instantly--na ja, pech gehabt! We now try to use the phrase as much as we can. But it was pretty cool and I tried taking some pictures.
Let's see, well the temperature's dropped considerably, but I know by now how many layers I need to survive, but now it's just normal fall weather--cloudy and windy but not too cold yet.
Tuesday was kinda cool--except we made a mad dash out the door and was prepared for okay-warm weather--but it rained like HECK and we didn't have any rain gear. So we got soaked pretty bad before breaking down and buying these 3€ umbrellas--and you know me, I just can't use an umbrella at all, and mine broke in 3 minutes. We had to jam a Kärtchen to make it stay up, but when you buy cheap stuff at Teddy---na ja. We met Gudrun this week--this lady we ansprach'd and she told us how upset she was about her husband who just died and we were able to give a street lesson and she was just SO unbelievably happy and said she was glad we ran into her and wanted to come to church, not this past Sunday but the next one and it always feels good when you know what to say. I also got a Blick of what it's like to serve in South America--we visited a less active Ehepaar from Cuba and the wife speaks only Spanish and the husband didn't really translate a whole lot. But she stuffed us to the brim with some really good food. The wife understands English but hardly speaks it in return so it was difficult--but Sis. Child knows Spanish pretty well so she was able to translate a bit. We also met with an investigator, Adris from Iraq who is SO golden and we invited him to baptism--in McDonalds! He doesn't have a specific date because he's taking care of his dad and can't come to church regularly and it's sorta stressful, but he wants baptism! We love it.
On Wednesday our whole schedule was totally durch einander so we had to improvise with who we can visit and where we should do Finding and all that razzmatazz and we decided to visit this kontakt that we went by on before but she was in the hospital. Well she was there and she had a friend there as well. We got to know her a little bit and she casually mentioned that her husband died last year and we were like, "oh, he did? that's really too bad" type stuff and she just started leaking like a faucet, just couldn't stop crying. The gift of tongues come in handy when a Turkish lady is crying and speaking German at the same time, but she really opened up about how she just couldn't get over it, and her friend is also depressed about other things going on in her life, and we just started teaching up a storm! It was such a major blessing and they just opened their hearts because we knew what to say and we were giving some rock-hard testimony. They were delighted and also wanted to make it to church (but didn't) but atleast wanted us to come back and teach them more. Frau Möllner, the original kontakt wanted to give us something and she gave us these random gnome figurines. I knew I wouldn't escape without getting one on my mission eventually, but she was so sweet. The friend even said, "We were planning on going somewhere else today but we missed our bus and so we didn't go and came back here--we wouldn't have met you if we made the bus. That must've been God!" Soooo awesome when they realize it's a miracle along with us. But that's not the end of Wednesday's blessings. We also met with Ingo and taught one of the best lessons of my life, personally, over the 3rd lesson. I guess mainly because at the end of the lesson he sheepishly asked, "So when can I be baptized?" How about October 14th!? He told us that he really wants to change his life and he came super close to suicide but he feels that with this faith and baptism he can really start anew. We crawled into bed that day total kaputt because our minds were just BLOWN.
Phew, Thursday was also pretty cool--taught Frank again, and jeez, our lessons with him are pretty powerful. I noticed while he was getting his phone from under his pillow he had a book there with the title, "How to become a Godly Man" or something to that effect. We are working on really inviting him to bapstim because we did before and he was like, "but I've already been baptized--i already gave my life to Christ." So we need to teach him some more and ask again. We taught Bru. Viehoff who is a Neubekehrt, but I wonder how much he really retained because his testimony is a bit frayed. He thinks that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon and thinks he was only visited by Angel Moroni and has his own Meinung about other things and so we need to iron out some stuff that maybe he missed before...but he doesn't know if the BoM is really true. He's one of those who thinks that truth is "relevant." Naja. But we taught Adrian, who has a Taufdatum with a RM, Henrich and he definitely whipped him into shape--which we figured would happen, because Adrian definitely respects Henrich a bit more and feels when he promises HIM that he'll come to church, he has to keep that promise. And he came, even though the guy was waaaaay hung over. He knows about the WoW but we're trying to curb his wierd thinking that he can "live it up" now and repent later. He's our trouble child. :)
On Friday we taught our tart Schw. Page, the Englishwoman. She's super hilarious, although she watches too much CNN and tells us about the news and makes it sounds like Armeggedon is at our doors. But we noticed that she's a lot more calm and happy now that she's reading the BoM again--she apparantly read the BoM in 5 days when she was an investigator and hasn't read it since--in like 10 years or whatever, so this week has been an amazing thing to see how the BoM really is inspired of God to change us. We also got to teach Ines, an 11yr old Neubekehrt from Italy (I geeked out about Italy with her mom!) and I basteld this "puzzle" with all the pieces of the Armor of God and we taught her about it, and she's super cool. We wrapped up our day by teaching Wolfgang and Helga and lots of OYMing. Our lives are blessedly verrückt.
We also got a call from this random kontakt we tried to visit, saying that he was sorry that he didn't make his appointment but wants to meet with us in October when he has more time. That was amazing because when you leave a note saying "call us back to make a Termin" you usually don't expect them to actually do it! It was marvelous.
Saturday was a day of fun---trying to find referrals from a member and realizing that this person has already been referred and already said NO. But we met with Michael Mauritz, this fella who really just stays home and plays video games and worships Star Trek, but he wants to read in the BoM! We then met with Sylvia, from Nigeria (or Ghana?) and taught her more about the BoM. She really likes that people in our church believe in prophets but they don't ask for money like many people do in Africa. I was worried that she was listening to us to be polite, because she kinda shies away from doing anything, so I asked her what kind of questions she has that she needs answers for, and she said she wants to know what happens after we die. Good thing the BoM totally answers that! So she's more excited to read and actually learn.
Sunday was also great--6 people came to church, including Ingo and Adrian. We stayed after for Gemeindeessen at sat at a table with all of our Neubekehrt friends, which is really just a fun mental picture--I love spending fun time with Neubekehrts because it doesn't matter how long ago they were baptised, they still radiate the same light they do just after baptism. And they took Ingo under their wing, which was precious. We went to visit Herr Abbel, a contact we found my first week here. He totally remembered us and gave us cake and everything and we talked about his life (he's done archeology and everything else under the sun) and introduced the BoM. He has a really strong faith but didn't want to disappoint us and told us to keep our book. Instead he gave us "grandpa wisdom" just telling us to keep our faith and make it strong and be wise in life. It was pretty inspirational. He said if he's still alive in 2 years, he'll call us, haha.
But yeah, our week was pretty insanely awesome. 22 lessons, phuh. We love it--and the best stuff that happened this week wasn't even planned by us at all, it was all Heavenly Father's doing. :)
We called Präs. Kozak to report about our Taufdatum and he was sooo happy--because that morning he sent out a text with the quote, "The Lord will put prepared people in the path of prepared missionaries" or something like that and was really impressed with Ingo's story. He was like, "I wish I had 148 Sisters in this mission!" Naja. ;P
Well I think that's all on my end--I got a baptism this Saturday! WE ARE SO EXCITED!! More deeets to come.
I love you guys soooo sehr!
love,
Whit
So Monday was pretty rad; we saw this random Laden selling skirts that looked long enough for us, and they were pretty cheap--so we went to try them on and realized that they're way TOO long---as in for Muslim women. Na ja, it was pretty funny. There are actually quite a lot of Muslims here which is interesting. But what was more exciting was seeing the big tower they have here in Bielefeld--it's like on their logos and everything. They used to have this old castle on a hill and it got bombed during the war and this one tower survived. We went up there to eat lunch, take pictures, and we even paid 2€ to see the lower basement stuff--it's where the soldiers lived, where the baker made his bread, and it was pretty neat. We were in this little interesting tour with two American girls (one translated for the other) and this group of Germans with their friends from Australia--so everyone was translating for each other--and one of the German guys who told us about the tour offered to translate for us. There's this phrase "pech gehabt" that people use all the time sorta like, "tough luck." Well we figured out where the meaning came from! They have this entry way for servants and soldiers that was heavily guarded with random traps and stuff for people who tried to break in. Well they had this slanted slit in the ceiling where they could pour Pech out on unwanted enemies--like boiling animal fat with birchwood, something or another and it was so hot and sticky that they would pretty much die instantly--na ja, pech gehabt! We now try to use the phrase as much as we can. But it was pretty cool and I tried taking some pictures.
Let's see, well the temperature's dropped considerably, but I know by now how many layers I need to survive, but now it's just normal fall weather--cloudy and windy but not too cold yet.
Tuesday was kinda cool--except we made a mad dash out the door and was prepared for okay-warm weather--but it rained like HECK and we didn't have any rain gear. So we got soaked pretty bad before breaking down and buying these 3€ umbrellas--and you know me, I just can't use an umbrella at all, and mine broke in 3 minutes. We had to jam a Kärtchen to make it stay up, but when you buy cheap stuff at Teddy---na ja. We met Gudrun this week--this lady we ansprach'd and she told us how upset she was about her husband who just died and we were able to give a street lesson and she was just SO unbelievably happy and said she was glad we ran into her and wanted to come to church, not this past Sunday but the next one and it always feels good when you know what to say. I also got a Blick of what it's like to serve in South America--we visited a less active Ehepaar from Cuba and the wife speaks only Spanish and the husband didn't really translate a whole lot. But she stuffed us to the brim with some really good food. The wife understands English but hardly speaks it in return so it was difficult--but Sis. Child knows Spanish pretty well so she was able to translate a bit. We also met with an investigator, Adris from Iraq who is SO golden and we invited him to baptism--in McDonalds! He doesn't have a specific date because he's taking care of his dad and can't come to church regularly and it's sorta stressful, but he wants baptism! We love it.
On Wednesday our whole schedule was totally durch einander so we had to improvise with who we can visit and where we should do Finding and all that razzmatazz and we decided to visit this kontakt that we went by on before but she was in the hospital. Well she was there and she had a friend there as well. We got to know her a little bit and she casually mentioned that her husband died last year and we were like, "oh, he did? that's really too bad" type stuff and she just started leaking like a faucet, just couldn't stop crying. The gift of tongues come in handy when a Turkish lady is crying and speaking German at the same time, but she really opened up about how she just couldn't get over it, and her friend is also depressed about other things going on in her life, and we just started teaching up a storm! It was such a major blessing and they just opened their hearts because we knew what to say and we were giving some rock-hard testimony. They were delighted and also wanted to make it to church (but didn't) but atleast wanted us to come back and teach them more. Frau Möllner, the original kontakt wanted to give us something and she gave us these random gnome figurines. I knew I wouldn't escape without getting one on my mission eventually, but she was so sweet. The friend even said, "We were planning on going somewhere else today but we missed our bus and so we didn't go and came back here--we wouldn't have met you if we made the bus. That must've been God!" Soooo awesome when they realize it's a miracle along with us. But that's not the end of Wednesday's blessings. We also met with Ingo and taught one of the best lessons of my life, personally, over the 3rd lesson. I guess mainly because at the end of the lesson he sheepishly asked, "So when can I be baptized?" How about October 14th!? He told us that he really wants to change his life and he came super close to suicide but he feels that with this faith and baptism he can really start anew. We crawled into bed that day total kaputt because our minds were just BLOWN.
Phew, Thursday was also pretty cool--taught Frank again, and jeez, our lessons with him are pretty powerful. I noticed while he was getting his phone from under his pillow he had a book there with the title, "How to become a Godly Man" or something to that effect. We are working on really inviting him to bapstim because we did before and he was like, "but I've already been baptized--i already gave my life to Christ." So we need to teach him some more and ask again. We taught Bru. Viehoff who is a Neubekehrt, but I wonder how much he really retained because his testimony is a bit frayed. He thinks that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon and thinks he was only visited by Angel Moroni and has his own Meinung about other things and so we need to iron out some stuff that maybe he missed before...but he doesn't know if the BoM is really true. He's one of those who thinks that truth is "relevant." Naja. But we taught Adrian, who has a Taufdatum with a RM, Henrich and he definitely whipped him into shape--which we figured would happen, because Adrian definitely respects Henrich a bit more and feels when he promises HIM that he'll come to church, he has to keep that promise. And he came, even though the guy was waaaaay hung over. He knows about the WoW but we're trying to curb his wierd thinking that he can "live it up" now and repent later. He's our trouble child. :)
On Friday we taught our tart Schw. Page, the Englishwoman. She's super hilarious, although she watches too much CNN and tells us about the news and makes it sounds like Armeggedon is at our doors. But we noticed that she's a lot more calm and happy now that she's reading the BoM again--she apparantly read the BoM in 5 days when she was an investigator and hasn't read it since--in like 10 years or whatever, so this week has been an amazing thing to see how the BoM really is inspired of God to change us. We also got to teach Ines, an 11yr old Neubekehrt from Italy (I geeked out about Italy with her mom!) and I basteld this "puzzle" with all the pieces of the Armor of God and we taught her about it, and she's super cool. We wrapped up our day by teaching Wolfgang and Helga and lots of OYMing. Our lives are blessedly verrückt.
We also got a call from this random kontakt we tried to visit, saying that he was sorry that he didn't make his appointment but wants to meet with us in October when he has more time. That was amazing because when you leave a note saying "call us back to make a Termin" you usually don't expect them to actually do it! It was marvelous.
Saturday was a day of fun---trying to find referrals from a member and realizing that this person has already been referred and already said NO. But we met with Michael Mauritz, this fella who really just stays home and plays video games and worships Star Trek, but he wants to read in the BoM! We then met with Sylvia, from Nigeria (or Ghana?) and taught her more about the BoM. She really likes that people in our church believe in prophets but they don't ask for money like many people do in Africa. I was worried that she was listening to us to be polite, because she kinda shies away from doing anything, so I asked her what kind of questions she has that she needs answers for, and she said she wants to know what happens after we die. Good thing the BoM totally answers that! So she's more excited to read and actually learn.
Sunday was also great--6 people came to church, including Ingo and Adrian. We stayed after for Gemeindeessen at sat at a table with all of our Neubekehrt friends, which is really just a fun mental picture--I love spending fun time with Neubekehrts because it doesn't matter how long ago they were baptised, they still radiate the same light they do just after baptism. And they took Ingo under their wing, which was precious. We went to visit Herr Abbel, a contact we found my first week here. He totally remembered us and gave us cake and everything and we talked about his life (he's done archeology and everything else under the sun) and introduced the BoM. He has a really strong faith but didn't want to disappoint us and told us to keep our book. Instead he gave us "grandpa wisdom" just telling us to keep our faith and make it strong and be wise in life. It was pretty inspirational. He said if he's still alive in 2 years, he'll call us, haha.
But yeah, our week was pretty insanely awesome. 22 lessons, phuh. We love it--and the best stuff that happened this week wasn't even planned by us at all, it was all Heavenly Father's doing. :)
We called Präs. Kozak to report about our Taufdatum and he was sooo happy--because that morning he sent out a text with the quote, "The Lord will put prepared people in the path of prepared missionaries" or something like that and was really impressed with Ingo's story. He was like, "I wish I had 148 Sisters in this mission!" Naja. ;P
Well I think that's all on my end--I got a baptism this Saturday! WE ARE SO EXCITED!! More deeets to come.
I love you guys soooo sehr!
love,
Whit
Monday, September 10, 2012
Work is awesome...
Hallo Familie!
So what if I'm stuck on the Brits? I can't help it if their accents are glorious.
Another week of Bielefeld, check! It was a great week with some interesting twists and turns. For starters, last Pday we bought some greatly-needed supplies for our apartment. We seriously needed new bedding, a dish rack, a laundry hamper, silverware, a frying pan, shower curtain, you name it--we needed it bad for our apartment! And so we got all those things--at IKEA! It was super fun and we found all the things we needed, of course! The next day we got an IKEA catalog and so we clipped out our "future IKEA homes" for fun. I know, random obsession, but I think I'm past it now. :) But I sort of attacked our apartment to really organize everything because it was just a mess, so all of our church materials look a lot better and we got rid of a ton of junk....like some old copy of a JW Bible. Tschüss!
On Tuesday we had what's now called a Zone Council Mtg--it's like Zone Conference, only we don't share it with a neighboring zone, it's only 3 hours instead of the whole day, and it was run by our ZLs and not by Präs. or the APs. The APs were there to in essence bring our mail and supplies but other than that, it was short and sweet! It was pretty nice because it wasn't strung out so long--and we'll have them monthly rather than every transfer, so we thought it was pretty nice.
BUT on Tuesday evening I got the BEST CALL OF MY LIFE, LEUTE! Sis. Schneider called me to say that TAN HAS A TAUFDATUM! My favorite person in Chemnitz will be baptised as of now on Dec. 16th. Aaaaaand that means that I might really really really want to go go GO! Gaaah! She told me and I got all emotional and everything but I was so happy. One of my people is taking the plunge! Gaaah, it makes me so happy. So that was probably the hilight of my week so far. I told Tan before I left that he has to send me pictures of his baptism, but it'd be great if I could actually make it. Good luck convincing my comp to take the 5 hr. journey there, though... but that's not til December!!!
We got a call from a member-who's-not-a-member-now-but-wants-to-be-rebaptized and he told us that he wanted to fast for us and for missionary work this week, and we felt like especially on Wednesday we got an extra boost! It was mainly a lot of rushing here and there to make our buses and trains so it was great running, JEEZ. But we had a great lesson with Frank, even though he has TONS of questions. He likes asking us though how missionary work functions. He asked if our Büro gives us like a reward at the end of our mission, like a paycheck or whatever, keine Ahnung, but we were like, "no, we don't get a reward." "Then WHY do you do it??" We tried explaining to him that helping people was reward enough, but that just blew his mind TOO much. He's hilarious. His friend George asked for a Book of Mormon, so it was a good day. We meet him at this German house that is remodeled to be more like a boarding house for Auslanders/students, so there were a couple of curious guys like, "who's the girls?" They all tried inviting us to lunch and stuff and we're like, "neeeeeeein danke!"
But we have to take a 30min train ride there, right? So we get on the train and I remember hearing something on the overcom but didn't really think anything of it just like a "enjoy your trip" thing, whatever. Well we notice that half way through we're sitting on the tracks but I'm writing like crazy in my journal and we don't notice no NOTHING. Like we're idiots or something--because they were doing some kind of construction and asked everyone to get off! The driver walks by and we think he's checking our tickets and he's like, "what are YOU two doing here?" and we're like, "We're going back to Bielefeld!" like we don't notice what's going on. He explains that he already ASKED everyone to get off, and that we shouldn't be on the train. But he was actually really nice about it, drove us back to the nearest station so we could take another train home. But he was friendly and asked us where we were from--he tried to remember who sang some random song about "Kansas City" but he was totally enthusiastic about us being Americans (pretty dumb-feeling Americans at this point) and being misionaries and asked about what we do. We were able to give him a card and thus we officially had the craaaaziest opportunity to give someone a card. I have a feeling it has something to do with this fast.
Fun experience this week--we went to a Pizza Hut here in Jahnplatz, or the Innenstadt with Alicia and Sai--Sai is from Fiji and works for the British military, and Alicia is a member from Utah--and Sai is our investigator at the moment--but it was hilarious, because Alicia ACTUALLY brought her own ranch to dip her pizza in. Wanna know the last time I had ranch? The MTC! I thought it was hilarious and it reminded me of the boys. Everything goes well with ranch! It was weird because the waitress even talked in English and gave us English menus so it was like an hour being in the USA (only you know how chic the Pizza Huts are in Germany) before going back outside to Germany. But it was pretty fun! I was full like the entire day.
We also met a new investigator this week at the church--Ingoo. At least that's how you say it, but he's German, pretty sure of it. He got our card from a member and called us last Sunday to meet with us (and for every 2000 cards you give out, maybe one will call back, seriously) and he told us about how unhappy he is with his life and he wants to change and he thought we could help. He doesn't have a church background to speak of, but we taught him how to pray and gave him a BoM. Talk about Golden people finding US! It was a super big miracle and he's willing to do anything, and he really wants to know if God can help him. It was pretty inspiring and ridiculously awesome.
We're also teaching a couple of our Neubekehrts how to use FamilySearch and how to do Family History work, which has been a lot of fun. We're really lucky that we live 10min away from the church so we have lots of appointments there, since we teach and meet with a lot of men and we aren't allowed to go to their apartments alone. But it's just nice to have like 3-4 appts at the church and just breeze through them all and not run all over town! :)
One lesson was particularly awesome. We met with Bru. Baumeister, a less active from Serbia (or is it Seiberia? Keine Ahnung) to start meeting with him and getting him back on track. He's the type that loves the gospel, loves the church, but moved or something--he hasn't been to church since 2005 and I think he feels guilty for not doing so and therefore it makes it hard to come back because I think he's afraid others will judge him. But we invited him to of course meet with us at the Church and we helped him practice his English by reading from a Kinder Buch Mormon alloud. But he walks in, we turn on the lights, and he just looks around in reverent silence and the Spirit just rushed in like wind, and you could tell he could feel it, too. We gave him quasi a "church tour" so he could just soak it up after being gone for so long. There's lots of pictures of ward members and he knew so many of them and was like, "all the good people I know are in this Church--all the good things in my life come from this Church." And it was a really cool, inspiring experience. He himself said it was a good idea to meet there. Leider, he didn't make it to church, but we're working on him! It's so weird to see how the Lord is REALLY trying to reach out to people and they just don't realize it at all.
Okay, so breaking news: Bielefeld has a baptism on 22Sept! We were supposed to have it this week, but it was way too rushed trying to teach Annalies everything she needs to know before her baptism. But she's Dutch with a killer British accent and will have Bischof "British" Brown baptize her. So the whole thing will be in English! Fun stuff. Ironic that she's Dutch though. The whole Danish/Dutch thing. At least she knows the difference! :) So that makes me grin from ear to ear each day--Taufe!
Another thing that was kind of funny was church yesterday--they called Günter, one of our Neubekehrts to play organ in Sacrament because he plays the piano super well and like has done it on cruise ships for years--but he can't play his way out of a paper bag when it comes to organ. But they let the poor guy do it anyway. He plays it really loud and slow and at the end of every song he would play some extra cords that he COULD play and it sounded like a Catholic sermon-type organ. It was different but I felt bad for the guy--his hands were shaking like he had palsy all through Sunday School.
We also had for the majority of our Sunday some weekly planning since some plans fell out (a lot of plans fell out and we had to be quick with some alternative options) but we felt like we should go outside and find some contacts or just do some OYMs and stuff--something I wouldn't have been excited for if you asked me in the first 3 months of Germany! But we tried to contact a guy that set up an app with us but he wasn't there at all, so we did dooring in the näher. Someone lets us in and at the beginning of the staircase there's a sign that says, "We don't want what you're selling, we don't want to donate to our cause, we don't want to change our religion--ALSO, TSCHÜSS!" and we thought it was hilarious but we kept going up--because when someone tells you not to klingel the neighbors because they don't think they'll listen--it usually means we'll find someone who needs us. And in this case it happened! An old lady answered her door and excitedly let us in. She never leaves her place because she can hardly walk and feels so lonely since her husband died and she's still gläubig but still needs help and we're like, "we're here! God sent us to you!" and she was pretty happy that we came. We will probably help her with picking up milk every once in a while, but she just let us in and wanted us to help her. Sounds like a plan! It's one of those miracles where it starts out, "Well, what should we do?" "I dunno, dooring?" "Mmkay, maybe this klingel?" "okay." Not like a "my spiritual sensors are tingling! Someone needs us HERE!" Just very quiet, but very efficient.
So that's the latest from my patch of field that we're harvesting.
Präsident wrote back saying that he would let me know about my release date soon. I'll let you know when I hear something!
I love you guys! Thanks for the prayers and the fun emails and everything else in between. Mom said something about how me going on a mission is a dream for her. Well, it's a dream come true for me, and I know it's because of you.
Until next Monday! Ich habe euch ganz doll lieb!
--Whit
So what if I'm stuck on the Brits? I can't help it if their accents are glorious.
Another week of Bielefeld, check! It was a great week with some interesting twists and turns. For starters, last Pday we bought some greatly-needed supplies for our apartment. We seriously needed new bedding, a dish rack, a laundry hamper, silverware, a frying pan, shower curtain, you name it--we needed it bad for our apartment! And so we got all those things--at IKEA! It was super fun and we found all the things we needed, of course! The next day we got an IKEA catalog and so we clipped out our "future IKEA homes" for fun. I know, random obsession, but I think I'm past it now. :) But I sort of attacked our apartment to really organize everything because it was just a mess, so all of our church materials look a lot better and we got rid of a ton of junk....like some old copy of a JW Bible. Tschüss!
On Tuesday we had what's now called a Zone Council Mtg--it's like Zone Conference, only we don't share it with a neighboring zone, it's only 3 hours instead of the whole day, and it was run by our ZLs and not by Präs. or the APs. The APs were there to in essence bring our mail and supplies but other than that, it was short and sweet! It was pretty nice because it wasn't strung out so long--and we'll have them monthly rather than every transfer, so we thought it was pretty nice.
BUT on Tuesday evening I got the BEST CALL OF MY LIFE, LEUTE! Sis. Schneider called me to say that TAN HAS A TAUFDATUM! My favorite person in Chemnitz will be baptised as of now on Dec. 16th. Aaaaaand that means that I might really really really want to go go GO! Gaaah! She told me and I got all emotional and everything but I was so happy. One of my people is taking the plunge! Gaaah, it makes me so happy. So that was probably the hilight of my week so far. I told Tan before I left that he has to send me pictures of his baptism, but it'd be great if I could actually make it. Good luck convincing my comp to take the 5 hr. journey there, though... but that's not til December!!!
We got a call from a member-who's-not-a-member-now-but-wants-to-be-rebaptized and he told us that he wanted to fast for us and for missionary work this week, and we felt like especially on Wednesday we got an extra boost! It was mainly a lot of rushing here and there to make our buses and trains so it was great running, JEEZ. But we had a great lesson with Frank, even though he has TONS of questions. He likes asking us though how missionary work functions. He asked if our Büro gives us like a reward at the end of our mission, like a paycheck or whatever, keine Ahnung, but we were like, "no, we don't get a reward." "Then WHY do you do it??" We tried explaining to him that helping people was reward enough, but that just blew his mind TOO much. He's hilarious. His friend George asked for a Book of Mormon, so it was a good day. We meet him at this German house that is remodeled to be more like a boarding house for Auslanders/students, so there were a couple of curious guys like, "who's the girls?" They all tried inviting us to lunch and stuff and we're like, "neeeeeeein danke!"
But we have to take a 30min train ride there, right? So we get on the train and I remember hearing something on the overcom but didn't really think anything of it just like a "enjoy your trip" thing, whatever. Well we notice that half way through we're sitting on the tracks but I'm writing like crazy in my journal and we don't notice no NOTHING. Like we're idiots or something--because they were doing some kind of construction and asked everyone to get off! The driver walks by and we think he's checking our tickets and he's like, "what are YOU two doing here?" and we're like, "We're going back to Bielefeld!" like we don't notice what's going on. He explains that he already ASKED everyone to get off, and that we shouldn't be on the train. But he was actually really nice about it, drove us back to the nearest station so we could take another train home. But he was friendly and asked us where we were from--he tried to remember who sang some random song about "Kansas City" but he was totally enthusiastic about us being Americans (pretty dumb-feeling Americans at this point) and being misionaries and asked about what we do. We were able to give him a card and thus we officially had the craaaaziest opportunity to give someone a card. I have a feeling it has something to do with this fast.
Fun experience this week--we went to a Pizza Hut here in Jahnplatz, or the Innenstadt with Alicia and Sai--Sai is from Fiji and works for the British military, and Alicia is a member from Utah--and Sai is our investigator at the moment--but it was hilarious, because Alicia ACTUALLY brought her own ranch to dip her pizza in. Wanna know the last time I had ranch? The MTC! I thought it was hilarious and it reminded me of the boys. Everything goes well with ranch! It was weird because the waitress even talked in English and gave us English menus so it was like an hour being in the USA (only you know how chic the Pizza Huts are in Germany) before going back outside to Germany. But it was pretty fun! I was full like the entire day.
We also met a new investigator this week at the church--Ingoo. At least that's how you say it, but he's German, pretty sure of it. He got our card from a member and called us last Sunday to meet with us (and for every 2000 cards you give out, maybe one will call back, seriously) and he told us about how unhappy he is with his life and he wants to change and he thought we could help. He doesn't have a church background to speak of, but we taught him how to pray and gave him a BoM. Talk about Golden people finding US! It was a super big miracle and he's willing to do anything, and he really wants to know if God can help him. It was pretty inspiring and ridiculously awesome.
We're also teaching a couple of our Neubekehrts how to use FamilySearch and how to do Family History work, which has been a lot of fun. We're really lucky that we live 10min away from the church so we have lots of appointments there, since we teach and meet with a lot of men and we aren't allowed to go to their apartments alone. But it's just nice to have like 3-4 appts at the church and just breeze through them all and not run all over town! :)
One lesson was particularly awesome. We met with Bru. Baumeister, a less active from Serbia (or is it Seiberia? Keine Ahnung) to start meeting with him and getting him back on track. He's the type that loves the gospel, loves the church, but moved or something--he hasn't been to church since 2005 and I think he feels guilty for not doing so and therefore it makes it hard to come back because I think he's afraid others will judge him. But we invited him to of course meet with us at the Church and we helped him practice his English by reading from a Kinder Buch Mormon alloud. But he walks in, we turn on the lights, and he just looks around in reverent silence and the Spirit just rushed in like wind, and you could tell he could feel it, too. We gave him quasi a "church tour" so he could just soak it up after being gone for so long. There's lots of pictures of ward members and he knew so many of them and was like, "all the good people I know are in this Church--all the good things in my life come from this Church." And it was a really cool, inspiring experience. He himself said it was a good idea to meet there. Leider, he didn't make it to church, but we're working on him! It's so weird to see how the Lord is REALLY trying to reach out to people and they just don't realize it at all.
Okay, so breaking news: Bielefeld has a baptism on 22Sept! We were supposed to have it this week, but it was way too rushed trying to teach Annalies everything she needs to know before her baptism. But she's Dutch with a killer British accent and will have Bischof "British" Brown baptize her. So the whole thing will be in English! Fun stuff. Ironic that she's Dutch though. The whole Danish/Dutch thing. At least she knows the difference! :) So that makes me grin from ear to ear each day--Taufe!
Another thing that was kind of funny was church yesterday--they called Günter, one of our Neubekehrts to play organ in Sacrament because he plays the piano super well and like has done it on cruise ships for years--but he can't play his way out of a paper bag when it comes to organ. But they let the poor guy do it anyway. He plays it really loud and slow and at the end of every song he would play some extra cords that he COULD play and it sounded like a Catholic sermon-type organ. It was different but I felt bad for the guy--his hands were shaking like he had palsy all through Sunday School.
We also had for the majority of our Sunday some weekly planning since some plans fell out (a lot of plans fell out and we had to be quick with some alternative options) but we felt like we should go outside and find some contacts or just do some OYMs and stuff--something I wouldn't have been excited for if you asked me in the first 3 months of Germany! But we tried to contact a guy that set up an app with us but he wasn't there at all, so we did dooring in the näher. Someone lets us in and at the beginning of the staircase there's a sign that says, "We don't want what you're selling, we don't want to donate to our cause, we don't want to change our religion--ALSO, TSCHÜSS!" and we thought it was hilarious but we kept going up--because when someone tells you not to klingel the neighbors because they don't think they'll listen--it usually means we'll find someone who needs us. And in this case it happened! An old lady answered her door and excitedly let us in. She never leaves her place because she can hardly walk and feels so lonely since her husband died and she's still gläubig but still needs help and we're like, "we're here! God sent us to you!" and she was pretty happy that we came. We will probably help her with picking up milk every once in a while, but she just let us in and wanted us to help her. Sounds like a plan! It's one of those miracles where it starts out, "Well, what should we do?" "I dunno, dooring?" "Mmkay, maybe this klingel?" "okay." Not like a "my spiritual sensors are tingling! Someone needs us HERE!" Just very quiet, but very efficient.
So that's the latest from my patch of field that we're harvesting.
Präsident wrote back saying that he would let me know about my release date soon. I'll let you know when I hear something!
I love you guys! Thanks for the prayers and the fun emails and everything else in between. Mom said something about how me going on a mission is a dream for her. Well, it's a dream come true for me, and I know it's because of you.
Until next Monday! Ich habe euch ganz doll lieb!
--Whit
Monday, September 3, 2012
Really excited...
Hallo Familie!
Hooray, it's finally Pday!!! This week has been so long, mainly with all the new stuff to get used to.
Bielefeld is amazing. And so is Sis. Child! Just a bit about her, she's a Humanities major at BYU and she's almost done with studies, so I will hopefully see her around when she gets back, but she's pretty awesome and everything a missionary should be. She also comes from Bountiful, so my second "Utahn" companion, but she knows how to get stuff done here!
This area is insane. We have a baptism in 2 weeks, and 3 more along the way, the ward is really on top of missionary work, and work amazingly with our Neubekehrts--someone recieved the gift of the Holy Ghost this past Sunday, yesterday, so I am coming into something BIG. I went to Ward Council, and they joked, "every Sister that comes here sees about 10 baptisms each, don't break the chain!" But they know their city is amazing, and they know the missionaries are amazing and expect a lot from us. It's....incredible. If I get to stay here the rest of my mission, you'll know I "died" a happy Sister! Sister Power rules here. And not just that, but we've already found some new people here.
And the most amazing thing: THERE ARE BRITISH PEOPLE IN OUR WARD!!!! That's right, British. I am shivering with excitement and have no idea what to start with first, so I'll just start from the beginning:
So yeah, leaving Chemnitz wasn't really that hard; I really liked the experiences there, and even though I didn't know anything about Bielefeld, I was just excited, and just did the usual packing, cleaning, tieing loose ends stuff. I've been pretty proud with myself that besides this box, everything still fits, and I didn't even need to "overdress" for the big transfer! So I'm learning some tricks and it's paying off. As far as transfers, it was pretty smooth--I went from Chemnitz to Leipzig, and from there to Bielefeld--a 5 hour trip! The last leg was great because I sat by this really nice German couple and I actually got to talk to them for like 2 of the hours about my work as a missionary and about what we believe, and they were pretty impressed. They were heading to Kölln and I had no cards dabei but it was a great experience and they were really impressed with me (and my German! woot!) But this time I didn't even have to really move my luggage myself, because people were pretty nice and offered to help.
So for the rest of Tuesday, I unpacked, bought groceries, visited a Neubekehrt, Diana and tried contacting referrals from the members. Everything is really spread out, so we take Straßenbahns, buses, and the SBahns are cool because they also become UBahns and go underground to places like Jahnplatz (Innenstadt) or Hauptbahnhof. This place is bereit, zum Ernte bereit! If you can imagine, we use all this stuff because even with Tuesday mainly loosely planned, we taught 23 lessons in 6 days. I LOVE IT!!
The British-ness started on Wednesday. They actually have some British military bases here like we had in Ramstein, but they have the housing off-base, and we helped some friends of Annaliese, our baptism in 2 weeks move out of their place, and it felt pretty familiar! Eeeeeveryone was speaking with a British accent and of all Pday shirts to wear, I picked my Harry Potter shirt I got in Florida--ohne Absicht! You can imagine that I died and went to heaven. I forgot how nice people are, until we went there to help. hehehehehe *excited giggles* But we helped with weeding the walk way with a BLOW TORCH. Take that, Jordo! Sisters can use flamable objects for service projects! Good thing Sis. Child loves British people, too.
But here in general there are a lot more houses, and it's beautiful. Hardly any sort of reminders of the DDR with like weird art or whatever. There are of course apartments, but there's a great deal of multiplexes, houses and what have you. It's beautiful, what can I say?? I am absolutely exhausted everyday but I love it. Love it love it.
We met a lot this week with Neubekehrts and investigators this week, with a few members and less actives in between. For example, I met Schw Page who is also British, just a funny lady because everything she says is funny when it's British, but she's exactly like Schw. Münch in Cottbus, so it wasn't much of a problem trying to figure her out. It's funny because she actually loves video games, and when we came in she was actually hunting for cheats online like the boys do and she was like, "I don't got the time to figure it out meself, you see?"
With the small British poplulation, there's actually a few couples in our ward with a British husband with a German wife, like our Bischof Brown--it's really useful for English-speaking investigators, but his German is of course amazing. But I mention that, because we were putting cards in Briefkastens when I saw "SMITH" on one of the boxes. I just had to klingle it because that was the first Smith I've seen here in Germany! Unfortunately no interest, but it was worth it, haha.
Another hilight of the week was meeting Frank from Ghana, who's really only been taught twice, so we got to teach some usual basics. We taught him mainly about revelation and answers to prayers through the Holy Ghost. I could see that he really wanted to change his life and our lesson with him was powerful and hilarious. Mainly because in the middle of it, he got a call and he tried to tell the person repeatedly that he couldn't talk right then but later. We heard: "I have visitors here...they are my Sisters from the Church okay? They are trying to save my life, so can you just let me call you back later?...Okay, so God is saving my life through the Sisters, okay? Just please call back laters, bye!" It was pretty funny, but pretty awesome to hear. He did ask if we could speak in tongues, and he was pretty disappointed that it doesn't ever really ever happen. But he was really impressed with what we had to say and especially about our "passion" as he called it. He said people have "something" when they are converted and we have it, and he wants it. More to come in the future!
The same day (which felt forever long!) we went to visit a Neubekehrt, Bru. Viehoff and his member-girlfriend, Schw. Steinweg and she's the one actually giving us referrals. But we tried finding them before and after the appointment, and within that time frame, we contacted and made out appointments with two of them, found two new investigators through dooring and ultimately through all of that had 3 walk ins. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN EVERYDAY. Although most of the referrals we got were African ladies...and none of them really knew this member...but whatever! :) We just sat in the bus when the day was done and just looked at each other and just laughed. Tender mercies up in HERE!
So that's just the insane-ness that is Bielefeld. We are buuuuusy. But Sis. Child knows her way around and she's really good at talking to lots of people, we make a pretty good team! I still really miss my investigators and such in Chemnitz and I hope that they're making progress. I plan on keeping in touch with the ones I'm allowed to--because they are SO CLOSE!
You know what the great thing is about having the British military here? The members offer to buy us stuff like BROWN SUGAR and other baking stuff that they don't have here. Woot!
I love you guys! Thanks for praying for me mom, I landed in the jackpot. I haven't decided if I deserve it yet, but I decided that I gotta keep the good rep of the Sisters up!
Bis nächste Woche! I love you!
Whit
Hooray, it's finally Pday!!! This week has been so long, mainly with all the new stuff to get used to.
Bielefeld is amazing. And so is Sis. Child! Just a bit about her, she's a Humanities major at BYU and she's almost done with studies, so I will hopefully see her around when she gets back, but she's pretty awesome and everything a missionary should be. She also comes from Bountiful, so my second "Utahn" companion, but she knows how to get stuff done here!
This area is insane. We have a baptism in 2 weeks, and 3 more along the way, the ward is really on top of missionary work, and work amazingly with our Neubekehrts--someone recieved the gift of the Holy Ghost this past Sunday, yesterday, so I am coming into something BIG. I went to Ward Council, and they joked, "every Sister that comes here sees about 10 baptisms each, don't break the chain!" But they know their city is amazing, and they know the missionaries are amazing and expect a lot from us. It's....incredible. If I get to stay here the rest of my mission, you'll know I "died" a happy Sister! Sister Power rules here. And not just that, but we've already found some new people here.
And the most amazing thing: THERE ARE BRITISH PEOPLE IN OUR WARD!!!! That's right, British. I am shivering with excitement and have no idea what to start with first, so I'll just start from the beginning:
So yeah, leaving Chemnitz wasn't really that hard; I really liked the experiences there, and even though I didn't know anything about Bielefeld, I was just excited, and just did the usual packing, cleaning, tieing loose ends stuff. I've been pretty proud with myself that besides this box, everything still fits, and I didn't even need to "overdress" for the big transfer! So I'm learning some tricks and it's paying off. As far as transfers, it was pretty smooth--I went from Chemnitz to Leipzig, and from there to Bielefeld--a 5 hour trip! The last leg was great because I sat by this really nice German couple and I actually got to talk to them for like 2 of the hours about my work as a missionary and about what we believe, and they were pretty impressed. They were heading to Kölln and I had no cards dabei but it was a great experience and they were really impressed with me (and my German! woot!) But this time I didn't even have to really move my luggage myself, because people were pretty nice and offered to help.
So for the rest of Tuesday, I unpacked, bought groceries, visited a Neubekehrt, Diana and tried contacting referrals from the members. Everything is really spread out, so we take Straßenbahns, buses, and the SBahns are cool because they also become UBahns and go underground to places like Jahnplatz (Innenstadt) or Hauptbahnhof. This place is bereit, zum Ernte bereit! If you can imagine, we use all this stuff because even with Tuesday mainly loosely planned, we taught 23 lessons in 6 days. I LOVE IT!!
The British-ness started on Wednesday. They actually have some British military bases here like we had in Ramstein, but they have the housing off-base, and we helped some friends of Annaliese, our baptism in 2 weeks move out of their place, and it felt pretty familiar! Eeeeeveryone was speaking with a British accent and of all Pday shirts to wear, I picked my Harry Potter shirt I got in Florida--ohne Absicht! You can imagine that I died and went to heaven. I forgot how nice people are, until we went there to help. hehehehehe *excited giggles* But we helped with weeding the walk way with a BLOW TORCH. Take that, Jordo! Sisters can use flamable objects for service projects! Good thing Sis. Child loves British people, too.
But here in general there are a lot more houses, and it's beautiful. Hardly any sort of reminders of the DDR with like weird art or whatever. There are of course apartments, but there's a great deal of multiplexes, houses and what have you. It's beautiful, what can I say?? I am absolutely exhausted everyday but I love it. Love it love it.
We met a lot this week with Neubekehrts and investigators this week, with a few members and less actives in between. For example, I met Schw Page who is also British, just a funny lady because everything she says is funny when it's British, but she's exactly like Schw. Münch in Cottbus, so it wasn't much of a problem trying to figure her out. It's funny because she actually loves video games, and when we came in she was actually hunting for cheats online like the boys do and she was like, "I don't got the time to figure it out meself, you see?"
With the small British poplulation, there's actually a few couples in our ward with a British husband with a German wife, like our Bischof Brown--it's really useful for English-speaking investigators, but his German is of course amazing. But I mention that, because we were putting cards in Briefkastens when I saw "SMITH" on one of the boxes. I just had to klingle it because that was the first Smith I've seen here in Germany! Unfortunately no interest, but it was worth it, haha.
Another hilight of the week was meeting Frank from Ghana, who's really only been taught twice, so we got to teach some usual basics. We taught him mainly about revelation and answers to prayers through the Holy Ghost. I could see that he really wanted to change his life and our lesson with him was powerful and hilarious. Mainly because in the middle of it, he got a call and he tried to tell the person repeatedly that he couldn't talk right then but later. We heard: "I have visitors here...they are my Sisters from the Church okay? They are trying to save my life, so can you just let me call you back later?...Okay, so God is saving my life through the Sisters, okay? Just please call back laters, bye!" It was pretty funny, but pretty awesome to hear. He did ask if we could speak in tongues, and he was pretty disappointed that it doesn't ever really ever happen. But he was really impressed with what we had to say and especially about our "passion" as he called it. He said people have "something" when they are converted and we have it, and he wants it. More to come in the future!
The same day (which felt forever long!) we went to visit a Neubekehrt, Bru. Viehoff and his member-girlfriend, Schw. Steinweg and she's the one actually giving us referrals. But we tried finding them before and after the appointment, and within that time frame, we contacted and made out appointments with two of them, found two new investigators through dooring and ultimately through all of that had 3 walk ins. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN EVERYDAY. Although most of the referrals we got were African ladies...and none of them really knew this member...but whatever! :) We just sat in the bus when the day was done and just looked at each other and just laughed. Tender mercies up in HERE!
So that's just the insane-ness that is Bielefeld. We are buuuuusy. But Sis. Child knows her way around and she's really good at talking to lots of people, we make a pretty good team! I still really miss my investigators and such in Chemnitz and I hope that they're making progress. I plan on keeping in touch with the ones I'm allowed to--because they are SO CLOSE!
You know what the great thing is about having the British military here? The members offer to buy us stuff like BROWN SUGAR and other baking stuff that they don't have here. Woot!
I love you guys! Thanks for praying for me mom, I landed in the jackpot. I haven't decided if I deserve it yet, but I decided that I gotta keep the good rep of the Sisters up!
Bis nächste Woche! I love you!
Whit
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