Baptism!!!

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