Busy week

Hallo Familie!

Soooo happy to write to you all! Conference was pretty kick-butt and I'm excited to tell you what's what in Bielefeld.

For one thing, we had transfer calls and Sis. Child and I are staying. I was pretty sure I was staying, but Sis. Child was pretty nervous about leaving, and everyone's pretty sure that I'll be training soon. I sure hope so--I only have 3 more transfers including this one, so I don't have much time at all! Freaky!

Well Monday was a pretty fun Pday--we went to Hannover as a district and we just wandered around and took pictures in the crisp new Fall weather. It was pretty dang cold this week, but Monday was super great weather! We spent most of our time exploring and seeing the Rathaus, because it's got one of those towers that you can take an elevator up and see everything and it was pretty gorgeous! They had some models showing what Hannover looked like as an old city, just before the war, just after the war (it was completely bombed out) and what it looks like today--pretty incredible. We also visited this big store called Primark that has some pretty cool clothes for relativ cheap. For example, I got a jacket that's like a bit warmer than the tan jacket I have but not as warm as my winter coat--just a nice in between. And it's RED! Perfect for fall. :)

Well, this week was like the mother-load of lesson-fall-outs. We had like 24 lessons planned and scheduled and we only schaff'd 14 of them because people just fell out! It was frustrating but we ended up being able to visit people who really need us and such. I know 14 lessons is never BAD because I know many areas would love to see 14 lessons, but that's quite a bit of fall-outs. In the mean time, we got to meet Fr. Ilazi from Macedonia and her two little boys. We ansprach'd her last week and stopped by but she was a bit busy, but we were at least able to give her a BoM and got to know her a bit better. 

But what made this week a bit...icklich was the fact that with the start of October we lost our hot water--it just for some reason went out and only for OUR apartment, not for our neighbors. And we were wondering when our Heizungs would turn on, because our house is right by a little forest and it's heavily shielded by trees so it was for this week way colder inside than it was outside! We tried calling people all day and all this week, trying to figure out who had which keys to which cellar and blah blah blah--and on Saturday, blessed blessed Saturday we got both heating and hot water! Mensch it was a bit rough, but it was also a good laugh I guess. You learn to be proactive and talk to your extremeley smelly and creepy neighbors! It got pretty stressful this week trying to figure this stupid problem out and trying to plan three baptisms at the same time...Turns out there's a bit of drama dealing with money in our Wohnung but none of it was our fault--we just got caught in the cross-fires so zu sagen but we're just pretty grateful for hot water and heat! You can only wear your hair in a french braid for so long...

So October 3rd was my 1 year mark in Germany, how BIZARRE. Like, a year ago I knew diddly SQUAT. and now maybe I know just a little bit more squat! hahah, but it's great to look back and see where I was and where I am now. 

On Wednesday we made another baptismal date for George--18.November! That makes 3 baptisms in this new transfer! He said that he wasn't baptized while he lived in Africa because there's a lot of "false priests" who just perform fake miracles or preach for money and have private jets or whatever while their Gemeindes are starving, but he saw just the one time he was able to make it to church that our church is the real deal--and we know that George speaks his mind and he's very blunt, so when he says he wants to be baptized and says, "what should I do to be prepared?" he sure means it! :)

We also taught Gudrun, who's this little cute old lady who is just a bit geistig behindert by showing her the Finding Faith in Christ movie, because she learns about the gospel like a child, and she LOVED it. We let her keep the movie because she wants to show it to ALL her friends, she is so hilarious. 

The other highlight this week was Ingo--he's making progress like crazy! Especially when we have good joint teachers. We taught him the Word of Wisdom and it totally made sense for him and luckily for us, REALLY lucky for us, he already follows it. He always asks questions about prayer and how to recognize answers and we have some really great conversations with him. And he's remembering a lot more than before--we were getting pretty worried that we would repeat something relativ basic and he wouldn't respond all too well--like he isn't paying attention or he's not getting it--but now things are going a lot better. 

On Friday we visited Diana and Andre--both who need visits to keep them afloat. They both needed a boost and luckily for us the circumstances were perfect that we visited them at the best time possible. We also visited Vladmir, another Taufkandidat this week. His son is a convert and he's working pretty hardcore on his big, tattoo'd Russian daddy. We're helping him quit smoking and drinking but for him it's a lot easier when he lives closer to his son Michael. The two also taught us how to say, "read the book of mormon!" in Russian. It was fun trying to get the pronunciation down. Bruder Baumeister met with us later that day to help us practice and we helped him with his English. I am extremely happy because he came to two sessions of General Conference! It was great to see members go up to him to say hello after many years of sort of ducking away from members. We told him he needs to befriend Vladmir because he barely speaks German, so having another Russian guy to talk to would be super cool. And some less actives don't neccesarily need to hear "you need the church," sometimes they respond better to, "the church needs YOU!"

Saturday was of course awesome. We helped Alicia and Sai build a Klammotte from Ikea and then they taught us how to make homemade eggrolls. SO good! We weren't able to make it to the RS broadcast, but we saw the first 3 sessions of conference over Saturday and Sunday--there were a lot of members sitting in the English room to practice their English. Dad--There's a Bruder Adler in my ward, I think he's a General Authority! He's heading to Sweden this week. :) I liked the "ask the missionaries!" talk and my mind was BLOOOOOOWN about the age-changing bit. I definitely have a lot of friends that I've met out here and some back home that I'm sure were prettty dang glad to hear about that. Out here, for girls, if you study, it takes a lot time and once you start a school program, there's no 1 1/2 year break in view. For example, Sis. Schneider had to be completely done with school before going on her mission, and most girls loose their desire to go after 5 years of school and there's the danger of blocking career opportunities...so being able to go a lot earlier will be absolutley amazing. Eeeeevery mission president loves to have a legion of Sisters. Präs. Kozak said so himself! He said, (when we called about our new Taufdatum), "Meine Gute, Sis. Olsen, I would much rather have 185 Sisters in this mission!" So that's pretty exciting. They've been trying to shorten and shorten the MTC program to allow more kids to pass through, some of the groups coming in have been tested to see how prepared they are with 3 weeks of Foreign language training rather than 9, so it's either that, or maybe they'll need a second MTC in the States! Pretty exciting.

I saw a little blip about the Kansas City temple/culture celebration and also about the Brigham City Temple in the church news bit in between sessions. That was pretty amazing to see the finished deal! They showed normal shots of Kansas City, MO in generaly and THAT was weird; but super amazing to get such an amazing shout-out from the Prophet about the show! I got really emotional to know that my lil' bro was in that crowd of 3,000 youth kneeling on the floor for a miracle. Jeez, that was cool. 

There was also a bit about the Christus statue in Italy and they're trying to use the same material and whatever they can to make it look as close to the original as possible. The segment was pretty cool and they showed what the temple and visitor center will look like. Gaaah, the news! We soaked it up while everyone went home.

But with Conference I definitely got a lot of insight for myself and for my investigators. Unfortunately, not many of them could make it, but Bru. Baumeister came which was a miracle. We saw a few less-actives that needed to be there, so that was great. I wrote next to most of the talks, "perfect for so-and-so!" so we'll be using some talks for our people peeps!

Anyway, here's hoping you have a great week! Ich habe euch lieb!!
--Sis. Whit