Work goes on...

Hallo Familie!

I'm glad you are keeping track of the blog--it's an art to be a Sister and be creative with what we wear all the time! I get sick of skirts but then again, I'm so used to it, like prepping for winter with skirts--it's just a fact of life, I remember what I wore last winter and I'm good to go! It does feel extremely weird wearing pants/jeans for Pday though. Like I'm NORMAL or something. 

But on Monday we went to Porta Westfalica to a Denkmal for Kaiser Wilhem somthing or another--it was a hill with a memorial and we hiked it. Fun times! It's super beautiful here in the fall so we're going through some majorly beautiful scenery--kinda like the hike to the Neuschwanstein Schloss only no snow, more trees, and no horse poo. :) Hence the weird feeling of wearing jeans. I just think they get stiff when you only wear them for service projects or hiking. But the weather was PERFECT and then the temperature dropped--we went running this week in -1°C! Talk about getting a wake up call!

On Monday we also visited a Neubekehrt for a Essenstermin and he taught us how to make REAL schnitzel like REALLY good. I took notes and we helped make 'em so I'm excited to just make Schnitzel for the rest of my life. 

Oh meine Mensch, we are starting to meet 2x a week with George which means a double dose of his amazing quotes. For one thing, he's loving the Book of Mormon--he's studying it with the Bible and just can't get enough. He wants to give a Book of Mormon to his girlfriend! :)

We also tried visiting less actives that live a bit more further out in other cities--on top of Bielefeld alone, we have this huge area including Herford, Gütersloh, Herzebrock, and the furthest south we go is Clarholz--mainly to work with members and less actives, but not so much procelyting because...it's a mess trying to get to as many people as possible and not DIE while you're at it. Look me up on Google Maps, we got a big field to harvest! 

Vladmir is doing well; he finally got the guts to pray for us, even though it's in Russian and we can't understand it anyway, but his son Michael had those shiny eyes after, like, he's so happy that his DAD, this tatoo'd, thick shouldered Russian just prayed to his Father in Heaven. What a great moment. 

Ingo is like a rocket! Although we blew him outta the water with our 2-part thema on Gesetz der Keuchheit. We figured he might have some issues with it which was right, a little too much TMI on his part, but we were like, "well, just repent now that you know better and you gotta keep this law to be baptized..." But it's sad because he has depression which comes from a breakup he had with his girlfriend of 5 years. It's really true that when you break the law of chastity and think you can come away from that unscathed, you're wrong. It's really there to protect your heart where it's the most vunerable. I hope he really understood that connection but he is willing to commit now that he knows! Meine gute... :P But yesterday at church he bore his testimony (we have Stake Conference next Sunday) and invited the ward to his Taufe! Woot woot! That just makes us feel sooo good! He was nervous and after he was like, "Dang! I forgot to close in the name of Jesus Christ!" But we were like, "Al-les klar!"

Oh my gosh, I have to tell this story: So we were teaching the 10 commandments to the biggest Bible Profi ever, George, and we talked about Abinadi, who is George's BoM alter-ego (I'm curious as to which BoM character i most resemble...) But Sis. Child quoted King Noah when he said, "Who's God that I should..." blahblahblah, right? Oh meine GUTE, George's eyes got all big like, "OH SNAP HE JUST DID NOT SAY THAT!" And went off on King Noah! He said, "If you be asking that, you have BIG trouble! You hear the thunder, you see the lightning, you know He got one left for YOU!" hahah, we were crying we were laughing so hard. I'm laughing about it again with Sis. Child as we type. Bahaha!

Michael Mauritz is doing AWESOME. He loves coming to church and just loves the atmosphere; he's like, this is how a true church should feel--full of the Spirit but the people aren't full of themselves and there's no hypocrisy in the leadership. I mean, just the fact that they wear suits and not vestments or whatever, he just loves it. He's like buying Halloween candy for the party this Wednesday and everything. Speaking of which, I want pictures of Jordo's halloween costume! What is it with him and mustaches? Probably because he can't grow one...just joking. :P I think I'm just going to wear my red coat with the hood and be Rottkäpchen. :)

As for our British Activist, we're deciding to "Tschüss" him big time, mainly because he SO has no interest in learning for the right reasons and to be baptised. I know it seems a big "sissy" sometimes to back out because they don't do what we want or whatever, but we have limited time and we know that all he really wants to do is prove that we are wrong and überzeug US! He pulled up the internet on his TV and was like, "I wanna show you this clip I found on Youtube" And it's about Joseph Smith, Free Masons and Temples...just total GARBAGE. We were like, "No, you are not showing us that, we don't want to watch it!" There's just this...icky feeling in his apartment and it's uncomfortable and I really don't ever want to go back. You can tell when people just research things that are just absolutely void of all Spirit, like not even a particle. 

But we got a spiritual boost from Schwester Krichler. Oh meine GUTE, if Barbie ever came in "German Oma" form, it would be Schw. Krichler. She made like the best Goulash and Spätzle EVER (guess who she asked for meal suggestions??) and gives us all these cooking tips and what-not. She is so tiny and adorable and she said, (it's funnier in Deutsch) "Manchmal die Leute kommt immer noch zum mir und sagt, 'Oh, immer noch so klein?' Ich denke, 'WAS für eine doofe Bemerkung!' Wie könnte ein Priestertumsträger so was sagen?" and we just tried to keep a serious face, but just BUSTED out laughing. But she started to laugh too, it was just funny. It's like my favorite Shakespeare quote, "though she be small, she is fierce!" In every city, I got my German Oma. :)

On Saturday we had a pretty legit service project for our Zone. We helped a team in Bergdorf (by Hannover) sort of help with the reconstruction of this gym that got burnt down. The structure itself is up, but we helped with a lot of construction of the inside. For the Sisters, we painted long planks of wood, just all the wood they had (they lined the walls with them like a log cabin/sauna look) with paint primer stuff and the Elders helped mostly outside cleaning and moving bleachers and hammering the wood against the walls, it was some LEGIT stuff! And at the end they gave us soda, even though I think we were the only members on the premises. Which means of course they had Bier dabei. They jokingly offered Bier to one of the Senior couple Elders, who remembers some of his Deutsch and the Elder said, "I can't drink beer!" "But it's beer with LEMON!" "But if I drink this, these missionaries will be thinking, 'no, no, no!'" "Then we'll have them all turn around!" It was pretty fun and they really appreciated having us there. They had a legit crew, but we did the stuff that really does take a while that anyone can do, like painting? But it was fun! Especially as a zone. 

This Sunday was finally normal, like all three hours, no broadcasts or anything, just your three hours of good stuff. All of our favorite people came and it was SO good. 

This week was pretty cool, because we got three people come ansprach US this week for information! This lady from Cameroon asked us if we were Menonites (spelling?) because of the skirts, and I'm thinking, "you see me wearing this awesome coat-scarf combo and you think I'm a Menonite?" But once she found out we were just missionaries she was like, "well what do you believe and where's your church?" So we had a good first lesson on the Straßenbahn. The other two were also Africans from Nigeria. We were walking home and I said something random in English and they called out to us and were like, "Hey, you Sisters from de Church?" We gave them instructions and everything--they live like 5min from church. A lot of times they just ask us where church is, because they feel more comfortable asking two girls that speak English and have nametags with the name "Jesus Christ" on it, so it's great. They're just super gläubig and just want to find a place to worship God while they're here in Germany for whatever reason they find themselves here. 

So yeah, what a week! This week we have Tausch, leadership training and stake conference--three days going to Hannover! Blarg!

Have a great week! Ich habe euch lieb!

love,
Whit