Letter #16 (9-15-08)

This week has been cool!! We started teaching this woman named Frau Angelas. She is from Sri lanke (don´t know how to spell it in English) and she speaks English and German, but she prefers to be taught in English. We had 3 appointments with her this last week and she prayed about the book of Mormon and said that she had a feeling that she had never felt before in her life. It was so cool!! We are meeting with her again this week and hope to put her on baptismal date this week or next week!!

Speaking of Baptismal date....S is doing so well. We taught her about temples and she really liked that we do work for those who have passed on...she has some family members who have died. She is progressing...although she will be gone for 10 days on vacation, but we planned her baptism with her and so everything is pretty much set when she gets back!! WAHOOOO!! :o)

We had a very interesting Sunday. There was this Stake Woman´s Conference in Hanover that we got to go to...well S said she was going to go...that´s why we got to go, but then she ended up not showing up at the train station. We had already bought a ticket for all of us and a ward member, so we just went anyways. It´s a little over an hour of a train ride to Hanover. It was a really good meeting...from what I could understand. Diana, the ward member who came with us, went back with another ward member in her car...because it is faster and she had to get up early. Well it´s a good thing because we had an interesting ride home!! I guess there was a Fußball game (Soccer) that night and there were SO many people waiting for the train. There was another train coming in about 25 minutes...so we decided to wait....bad idea. It was even more packed and there were a ton of drunk boys...yes boys..between the ages of 16-25. There were drunk people sitting on both sides and we were crammed in the middle of the 2 sides of the train car with a bunch of normal people. Things were fine at first because it was so packed that no one noticed how we were dressed or our name tags. Then the train started to empty out and I was sick of standing against the doors that kept opening to let people in and out. So I moved out into the middle of that area and just balanced myself as the train moved along...wrong choice. I immediately felt about 8 people just staring at me on one side through this glass door. I refused to look because I knew that they were drunk and crazy. They were all looking at me for SO long as I just stared right ahead. I finally looked the opposite direction of the staring boys and this guy waves at me from the other group on the other side. I looked right at sister Jones and we both thought the same thing..."Oh no, they´ve noticed us!!" I moved back against the door by Sister Jones and we were then bombarded by 5 or 6 of them. They came right up to us and we were just stuck against the wall. They were asking us who we were and why we were dressed like that. They kept asking if we were nuns and we said no about a million times. They said that only nuns wear shoes like ours!! I think my shoes are cute, but whatever!! :o) They kept mocking us and asking why we didn´t have a cap on our heads. One of them got right up in my face and pointed at my name tag with his beer bottle. I thought it was going to spill all over me. They ended up offering us a beer and asked us to party with them...we of course said no. It was a little scary because they were pretty drunk and unaware of what they were really doing and so we kept trying to find a way out as they stood around and talked to us, but the only way out was to get off the train because we would have had to walk by all of their friends to move to another car. Soon it cleared out a bit and only 3 of them hung around. One of them was speaking English to us and kept swearing, which I hadn´t heard in a long time...German swear words just don´t pierce my heart as much as the English ones. One of them kept asking me what we do for fun...why we don´t party. I told him that I have fun doing what I´m doing and he kept asking why we don´t party...I don´t really think he was understanding that we don´t party like him!! It was a LONG train ride..about an hour and then it was finally over. We ended up missing our connecting train because the train was so slow, so we didn´t get home till 10:00pm. An hour later then planned!! Lesson learned? ALWAYS take the first train!! lol

It was an exciting week!! I love missionary work and all the excitement it brings!! I know this is the work of the Lord and that He is watching over me!!

Have a great week!
Love,
Sister Jones