Week #22 (10-27-08)

I can´t believe how fast the time flies when I am here!! I feel like every few days is Monday. So Last Monday we had an appointment with a nice older couple. We brought a man from our ward, Bruder Wächter, that was about there age. The investigators just asked him question after question. It was pretty good because Bruder Wächter served a few missions with his wife over the last 5 years, so he did a great job. We kept trying to get into the conversation, but it didn´t really work....good thing the Tea tasted good...only kidding!! They ended up saying that they weren´t really interested in meeting with us again. The man said that he didn´t really believe in God and he wouldn´t even let us pray. You can´t find out that God is there if you don´t pray, but he is just not ready to accept an answer even if he got one. They are a really friendly couple and maybe one day they will accept our message. Then we went to FA (FHE) with the JAE´s (YSA) and we played a board game...in German of course. You pick a card that has a word on it, then you have to either draw a picture, act it out, or explain it in words. They let us use our dictionaries, but otherwise they weren´t very easy on us. It was really fun and we did pretty well...we actually won!! I didn´t like it at first because I feel so bumb auf Deutsch, but I sucked up my pride and played and actually didn´t do that bad!!

We took our P-day on Tuesday last week and Sister Buynak and I went to Detmold. It´s about 30min on the train and it is the cutest city!! It is very German. We saw so many cute buildings and even took a tour of the castle there!! We had so much fun...it is so amazing here!! The Castle was so HUGE and amazing. We didn´t get to take any pictures on the tour, but it was cool. They had HUGE portraits on the walls of people who had lived there and also family members....I didn´t get all the details because it was in German, but I understood enough to know what she was talking about. There was this one room with animal heads and antlers all over the walls!! It was so dark and scary...she said that it was the men's room, which was obvious compared to the other rooms that are so open and bright. There was this one room that looked like a ballroom and it had red walls with nudie angels on the celling. I took a design class at BYU-I and it was cool because as I was looking at the furniture and the designs on the walls I remember learning all about it and the time periods and what they mean, but I have forgotten it all now...I just remember learning about it!! I also forgot the word for my pitch pipe the other day....4 years of college are escaping my head. Oh well...life goes on. I just hope it comes back quick when I need it!! :o)

On Wednesday we met with O!! She is SOOOO amazing. We found out that she is married and that her Husband lives in another city because of work and she lives here because of school. She said that they see each other usually once a week!! WOW...I wouldn´t be able to do that. We brought Schwester Adler along as our Joint Teach and it went well. It was a really long appointment...like an hour and a half or more, but we taught her a lot and answered a lot of her questions. Normally we meet 3 times a week for only 30-40 minutes...so since we are only meeting once a week then if it´s longer it´s ok. She agreed to read in the Book of Mormon and pray and she is really excited to meet with us again this week. She didn´t come to church on Sunday, because she was out of town, but she is coming to Stake Conference in Hannover on Sunday!!

On Thursday we went and visited a Russian girl named N. She normally comes to our English class on Wednesday, but hasn´t been there for the last 3 weeks. I´m so glad that we stopped by because her mother-in-law is in a coma and she was really fragile. We sat and talked with her for a while and I really had a gift of tongues experience. I have a hard time knowing what to say to console people in English let alone in another language, but the Lord really helped us to know what to say and what to ask. I didn´t understand all the specifics, because I don´t know German medical terms, but through asking questions I found out that her mother-in-law has blood in her brain and she is only living because a machine is keeping her alive. It was really sad, but we bore our testimonies about God and His love for us and a little bit about the next life. We even prayed at the end and the Spirit was really strong and I know that she felt the Spirit while we were there. It was a really cool experience. We are going to go back this week and see how her mother is doing.

So there is this new member in our ward, K. She was baptized in Jan of this year. Her daughter was just baptized in August. We went and visited her this week and we were a little nervous. Kerstin works on Sunday so she can only come to church one time a month. She has a really strong testimony, but the ward and us as well are worried that if she keeps this up that she won´t be able to progress anymore. She can´t go to the temple unless she comes to church on Sunday...it is one of the 10 commandments to keep the Sabbath day holy and that includes going to church. She knows all this, but we want her to understand that if she puts her trust in the Lord that everything will work out. Her fear is that when she finds another job that she will have less time with her kids...she has a 2 year old and a 10 year old. She only works 2 or 3 times a week...here in Germany if someone works on Sunday then they get paid double...they do that because it is really hard to find people to work on Sunday. All the stores are closed and most resturants as well...it´s like a Ghost town in the city on Sunday. She works on Sunday so that she gets more money and doesn´t have to work so many days. I can totally understand that, but if she keeps the commandments the Lord will make it up to her somehow. My comp and I both have personal experience...we lived with single mom´s who never worked on Sunday. We didn´t see them much during the week, but they were always there on Sunday in Church. We bore testimony to her about how much our families were blessed and the wonderful example that our mothers set for us. I also told her that God has blessings for us, but he waits for us to keep the commandments and then he gives them to us. When we don´t do what he has asked then he can´t give us the blessings that he wants to give us. She knows what is right, but the sad thing is, is that she won´t do anything about it. We told her that we love her and that her family will be SO blessed if she will set a goal of going to the temple in January. The temple blesses familes so much, but she said that she couldn´t do that because she had to work on Sunday. She understood what we talked about, but she is just not ready to trust the Lord completely. It was really sad.

This week has been a hard week because we have talked to so many people and no one really listened to us. We don´t have very many investigators and we aren't finding people either....but the thing that I am excited about is that we only have 2 investigators, but they are both progressing and that is amazing!!! I love this work and I know that the Lord is in it. It is his work and this is his Church! It is true and I know it. I am here in Germany because there are people who need my testimony and I will shout it from the mountian tops to make sure that they all hear it!!

Ich liebe dich!

Deine Sister Jones