And the world keeps getting smaller...

This is a comment that was left on Christi's blog this past week....just crazy really. And to you Maudjean...please feel free to read Sister Jones' blog and comment anytime...I am just amazed at how small the world really is!

We're the Thompson's, Dave and Maudjean, from Bothell, Washington. Our daughter came across your great blog for Sister Christi Jones thru her friend, Analisa Walk's site, and then discovered Sister Jones is a cousin of our good friend, Hannah Unguren. We've been friends with the Unguren family for many years. What makes us more excited is that our son, Elder Alec Thompson, is also serving in the Hamburg Mission!! He arrived there this past December. He's serving in Dortmund right now. While Elder Thompson is a good letter writer, he doesn't describe things like a girl does! So we learned so much from Sister Jones' first letter, the info about the rock, and what they did when they arrived! We hope you won't mind if we follow her progress on your blog. Maybe our missionaries will meet during their missions! Thanks again for sharing Sister Jones' great letters!

Teri (Christi's sister in UT)....also a Thompson, but I don't believe any relation to you Maudjean :-)

Letter #2b (6-10-08)

Email to Christi's dad...

Well we had a half p-day yesterday and the other half today. Kind of weird, but we had interviews with the president yesterday and it cut into our p-day. I promise to write more next week. I didn´t get much time to email this week!! Too many people emailed me kind of long emails, so I spent a long time reading!! :o) I love email, but I told some of them to keep them a bit shorter so I could write more. They are funny!!

This week was great. We had a baptism on Sunday....it was so wonderful. We are going to work on getting more investigators this week because we only have a few and they are not really commiting to much. We are working hard on getting them to read and pray and it is slowly coming...I hope. They are so wonderful and I just want them to have the happiness that the Gospel brings to my life, but it is up to them. They have a lot in their lives to change and that can be hard, but I know that if they made the changes that the Lord will bless them. They just need a little faith. It is strange to ask someone to completely change their life, but that is what I am here to help them do!! I love this work and I learn to love it even more each and everday.

Thanks for the email and the love and support.

Love
Sister Jones

Letter #2 (6-9-08)

 From the sounds of the "letter" she sent this week, she had very little time for email today (PDay) and since us sisters and her mom are slightly long-winded in our emails I think we monopolized her time with reading instead of writing.  (She even asked us to keep our emails short)  So she responded to a few questions in our emails and here they are (you can guess what the questions were).

Hello everyone.

The Area is great. The people are awesome. We haven´t gotten many contacts, because Germans are stuck in their ways, but we have not given up...nor will we ever.

My comp is great. We had an interesting time learning to get along, but we seem to have worked it out. She is great...very stubborn and likes to do things her way, but I just smile and do what she says and it seems to work out ok. She says that she loves to argue, but she trys not to. Sounds like it could be dangerous for me, but I just hold my tongue. We have been doing good though.

Biggest adjustment?? The key board for right now...but in all seriousness I would say just the language. When you go up and talk to someone and they talk back and you have no clue what they are saying it is very difficult, as you know from your mission (Vicki's questions).

Favorite gift of Tongues experience? Well I haven´t had many, but on Sunday my comp was dealing with things for a baptism that we were having and so people were coming up and asking me things...I had to ask each of them to say it again, but I understood enough to know what they were saying. So I was able to help some people out. It was pretty cool.

Favorite culture part? I love the houses and the cobble stone streets. I think that is my favorite...it´s just the way that the cities and little housing communities look. It is just so COOL!! Way better then the US!! haha

We had a baptism for Stella on Sunday and it was amazing. We are struggling a little with our other investigators, but it will work out. I will be more detailed next week. We have a weird pday today...so I don´t have much time.

I love you all so much and want you to know that I´m doing well. I´m trying to be patient with the language and I´m learning to love people that I don´t even understand, which is weird but SO awesome. I love the ward I am in. They are amazing and very nice to me. I gave a talk this last Sunday as well. I was pretty nervous, but the ward was so nice to me. I love it here!

Sister Jones

______________________________________

Christi's actual address is:

Voltmannstrasse 122
33619 Bielefeld
Germany

She has informed us that it costs 3 Euro ($5) to mail a letter to the states so she will not likely be able to respond to people individually very often.  However, I believe it costs less then a dollar to mail her a letter and she could definitely use the support!

Thanks to all of you who view her blog...leave a comment if you have a minute (to Christi) for her to read when she returns home!

Pictures from MTC (3-26-08 through 5-26-08)

At the Provo Temple.

Companions at the MTC.

(Sister Pelo & Sister Fourtina)

New Missionary Techniques.

Life in the MTC

(getting ready for bed)

Drying her hair...(pretty sure a dryer would be easier)

Bedtime...

Doing laundry...

Lunchtime...

Letter from Mission President and Pics in Germany

Christi's mission president sent the following email and pictures to Christi's mom.  I guess this verifies that she is really there:

Dear Sister Anderson,

Your daughter, Sister Christi Jones, arrived safely on 28th of May here in Hamburg . Although she was very tired when we picked her up at the airport, we felt of her great spirit. She then traveled to the Elbe river where we ate lunch and had some orientation. She then arrived here at the mission home for a little rest, a nice meal and a testimony meeting, in German. We then sent her to bed for a well-deserved rest.

The next morning we had some training before she received her new assignment. Her new companion, Sister Welch, came to pick your daughter up and take her to Bielefeld . We have very carefully chosen those to train our new missionaries and we know that your daughter will have a great training experience with Sister Welch.

Sister Thompson and I deeply appreciate your faith in sending your daughter on a mission and we will care for her as if she were our own daughter for the next two years.

P-day is on Mondays for the Hamburg Mission so you may wish to write your e-mail on Sunday evening so that she can read and answer it Monday morning.

Attached are a few photos of your daughter with us and also your daughter with her new companion.

Please feel free to contact us at any time with any issues or concerns.

With our warmest wishes,

President Wesley B. Thompson

Sister Rebecca L. Thompson

Christi with the mission president and his wife in front of the "big boulder" she talked about in her first letter.

Christi and her first companion and trainer, Sister Welch.

1st letter from Sister Jones in the Mission Field (June 2, 2008)

I´m in GERMANY!!! Can you believe it?? I sure can´t!! Well actually I can because I´m surrounded by people speaking a language that I don´t understand!! My first day here was pretty good. We were exausted from 22 hours of travel. Our mission pres picked us up at the airport with the assistants and his wife. They then took us to this park by the river thing in Hamburg. When I walked into the park everyone was in awe at how green and pretty it was...and it was, but it looked just like a park in Seattle that I have been to. I was really happy though cause it reminded me of the best state in the world!! (WA of course...in case anyone is confused) Then we went down by this river and there was a HUGE rock and he said that this rock had been in the middle of the canal and that the ships had to be really careful about going through there until the rock was moved. It was really hard to move, but once they moved it, it was safe for the ships to travel through and it was easier for things to get done. He then related that to us. What ever "boulders" we have in our river, we need to move or it will get in the way of the work we have to do. We then all took pictures and then went to the mission home.

Germany is green and beautiful like WA, but the houses and streets and everythings else is really cool and european!! The mission home is so awesome...it is like an old victorian house that is like 4 floors!! Ok...so I could go on forever about Germany and awesome it is, but I need to move on.

They gave us time to shower and nap...which I only did for like 20 min. Then we had a little orientation and dinner...which was SO good compared to MTC food. Even the plane food was better then the MTC...anyway...we then had a little testimony meeting and then they sent us to bed. So went to bed at like 8:30pm...or so. I don´t think I have ever fallen asleep that fast in my life. They told us we could sleep in and that breakfast was at 8, but sister Seiter and I decided we would get up at 6:30am like we are supposed to. So we had breakfast and then a meeting and then we got paired up with our trainers. Sister Welch is my mission Mom. (That is what they call it here) The we hoped on a train and traveled for another 4 hours or so...I got to ride on a train!!! WAHOO!!! Then we dropped my stuff off and headed out to do missionary work!! Oh I´m serving in Bielefeld. We headed to the main part of the city to street contact!! I was really nervous and didn´t really know what I was supposed to say to people. So we did like a 2 second practice and then she said..."ok, there is a person behind you, talk to them." So I turned around and just started speaking about all the german that I know. They told me that they were not interested and just walked away!! I can´t believe that I actually did it!! I wasn´t even that scared when I did it. So we did that for a little while and then we headed home for the night. It was pretty exciting. No one really talked to us for very long and I didn´t really know what they were saying, but it was good anyway.

Ok...So I´m trying to remember the rest of my days. On Friday I had my first meeting with an investigator that is getting
baptized this up coming Sunday. The meeting was good cause it was in English. She is from Gauna so she understands English, but not perfectly. Her son was being a pretty big distraction so I sat in the door way of the play room (so I could still see my comp) and played with her son. I felt a little helpless because I could see that she was having a hard time understanding what we were trying to teach her as her son ran around dumping cookie crumbs everywhere!! He is the cutest little thing ever. We also had lunch at a members house that day. That was intereting...I tried to understand what they were talking about, but it was hard to follow. They talk to fast!! My comp also made me do the spiritual thought....I did my best and then I pasted it to her for the commitment part. I know that the language will come, but it takes time. Sister Welch told me that I can say and understand a whole lot more then she could when she first come here. She has been out for a year and understands almost everything that people say to her...I have a long way to go!! On Saturday we had another lunch appointment. This time the Elders that are in our ward also, came with us!! The family was so funny. I had a harder time following them...they spoke SUPER fast. Especially the dad. Although I was pretty happy wih myself because he asked me a question and I responded and then I thought to myself "wow, I can´t believe I understood that." It was cool.

Ok, well everyone wants to go!! Really quick...Sunday was amazing. I got up and bore my testimony and I was suprisingly not scared at all. It was great...not the testimony just the unnervous part!! We also has this amazing meeting with the girl named Andrea. We are trying to get her baptized. She was so nice to me and even though I only understood 1/8 of the conversation...the Spirit was amazing. We then went street contacting again and sister Welch talked to a family and then got there contact info...it was amazing. Oh and we also knocked doors for a few hours on Saturday. That was actually kind of fun!!
I love you all and I´m so excited to be here!! I love Germany and I´m learning to love the people!!

Love,
Sister Jones

It's a small world after all...(at least in my world)

At church today I bore my testimony...but that's not the cool thing.  I talked briefly about Christi leaving for her mission this past Tuesday and heading for Germany.  After the meeting one of the elders in our ward came up to me and asked where my sister was going in Germany and I told him Hamburg.  He stated "that's my mission....that's where I'm from".  I had no idea he was foreign...he barely has an accent.  Anyway...his name is Elder Krieger and he is from Kassel, which is in the Hamburg Mission.  He told me that she would be well taken care of and to not worry about her.  I may have mentioned that I was a little worried about my little sister being so far away....sorry Vicki, but I just wasn't worried about you...you are the big sister you know!  I thought that it was VERY cool and thought I would share my story!

Teri (Christi's sister who lives in Utah)