SHE GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!

IT HAPPENED!!! SONJA GOT BAPTIZED YESTERDAY!!! It was so amazing. Honestly, it was probably one of the most insane Sundays of my life because we were also working really hard to get a less active member to church and making sure she had a good experience and helping advertise for this ward movie night that is going on this week. It was pretty cray. Sister Mehr and I were running around the building all day trying to make sure things were going the way we wanted them to. And for some reason, the world seems to think that because I am a missionary, I must be an expert and organizing baptisms. I just act like I know what I'm doing, I don't actually know what's going on, BUT somehow everything worked out. It was amazing. Ward members were really great and helpful with things and Sonja was all smiles the whole day. Sister Mehr and I got to be the ones standing at the side of the font holding a towel for Sonja when she came out of the water. It was a really great moment. Elder Jensen performed the baptism and he did a great job. Overall, I think it went pretty well. Sonja is great because she told us yesterday at the end of the baptism how the temple is really something she is going to work towards now. I couldn't ask for anything else. Now, we are just going to keep working with her and the ward to keep her on that track and help her accomplish the goal of going to the temple. It just went really well, and now, I know how to turn on the water heater on the ward building here. I guess that's a handy skill. When it was all over and everyone left, Sister Mehr and I just died a little bit. We broke open a bar of chocolate to celebrate. 

Needless to say, it was a pretty intense day, but there was one point where a member just approached me and asked, "is there anything I can do for you? What do you need?" I wanted to sit down and start crying when she asked that. You have no idea how much it means to a missionary to have a ward member just ask how you are doing and if you need anything. Seriously, if you ever want to make a missionary's day, approach them, introduce yourself, ask them how they are doing and if they need anything. It is the best thing in the world to hear. It lets you know that they recognize that you are just a teenager trying to do your best. That is my challenge to everyone who is reading this email who is not a missionary. Just walk up to the missionaries in your ward on Sunday and let them know that you are there for them and that you are on their side. They may not show it, but they appreciate things like that SO much. Trust me, I know. 

OH and we got transfer calls on Thursday! Sister Mehr and I get to stay together in Augsburg!!!! We were pretty happy about it. We really like working with each other, so it was a happy moment that we get to stay together for a little while longer. We are just coming out of a seven week transfer and this upcoming transfer is a five week one. It got a little messed up because there was a Mission President's conference in Portugal, so we had to change the schedule, but basically, this transfer is going to fly. Seven weeks didn't even feel like seven weeks. Time is the weirdest thing on a mission. Anywho, Elder Jensen (who is one of the Elders here is Augsburg) got transfered. Tomorrow he will be going on a train journey to Wiener Neustadt. Weird right? I was just there. He's going to work with my people. I'm prepping him for his adventure he is about to go on. We are going to be getting a new Elder here and I am anxious to see what he will be like. He's going to be our new district leader too, so we'll see what happens.

But yeah, that's my life lately. Oh and last p-day! Sister Mehr and I had a good one. We went to this Cathedral called St.Ulrichs, took lots a pictures because it was BEAUTIFUL and we went to this cafe that gets a lot of hype here in Augsburg. They have really good cake and hot chocolate. I'll attach a picture in this email, but it was awesome. We just kind of sat there, ate our cake, and watched people walk by. I keep saying it, but gosh, we are so spoiled. 

Well, that's it for this week. I hope everyone is doing well. Make good choices!

Love,

Sister Smiley

Pictures:

Us at the baptism and Sister Mehr and I exhausted after the baptism. The Elders actually took that picture without our knowing. Don't worry, we were only there for like five minutes.

Keep On Keeping On

Hi everyone! Let me just take a minute and tell you about our P-day so far, really quick. It was going to be one of those nice mellow ones, and it still is, but this morning, we went to take our laundry out of the machine so we could hang it up and we were both standing there so we could take it over to the drying rack. Sister Mehr opened up the washing machine and it literally exploded all over us. We don't really know what happened, but it was done with the cycle for sure, it just didn't drain at all, so when we opened the little door, our washer literally puked water all over. I wish there was a video of it, because it was totally unexpected, but yeah, we gotta figure out our washing machine now. Well, we figured things out as best as we could for now and then left our apartment to go do groceries. We walked down the stairs and both looked at each other because we both realized that no one took the keys. We were locked out of our apartment...that is not the best feeling in the world. BUT we are clever Sister missionaries and we gave the spare key for our apartment to the Elders just this week, so they have already dropped off the key for us, but man that was a bit stressful. Fortunately, Sister Mehr and I are the kind of people who can laugh at ourselves when these things happen. We think that one day, our laughing will get hysterical and then turn into sobs, but we're fine. It's been an adventure of a day already for sure. 

Anywho, last p-day was really good. We took a beautiful drive into the mountains with a member, and then we went on a hike to this waterfall and IT WAS BEAUTIFUL! Needless to say, we got an abundance of pictures. It was super cool, so that was fun.

Aside from P-day stuff, life in Augsburg is going pretty well. We are focusing mainly on getting Sonja ready for her baptism. It's this Sunday after Church! And needless to say, we are thoroughly excited and nervous and stressed. She is great and has such a strong testimony. Sister Mehr and I just don't want to do anything wrong, I think that's inevitable though :) We have the baptism interview tonight. We have taught all of the lessons, and been over everything, so I think she's ready, but gosh, at this point we are just hoping and praying that everything goes smoothly. I think one of the many things I have gained out of working with Sonja is how important joint teaches are. It is vital to have a member at every lesson with you when you are teaching someone about the gospel, and sometimes, it is SO hard to coordinate schedules. Sister Mehr and I really wanted to do everything we could to get joint teaches though, so a few times we have come to the point where we were literally just going through the ward list seeing if anyone is available, and for some reason, Heavenly Father has ALWAYS given us the joint teach that is perfect for whatever lesson we are teaching. Either they have had experiences with what we are teaching them or they are really good at explaining what we can't, it has always been perfect. It's so amazing to see.

On Wednesday, we went to the funeral for the Stake President's son. All of the missionaries in our zone were there, so about 40 or 50 missionaries from all over Baveria. It was really cool that we could be there. There were so many people there, so we had to sit in an overflow room and watch it on a TV. There was the service at the church and then afterwards, we were all supposed to go to the burial and the cemetary and the missionaries were supposed to sing while people paid their respects. WELL after the service at the church, our Mission President came into the room where we were and told us that there is a train strike going on and that he doesn't really know how we are all going to get home. The funeral was about an hour and a half train ride from Augsburg, so we were kind of stuck. There were some trains going to Munich, but that wouldn't really do us any good because we needed to go farther than that. Not to mention, there were plenty of other missionaries there with the same problem. WELL, there happened to be a member of the Augsburg Ward there who happened to have just enough seats in his car for us and the Elders. It was a miracle for sure. He offered to take us back to Augsburg and it worked out really well. Let me tell you, Heavenly Father looks after His missionaries. It was so nice of that ward member to do that for us.
 

I have come to this conclusion that being a missionary is literally just trying to do nice things for people all the time. We want to bring people unto Christ and the best way to do that is to be like Christ. What did Christ do? He served and taught the people. That is what we as missionaries are told to do, so that's what I'm going to keep doing. It is such a wonderful thing to be a part of. I get to wear Christ's name over my heart and represent him every day. What an honor. It is easily the hardest thing I have ever done. I have never ever done anything as challenging as this, but I would not trade this experienc for anything. 

I hope that you are all doing well. Make good choices!

Love,

Sister Smiley

Pictures: The first two are us on the hike last p-day, and the last one is me eating a giant piece of pizza on saturday (a member took us out)

Going to the Mountains!

So you may or may not be wondering why I am emailing super early again. Well, today, a member is taking us on a trip to the southern part of Bavaria and we are seeing the mountains. The rule for P-day is that we can go anywhere within our zone, so that means I need to stay in Baveria. We're going South today and I think we're going to see a water fall or something. I don't know really, we'll just see what happens. I'm just excited because it means I get to wear pants for a whole day. This is pretty exciting stuff.

Anywho, this week has been pretty good. On Thursday we had zone conference and it was awesome. It was combined with Stuttgart Zone which is my first zone so I got to see a lot of my old friends. That was great. They are all doing well, and I got a report that Ludwigsburg is doing good. There are Elders living in our apartment in Ludwigsburg and I guess they have a problem with the fact that the walls are pink and purple, and that the shower is too short. I thought it was a great apartment. One funny thing about Zone Conference here is that you can tell how long and Elder has been on his mission based on where his fashion sense is. The ones who have been out for a while wear the fitted European suits, fancy shoes, a skinny tie, none of those marshmellow white American shirts, and a swatch, with a leather side bag. It's pretty funny. The newer Elders wear the boxy American suits and puffy white shirts, and their ties are usually pretty wide too. It's kind of an observation that you can't help but noticing. I think as Sisters, we get more frumpy on our missions as time passes. You don't really want to hit the frump stage though because people here look good and you feel like an idiot if you walk out the door looking like you just stepped off a 17 hour plane ride. Just an observation. It's hard not to notice because with two zones combined, there are 12 Sisters and 68 Elders. We are pretty outnumbered. That is a lot of teenage boys in one room, but the thing is, it's not like we get together and talk about video games and basketball. We are talking about how we can help bring people unto Christ. That is just so not a normal thing for a group of teenagers to be doing at this point in our lives. We are out here in Southern Germany running around speaking a language with too many forms of the word "the", trying to tell people that there is so much more to life. There is no way that this work isn't directed by a loving Father in Heaven, otherwise, we would all probably be failing miserably. It's just so cool. Zone Conference was great. President Kohler was awesome. He is so great at putting things into perspective. Sister Mehr and I are working really hard to apply what we learned. It was great.

Every Thursday here in Augsburg we have a "Sport Abend" which is like a sports evening. It's someting easy that we can invite investigators to and ward members like to come. We usually play volleyball or field hocky, but here's the thing, if you know me, you know that I am not the most athletic person in the world. I can manage in field hockey because you have a stick to protect you from oncoming danger, but seriously, volleyball is dangerous! My game has gotten a bit better since I've come to Augsburg, but you know you have reached a new level of low when both teams cheer for you when you've gotten the ball over the net...It's just not my thing, but no worries, I am really good at loosing at sports. At least I'm small. It's a fun activity to have though.

A little bit ago, I talked about this thing Sister Mehr and I do, called "Extreme Personal Touching". Some people pointed out to me that it doesn't have the best title in the world, but it's how we're getting to know the members in our ward and it's going great. Anyone who ever tells me that I'm not adventerous needs to put a sock in it because the area of Augsburg used to be an entire zone when this was just the Munich mission. It is a pretty large area and lots of things are spread out, so when we decide to go drop off flowers or something at a member's house we have the name of their town or village and then their street name and house number and that's it. We don't have maps of all of these little villages. We just kind of show up at the train station and start walking. The other day, we ended up in a village called Schwabmünchen. We asked a bunch of people where the street was that we were looking for and no one had any idea at all, so we went to the main square and there are usually maps of the towns there, but there was nothing. We went into a few stores to ask, and no one knew, so we ended up at a dinky little gas station and had our prayers answered when we found a map of the village for sale. We bought that along with some candy too and WE FOUND THE ADDRESS. It may sound simple, but it's a mega victory. We don't have a GPS, or anything, but we did it! We had potential investigators and such to check on there, so we needed to be able to figure the town out and Heavenly Father really helped us out. Situations like that just shouldn't work out, but with some heavenly help, anything is possible.

Some sad news that we recently found out is that our Stake President's 11 year old son died suddenly of a heart defect. All of the missonaries in our zone are expected to go to the funeral in Landshut on Wednesday which is on the other side of the Zone, so we have a bit of a train journey ahead of us, but I guess there are going to be a lot of nonmembers there, and we need to be ready to answer as many questions as possible and really use this experience to bring more people unto Christ. The Stake President has asked us all to bring lots of Book of Mormons and passalong cards and be ready. It's interesting, because I just could not imagine thinking that it is all over when you die. I know that it is not. I know that there is more than just this life here on Earth. This is just a part of the journey. We have the opportunity to share that on Wednesday and I'm interested to see how it all goes.

Last week, I told you we have a baptism on the 26th of Oktober and that is still true! She is so great and has such a strong testimony, she knows that this step is the right thing to do, the only thing is that she invited all of her friends and family to the baptism (she's 23) and literally everyone said no. She called us on the phone last night crying. It crushes your heart to hear someone you love cry like that. It's like being a parent and hearing that someone was mean to your kid at school. It was just so sad, we talked to her for a bit, and decided that we REALLY need to get her involved in the Young Single Adult(YSA)scene. There is only one other YSA in Augsburg, but the Munich Stake does a great job of getting things put together so the YSA's can stay in touch. We are working with the senior couple in charge of the YSA's in this stake right now so we can get her to the YSA center in Munich and show here that she is not going into this alone and that she has SO much support. Being born and raised in the church, I literally will never understand what it is like to make that big change in my life, but I know that the ward members who are converts know exactly how it feels, and we have been working with them a lot in giving her the support she needs. 

But yeah, it's been a great week. Still working hard and still acting like I know what I'm doing (I really don't). Being a missionary is great. I love being here and doing this.

Hope all is well. Make good choices!

Love,

Sister Smiley

Pictures: what a super happy Sister missionary looks like when she's received a package from her parents, we took ourselves out to lunch last p-day and got some SUPER good Italian food, and then us being super happy when we found the address in Schwabmünchen.

How Did We Get to Oktober?

Hi everyone! Can you believe it's Oktober already? I'm pretty sure that the world just froze on March 26th the day I left and that is what it'll be when I get back. But anyways, this week was really good. Sister Mehr is so fun to work with. We have lots of fun together and have both acknowledged the fact that we really have no idea what we're doing, but we're doing our best.

Last Monday we went to Oktoberfest and that was to cool! It was the actual Oktoberfest in München. Sister Mehr and I wore our dirndls, so we looked the part. I have never seen so much trachten in my life. Trachten is the traditional Alpine clothing that people wear here and it was so cool. It was like a trachted fashion show. Sister Mehr and I were just walking around pointing at the dirndls we liked  and stuff. There are some pretty crazy ones out there too. I got a pretzel the size of my head and it was so good! We mostly just walked around and watched people, but there were plenty of beer tents and rides. Gotta love Germany.

On Friday we had a lesson with an investigator and it was AMAZING!!! We were talking about tithing and fast offerings and I was so nervous for this one. This investigator has made a lot of changes in her life in the past month because she understands the truthfulness of this gospel and really wants to come closer to Christ. I was just nervous about telling her another thing she needed to change in her life. The thing though was that we had a joint teach who was PERFECT. We taught the lesson and it went really smoothly and our investigator was accepting it and understanding just fine, but at one point we asked our joint teach how being a full tithe payer has been a blessing in their life and they just did an amazing job of really explaining with the Spirit what tithing and fasting has done for them. It was so cool. The Spirit was really strong in that lesson and Sister Mehr and I were extremely glad to have that particular joint teach there. We were trying really hard to get a joint teach for that lesson and we just could not get ahold of anyone. This member was the only one who picked up their phone and after that lesson, we knew it was because they were the only one that could be there with us for that lesson. It was great. After that lesson, the joint teach invited us over to her house for dinner. Of course we said yes, and she drove us to her house. She comes from England and makes really good food. She taught us how to make a pumpkin pie from scratch and it turned out beautifully. We just had a really good time getting to know her and her family a bit better. AND we can make a mean pie now. Sister Mehr and I were really counting our blessings that day. 

This past weekend was General Conference and it was so great! Basically, as a missionary, you camp out at the church for the weekend and watch session after session, but we came prepared. We had lots of snacks and goodies. We got to watch Saturday and Sunday morning live and we watched a rebroadcast of Women's Conference and the Saturday afternoon session. We haven't seen the Sunday evening session, but I guess we will just wait for the General Conference edition of the Liahona to come out. Sister Mehr and I were the only ones there for the Women's conference, so we kind of took over the Relief Society room and spread out. It was a good time. Our investigator who we had just taught about tithing and fasting came to the Sunday morning session of conference and she said she was fasting with a question. Sister Mehr and I were so impressed. This investigator is awesome. After conference she just looked at me and said she got her answer. SHE'S GETTING BAPTIZED ON OKTOBER 26th!!!!! Sister Mehr and I basically just wanted to sit down and start crying. We have about 3 weeks-ish and are so excited to help her get ready for this awesome step she's about to make. 

It's been a good week. Doing this work and helping bring others come unto Christ is such and honor. I love being here and I love being a missionary. This is hands down the hardest thing I have ever done, but it is easily the most amazing thing I have ever done. 

I hope you are all doing well and making good choices!Love,

Sister Smiley

Pictures: Us at Women's Conference, on a train ride home one evening, us at oktoberfes


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