Oh My Goodness!!

You guys would not believe what Sister Powell and I went through to be able to email you today. It is a holiday in Germany today and that means literally everything is shut down. Both of our internet cafes are closed, and we couldn't get to the church because the bus to get there was not running, so we took a train to Stuttgart to use the internet at a cafe there that our zone leaders said was open. Talk about stressful, but our President really wants us to email on Mondays so people at home won't worry. We will have to get groceries tomorrow. That's life though. You just have to learn to work with the uncontrollable circumstances sometimes. Anyways, what a week!

So there is a student from our english class that we teach every Wednesday. She is 16 and I love her so much. We learned that we both love the same books and she is reading some of my favorites right now (City of Bones for those who care). She wanted to get together with us to talk about books one day, so on Saturday, we met at a crepe place and did just that. It was really good. She showed me her book list and I pointed out that one of the books on her list was written by a Mormon author (Matched, for the same people who care), and then she asked what Mormons believe. Perfect right? Well, Sister Powell, being the beast she is, just threw down the first lesson right there. It was amazing, and our friend totally appreciated it. I can't wait to see her again at English because I love her a lot. 

One thing I have learned about missionary work is that it gets you excited about things that you would have thought were super dumb in the past. For example, I really want to do family history now and watch Mormon Messages. That is not something you would have found me begging my Mom to do in the past, so that's interesting. But speaking of family history, here is another story. Yesterday, we were coming home from an eating appointment and ran into a neighbor on our way up the stairs to our apartment. We started talking to her and ended up inside her apartment talking all about her grandma and the stories she used to share about her travels. It was so fun. We told her we want to come back to hear more stories about her grandmother. The goal is to tell her about our family history center and get her interested in the church through that because I know she would love it. She really is the sweetest old lady.

 

Another exciting thing that happened yesterday was that I gave my first talk in sacrament meeting in German! It was incredibly scary, but pretty good actually. My topic was missionary work, believe it or not, and I discussed Ammon. Before he went out to the land of Ishmael he fasted and prayed that he could be an instrument of the Lord. After plenty of trials, afflictions, and enduring, he reached a point where King Lamoni ASKED to learn more about the gospel. How cool is that! Sometimes, we need to show Heavenly Father that we are willing to work for our miracles. I was pretty happy with that talk, and throughout the week, I asked ward members to check the grammar, so it wasn't too bad I think.

 

Anywho, sorry it's a short one today, I'm just grateful that we get to email today, it's been a really weird day for us, but I'm going to put in a couple pictures: one is of our district eating lunch at the chinese gardens after a district meeting, and the is from our p-day last week. We went to visit a castle in our area called the Seeschloss which means sea castle. It is basically the German version of pemberly and super beautiful.

I hope you all have a great week and make good choices!

Love,

Sister Smiley