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.