We Get to Stay in Augsburg!!!

Holy Cow or Heilige Kuh!!!! Let me tell you, transfers are crazy. This transfer, there are no sisters coming in at all and there are plenty going home, so every sister in the mission was sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear if their area was getting closed or not. I believe President had to close four sister areas which is quite a lot. I was freaking out the morning of the call because I really didn't want Augsburg to be closed at all because there are people here that we need to work with. The thing is though, Augsburg is not a big city like Munich or Stuttgart or Vienna, so it would be fairly easy to close us. WELL! We got the call and guess what?! Sister Baker and I get to be here in Augsburg together for another transfer! Woohoo! I am so happy. This is my fourth transfer here in Augsburg and I love it here to death. Half of the sisters in my zone got closed though which is crazy. There used to be eight sisters in my zone and now there are only four of us. I am still saying prayers of thanks because it is seriously a miracle that we are still open. Heavenly Father really does hear our prayers.

Anyways, aside from that insanity, we had a great week. Tuesday was zone training so we got to go hear from our zone leaders and sister training leaders in Munich. It was fun seeing other missionaries. There is one sister going home this transfer who was one of my first sister training leaders, so I am sad to see her leave, but she is from Hungary, so she is going to crush it over there. So a part of zone training that always happens is they remind us of rules or adjust them based on our needs, and this week we got a new one that President just recently decided on: we are to speak only German from 9am to 9pm every day. It seems like it is a rule that would have been there already, but it is actually harder than you think because this mission is kind of like little America. There are so many Americans and English speakers in this mission that it is so easy to revert back to English, but it is kind of a fun challenge to go 12 hours straight of all German. It should have been that way all the time. It is only a bit difficult for Sister Baker because she has not been in the field that long, so we are still working on her conversational German, but now worried because we have a plan! 

Sometimes it is hard to know what to talk about when you are not speaking your mother language, so during language study one day, we made a list of topics, so then at the beginning of the day, we pick one of these topics and when there is no one to talk to or we are just walking, we have something to talk about. So yesterday it was friends (like friends from home and stuff) and today it is books. It is fun and keeps things interesting, but it is especially good for Sister Baker because at the MTC they teach you how to talk about church things. We could have a conversation about the gospel just fine because she was taught how to talk about that for six weeks at the MTC, but believe it or not, even missionaries don't talk about the gospel ALL THE TIME. So I think this is helping.

Yesterday, at church, we were all walking out of Sunday School class and when I rounded the corner I ran into none other than Sister Kohler. She is our Mission President's wife and I had to do a double take to make sure that it was actually her because if she was there, that meant that President Kohler would also be there. It sounds like a no qbig deal thing, but it is actually a big deal because there are 70 wards in our mission and he chose to come to Augsburg yesterday. No one knew he would be there at all, so it was a total surprise, but it was actually really great to see them. They came to our Sacrament Meeting and sat on the stand and stuff, but afterwards, I got to talk to President and Sister Kohler and it was really nice. They asked me how I was doing and if I was happy to be there and everything.  I had a good conversation with Sister Kohler in particular about how serving a mission is going to be so helpful to me in the future. She served a mission in California, so it is fun to talk to her about that, but it was just so nice to talk to her. It was kind of funny though, because we have this new 9-9 German rule, so when I talked to President Kohler it was all in German. I had never spoken to him in German before but it was fun. 

So yeah, other than those things, this week was actually a pretty quiet one unfortunately. A lot of our lessons did not go through which is always depressing, but you just keep moving forward and pray that more things will work out in the future. It is a good time.

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

Love,

Sister Smiley

Pictures: I took Sister Baker to the Gold Room last p-day, me with my pretty stationary that my parents sent me, making sandwiches for zone training.