 |
| I found a sign today with Colorado on it! I looked over and it was the sketchiest thing ever. So naturally, I had to make picture with it. |
Well, thanks for
the wonderful emails. I just got done
grocery shopping, and the Ritterssport Chocolate was on sale for 59 cents so I
bought about 20 of them for all of you. About
three each...we'll see how generous I'm feeling in a few weeks to see if I buy
you anymore—ha-ha.
Also, we found
somewhere to Skype. One of the senior
couples is letting us Skype at their place.
So I am thinking we will Skype at about 7 pm here, which would be 11am
your time. Is that okay for you all? I sure hope so.
I also got a lot
of that letter translated! I still have
a few words here or there that are hard to read, so I am going to ask a few old
people if they know what they say, but I am able to read her handwriting a lot
easier now. I've been looking at all of
the letters and writing all of the names out and trying to figure out the
family relationships. I came to the
conclusion that Erna's son, Clause, is probably alive still and about 70 to 75
years old by now. So I have made it my
new mission to find him, and then fly back to Germany once I do and interview
him to find out more about our family. That
would be awesome, wouldn’t it? The
letter that you sent me is right around Christmas time, and so it’s cool
because she is describing Christmas in Germany, and I am just like, "Hey,
I am here and see all of this stuff!"
Pretty cool stuff.
 |
| I realized the other day how awful everything looks when I have on my huge coat. But it's warm, so I don't care..ha-ha! |
This week was
pretty good. I am actually impressed at
how busy we have stayed, considering as
how it is Christmas time, and the whole world drops off of the face of the
earth because they are all cold or on vacation.
But yeah, we have been able to stay pretty busy, so I consider that a
victory on its own.
We had Family
Home Evening with the Adrianos this week, and it was so great. She is the Relief Society president and is
from Spain, and he is from Portugal, and they have three kids. They just remind me so much of our family...just
making fun of each other and laughing at the most ridiculous things. I loved it.
They are such a great family. Sadly
they are leaving for Portugal for the next few weeks...along with everyone else
in our ward. Church should be
interesting next week! Ha-ha.
The next day, we
had a nice, white day, so we went finding with the elders. We pulled out another roll of wrapping paper,
and did the topic on Christmas, and just walked around the innenstadt asking
people about it. What did I learn? There are quite a lot of interesting people here
in the world. One guy walked up to us,
looked at our sign, then the mormon.org thing,
and just stood there, shaking his head, and then he held up his fist and just
shook his head and finally walked away. Another
lady, walked up to Sister Sorensen, and started whispering in her ear, because
it was "too inappropriate for the elders to hear". Good thing Sister Sorensen doesn’t understand
German, ha-ha. Also, one guy had little
rats in his hand, and another guy gave us all candy. And another guy stayed around and warned
people that we were handing out Mormon propaganda...cool guy. Quite the success, I'd say, ha-ha. We did give out about 30 “Joy to the World”
though, and a Book of Mormon, which I didn’t actually know was a Book of Mormon
because the elders wrapped it up. Well,
that woman got a nice surprise!
 |
| My split |
I was also on a
split this week, so I got to go work in the German area. We had lunch with this hilarious old lady,
and then went and did service, and when we split back, we went over to this
partly active family who are from Columbia, and speak extremely quick Spanish. Bah, that hurt my head. But what I thought was funny was that when we
walked out, Sister Sorensen said that she could understand Spanish more than
German...whoops—ha-ha.
Which I guess it
is fortunate, because most of the people we are seeing success with are Spanish-speaking. We went contacting, and met this woman from Peru
that had met with the sisters for years before she moved here. She showed us where she worked, and said to
just stop by any time and we could talk with her about our religion. It was funny because as we approached her and
gave her a “Joy to the World” DVD, she just passed it off to her friend, but
when she found out what church we were from, she took it back and told her
friend it was for her. Ha-ha.
 |
| I got my Christmas package! We wrapped them up and put them under my tree to get us excited. We set up my nativity scene, too. Yay! thank you |
We also visited
with the Carricondos, and taught the Restoration, and learned that she has no
testimony about Joseph Smith anymore. We
have a lot more work to do than I thought to get them to come back to church. But everything is possible. We are going over again tonight.
I think the best
part is that we finally got in touch with Victor again. Thank goodness. We were able to clear up why the appointments
were falling out and straight up ask him if he is interested and wants to learn
more. He is, however, his wife at the
moment is flaky. So we are still going
to work with him. I am hopeful.
I think the
highlight of the week was our lesson with the Palmers. They are a new family from Scotland, and are just
HILARIOUS. I have never laughed so hard
in my life. They just have so much
personality. But they invited us over
for the third day of Christmas, and they asked us to bring 27 “Joy to the
World” DVDs and Books of Mormon, and we are going to go caroling to all of
their neighbors, and give out the goods.
It’s going to be great.
I also helped a
family move with more stuff than I have ever seen in my life...that was a cold
day.
Oh yeah, it
snowed here! Sweet!
As for a
spiritual note, well we had a really cool lesson on sacrifice yesterday, and
afterwards Sister Sorensen had a cool thought.
She said that she had this image of two things on a table, and God would
speak with us and say, "You pick one, and I will take the other." The two things are yourself, and the kingdom
of God. When you choose to focus on
yourself, and only yourself, you block yourself off from all of the amazing
blessing and relationships you can make otherwise, but when you choose to put
the kingdom of God first, God promises to take care of you, and can make of you
so much more than you can make of yourself.
I thought that was a cool thought, and just wanted to share it with you. When you put others first, especially God,
then everything will just work out. He
won’t leave you stranded or alone. He
just won’t.
Well, I love you
all. I am excited to see all of your
faces on Skype just next week! Weird
stuff.
Have a great
week.
Savannah
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