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| Our bishop lives right by the temple in Friedrichsdorf, so we took a nice little walk :) |
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| I saw Munster on the poster and got really excited! |
Well, this week, something happened in the past day
or two and things are starting to turn around, and I am really grateful dafür. This week, well, every single one of our
appointments fell out. Every one. Until Saturday, we didn’t teach one person. Even our street display fell out on Tuesday
because of the rain! How ridiculous is
that? So by the time Wednesday came
around, I was more than excited to go on my split. It was still in Frankfurt, but with the
German Sisters. And it was so great
being able to speak German again. Oh how
I've missed it. But that ended up being
a super crazy day because about half way through, we got a call from the
Darmstadt Sisters. One of them was super
sick, but they had an appointment that night with an investigator, where, if
they didn’t meet, she wouldn’t be baptized on her scheduled date. So, we got to go on what I like to call,
Splitception. We rushed down to
Darmstadt, where I got to go teach their investigator with Sister Fuller while
Sister Clendon stayed in the “sicky” apartment.
Yay. This lady was really cool,
and it was so great to just be able to teach her and be taught from her. Her sister is a member, and she has been
going to the church for the past 5 months, and knows and believes everything
already. The lessons are more of a
mandatory thing than a necessary one. So
we were teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and it was more of her teaching us. She has such a sweet spirit, and you can just
tell how excited she was to be baptized.
It was a great appointment.
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| Our cool street display |
The next day, we had a street display, and since
our appointment fell out, we were there for the full four hours—ha-ha. Out in the freezing cold. But it was okay, because it was a cool street
display. We got this massive TV and set
it out on a table and played Mormon messages and Bible videos on it, and people
would stop to watch them. My favorites
were the people standing far away, not wanting to admit they were watching it,
but you could just tell they were. Well,
after 3 hours and 50 minutes, we finally had a discussion with a guy that got
somewhere. He was from Ethiopia and
wanted to know why we claimed to be the only true church. So we got his number. Ten minutes to go, and we got a number! Success.
But Saturday made this long week completely worth
it. Saturday was a miracle day. The elders had a baptism for this man named
Eric. He is the coolest person I have
ever met. He is from Ghana, and just
loves the gospel so much, and was so excited to be baptized. He just couldn’t stop smiling the entire time. It was a nice reminder that there are people
out there just waiting for us to come and find them. After the baptism, the bishop and his wife
invited us over for lunch, and we had a nice lesson with them. Bishop Chaves gave us some direction of what
he wants us to do, and that he wants us to really work with the members. Well, after that appointment, we went and
visited a few members that live in the area.
One of them is the Pelucchi family, who are just awesome. They are from Italy and lived in France for a
really long time. They have only been
here for a few months. We had a really
great lesson on the importance of the family, and at the end, asked them if we
could help them in any way. She asked us
to tell her why we decided to serve a mission.
That question made me really think, and remember the reason why I
decided to come out here. It was needed. I feel like at some points of the mission,
you just start going through the motions, trying to fill up the days, but
forget the over-arching reason why. Well,
that kind of set me back on track, which is that I am here to help others find
the joy that I have.
That night, though, was when the miracle happened. Do you remember a few weeks ago, that I told
you about that part-member, inactive family from the Dominican Republic? Well, we finally got ahold of them and made
an appointment for that night. We got a
new ward mission leader this week, Adrian Rodriguez. He is originally from Spain, and asked to
come with us for the appointment. He is
awesome. He got back from his mission in
England a few years ago, and was a teacher at the England MTC, so he is just
pumped about missionary work. We ended
up teaching Victor the Restoration, and it was clear that Adrian kind of forgot
that he wasn’t a missionary—ha-ha. It
was great. Victor was able to relate so
much to Joseph Smith and really added in a ton of input, and wasn’t afraid to
ask questions. We taught them in Spanish
and it was really quick Spanish, so I didn’t really understand a ton, but I was
able to catch enough and teach enough to know that the Spirit was in the room,
testifying to Victor of everything we were saying. At the end, Adrian asked Victor if he would
be baptized when he knew that this church was true. He said yes.
I asked him if he would prepare himself to be baptized on Dec. 20th, and he said yes. It was amazing. His wife just looked at him and…it was like,
“Then we can be an eternal family!” She is so big on families and how the
church raises them right, and it was just cool to see her excitement. They have the cutest two-year-old daughter
too. Also, he came to church yesterday,
and so that was really exciting. We went
and picked them up, and he got to meet a few of the other Spanish-speaking members,
so we are headed in the right direction!
We are going back on Wednesday with the Relief Society president, who is
from Spain, so it is going to be perfect.
I am really excited. I feel
extremely blessed to get to work with them.
Just goes to show, there’s always blessings after hardships.
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| My companion was so excited to get out of Frankfurt and have an appointment--haha |
Also, this week is already looking up. We have quite a few member appointments, and
had another miracle at church yesterday.
One of the young women came up to us and introduced herself. Her family has been inactive lately, but she
is bringing them all back. They are from
Portugal, but have lived in Spain for a while.
And she told us that she had talked to her friend about her church and
that her friend loves it so much that she wants to meet with us and be baptized. I am still in shock about that one. Sounds too good to be true! But she said she was going to call her friend
after church, and we are suppose to call her at 3 pm today to see when we can
all meet. So pray that this really is
golden! To make it even better, the
friend is from Spain. I guess I am here
to teach Spanish people. Looks like I
need to change my focus of language study.
Sorry, Sister Sorensen.
But I am hopeful for this week. I can sense that things are changing. Blessing are coming, and I am extremely
grateful, because it’s really tiring going through day to day, feeling like you
are making absolutely no difference. And
I have felt like a failure of a trainer to Sister Sorensen, having no teaching
opportunities at all. But I need to
count my blessings, and more and more will come. In the past day or two, we have seen blessing
out of the wall. So, thank you Heavenly
Father.
Thank you for all of your prayers. Things are looking up here, but we are still
trying our hardest to find people that are looking for our message, and want to
listen and learn. We continue to give
our best.
I love you all so much! I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving
break, and eat lots of good food for me.
Talk to you all next week.
Savannah
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