December 29, 2014

German Harry Potter!
Merry Christmas to me!

Well, it was really great to be able to talk to all of you this past week. Actually, it was a great week over all.  Christmas on the mission is just the greatest thing ever.  We saw some way cool things and I saw a Christmas miracle: somehow I managed to get through this week without having to ask for an overeating blessing.  I have never eaten so much in my life.

Christmas Eve with the Palmers

So although I talked to you all just this week, so much happened this week that I want to tell you about.  First off, I had this master idea of going dooring at the Uni. I figured, “Hey, the only people left would be those that have no one to go to during this Christmas season.  So they are lonely and have no family, and we have no family, so let’s go see if they want the gospel.” Yeah, I thought we would find someone.  But we didn’t, yet that’s okay because we had a few good conversations with people and wished them a merry Christmas and gave them a nice “Joy to the World” DVD.  Most of them just looked super confused at what we were doing.  I wish I could’ve taken pictures of their faces. That coupled with the next night where we went caroling with the elders…Germans just don’t know what to do when a bunch of Americans show up at their door and burst into Christmas songs.  Most of them ran to get money and chocolate and didn’t understand when we said that all we wanted to do was give them a nice Christmas DVD.  We wanted to give THEM a gift.  One lady got so offended that we didn’t take her 10 euros that we had to and gave it to our bishop.  But it opened the door to a lot of questions, so we got to have a few decent conversations about what we were doing here and why.  So that was exciting. 

Dinner with the Fernandez family

Christmas time in the mission

I think that one of the funniest things this week though was our street display on Tuesday night.  There were about 10 missionaries there and we had “He’s the Gift” playing on repeat and we all went just crazy talking to people.  We managed to hand out so many Books of Mormon together. I had some really good conversations with people.  I got to teach the Restoration to someone from Columbia, and was able to talk to a lot of other cool people and testify to them about how wonderful the gospel is.  We just had a solid time there and all the missionaries were on fire. 

Words of wisdom from a college student....

I already told you a little bit about our appointment with David.  It was really good.  I just can’t get over how many questions he had…how one little statement that I have learned since I was five could boggle his brains that much.  It made me realize how much knowledge I take for granted.  It was also really funny because he said he was trying to read the Book of Mormon and was like, “What the heck is ‘hath’ and ‘thee’ and ‘thy?’  It makes no sense!”  So yeah, he needs one in Aramaic...ha-ha.  And along the way we found a cool guy from Kentucky, so we will have to go hit him up and buy some more burgers. 

We found these chips that are "Only
for Men."  So naturally we had to was some.

There is also this one lady from Ghana that has been at the church for about the last four weeks.  She has come every Sunday faithfully and even to our Christmas party, but she doesn’t speak much English or German.  So every time we tried to make out an appointment to teach her, she hasn’t understood.  Well, that was my goal going into church yesterday - make out an appointment with Dorinda. Mission accomplished!  We are going to meet with her on Thursday, and it will take a lot of patience and work, but hey, someone that comes to church every week should really be taught.  So we are excited about that.

Lovely

I also got a call from Sister Lyons last night.  Apparently they called up someone from the area book that I taught once in Heidelberg.  Her name is Yue, and we had the best first meeting ever with her and then she just went missing.  But when they called her she said that she had moved to Frankfurt SO we are going to call her up.  Pretty excited.

The awkward missionaries of Frankfurt :)

Sister Sorensen's five-year old
brother sent this to me.  I guess
I am now "Companion."

Our wonderful gifts from
Sister Sorensen's mom

So yeah, we have some awesome leads for some new investigators, so I am doing pretty great.  Besides that, we just had a ton of member appointments this week, and ate more food that I think is even humanly possible.  It turned into four days of Christmas and by the end I just went home and wanted to roll on the ground and just lay there for ages.  Ha-ha.  But it was all super fun.  We handed out loads of stuff with the Palmers, and that was just great.  Their family just chased people down on the streets to give them these DVDs, and because little kids were there, they went like hot cakes.  This Christmas season, Sister Sorensen and I managed to hand out four boxes of DVDs.  It was pretty great.  For dinner that night, Sister Palmer wanted to make us a bird, but since she doesn’t understand German, she just got one from the store.  Turns out it was duck.  As soon as the kids found out, they suddenly didn’t want to eat it any more.  Ha-ha.  But duck is pretty good!  Also, we had Christmas dinner with the Raymundos, and it got really awkward when we found out they were from Portugal and not Spain and then opened up our thank you card written in Spanish...whoops.  But I ate roasted chestnuts for the first time, and let me tell you…those are DELICIOUS!  I also found out this week that I can understand Portuguese because a less active member showed up at church this week and I had a lovely conversation with her were I would speak to her in Spanish and she would reply in Portuguese.  So that was pretty neat.  Yeah, but as far as this goes, my advice for all of you…be nice to the missionaries when you feed them. 

Also, this week I read "The Power of Everyday Missionaries".  If you haven’t read it yet, go and read it.  It isn’t that long, so it is a quick read, but it has some really good ideas for sharing the gospel and how, and some awesome success stories, so just go read it. You won’t regret it.

Well, it snowed this week, so all the missionaries are going to go have a nice snowball fight, so I am going to head out. I wish you all a wunderbares week, and just remember how much I love you all! 

Elder Lovelace and me...reunited
from kindergarten in Texas!

Liebe, Sister Teeples