Monday, September 21, 2015

Monday September 21, 2015 Gera, Germany

Well, I’m glad to hear that this week was pretty normal and that everyone is now eating healthy. I’m still here, eating all types of carbs you can imagine! Potatoes, pasta, bread, and all of those in every form you can even imagine! I liked the picture of River dressing up as me! I miss that hoodie...hopefully it’s still in good shape when I get back! ;)

My week was SOO long for some reason!! It just felt like a really long time.
Montag: We got to eat kind of American food! Actually, they had really good donuts! They don't beat Lucy’s homemade donuts, but they were still pretty good!

Dienstag: We did some finding. Wahoo! We did some apartment buildings. We call it klingeling! Cause a doorbell is called a klingel...anyways, not important. But, a door actually literally got slammed on us. Usually they just cuss over the sprach box, but this time the lady came all the way down to let us in, took one look (at our cute smiling faces) said something rude about church and slammed the door. We can't help but laugh at the angry Germans sometimes! Then…we planned to have Sandy. But, he didn't show up! LAME. So...we went and grabbed the car drove it kind of by Frau Dhillion’s house and met with Frau Dhillion. She loves to travel, so she talks a lot about traveling. Which is also one of my favorite topics, seeing as one day I will travel everywhere...except for Asia. I wouldn't really mind not visiting there. She gave us a huge atlas to take home so I could study where countries are because I was confused at where everything in the world was. Does that sound like me? Probably! Then we had Gemeinde Abend. The 3 old ladies made me eat SOOO much because they forgot to celebrate my birthday! So they made me eat the WHOLE bowl of Quark! (Yogurt pudding stuff!) Then at Gemi-Co Bruder Krause had cake there because he also forgot my birthday. I can't even describe to you my prayers at that time...just bless that this food can FIT without me throwing up... :)
Mittwoch: Distrikt meeting! The sister’s train fell out. (if ever traveling Europe, I suggest renting a car) so we picked them up in Zwickau and started distrikt meeting late. The Elders were in a mess this day because Elder Timmerman was waiting to pick up his trainee in Freiberg. He was Elder Schofield’s last companion! So, Elder Timmerman has a REALLY good area! Their area has had 6 baptisms in 2 transfers and they were ALL found through members! Elder Timmerman has been in this area for almost a year. He told us how he turned the program around from hating the missionaries to getting 6 baptisms through the members! Crazy, and sounds impossible, but it’s possible! So, we learned and talked a LOT about member work and HOW we can do it! It was awesome and it's like I was trapped inside a box of missionary work and now it just opened into a whole new world! Really! You mean we SHOULD be friends with the members? You mean we can do more than 1 service project in a week? You mean we can just stop by the members to say hi? And it won’t be wasting our time? Wow! So...Sister Medley and I found our motivation! MEMEBER work!! After this great learning experience, we went home to Gera and taught the Meckels. They aren’t doing too great. We couldn't get in contact with them for like 2 weeks. They weren't at church and their home life is just not so good because they don't live the gospel principles. We are going to really start our focus to be back on them! They need our help and I think we are still here to help them! I love those kids!

Donnerstag: We decided to use our motivation and go visit some members! I made some cookies mittwoch abend (Wednesday night) and we went to Meerane and just randomly stopped by some members that we haven't really had a lot of contact with! They were all SOO excited!! We even got 2 new appointments for next week because of it! Later that day we taught Claudia. Lucy was there and was AWESOME! We taught her some more of the Plan of Salvation, or rather, Lucy taught her, and then we focused a lot on baptism. We re-invited her to be baptized. She said yes! My gosh she is so prepared! She also said yes to come to church on Sunday and to a fireside this week on Wednesday! What the?! This NEVER happens! Sometimes I think it's too easy...like there must be a catch! We will see! She is really starting to love us though! She is 19 so about our age.
Freitag: We taught Michael, talked about his temple experience and really focused on the blessings. He told us he wanted the blessings, and he said he knows that he needs to get baptized, he just still doesn't feel ready. Then we visited Sch. Kretchmar! We had printed out a pic of us and wrote a note on the back so she would remember us and put our pic with all of her other black and white pics! Then, to Sch. Dörlitz's for lunch, where we had to eat up to our eyeballs! Then, to Sch. Sorge's garten for some work! Then, we picked up the Hohenstein sisters because they were sleeping over with us for what we did on Samstag.....

Samstag: Zone Service Project in Jena! Probably my favorite city in the zone! It actually has mountains! So, we were split up into companionships and Lucy came with us. She’s our third comp. and our group got to go to a building in Jena and paint!! Wahoo!! It was cool! We got to know a few people and get them to know a little about the church in a casual way. Something funny about this day was that the zone leaders went to go pick up trash, but it actually ended up being fishing tires out of the river, so they came back like soaking wet up to their mid-torsos! Kind of funny! We "hung out" (as much as you can do as missionaries) and then studied all 20 of us 20 year olds just up and studied for 2 hours! What group of teenagers do that?! Missionaries amaze me! Then we went to this slide show and party where everyone knew that we were missionaries and talked to us about America! The Zwickau sisters ended up having to sleep over with us because trains are stupid! But that was fun too!
Sonntag: Claudia and her boyfriend came to church! And so did Sch. Meckel and Fynnlay! SOO good!! It was Ernte Dankfest! (Harvest festival) and so we ate all together as a ward after church! Then we went by on a less active and did weekly planning. Good day!

Well, not much time left. But God answers prayers! He really knows just how to answer them! I have been praying for motivation for a while and this week just did it for me!! Love you so so much! Pray for the Meckels for me if you can!!
Liebe Grüße, Sister St. John


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