Claire told us this week that her mission is the biggest in the world. They currently have about 70 sisters and 200 elders serving there.
Last week's word of the week was great. This week, I would like to introduce the
more complex word..."good."
Good
things come. Sometimes. But not always. But the end is always good. And if it's
not good, then it's not the end.
Good
news first
Remember
Frau Köhler, my cute little old lady neighbor in Leipzig that I befriended
while running circles in our garden outside? Well I got a letter from her last
week! I had given her a Book of Mormon before I left and she wrote to tell me
that she started reading my gift and has enjoyed it thus far. She said she
missed her Claire-chen (little Claire) and hadn't met the other missionaries
that moved in yet, but....she is so good. The card made my day.
Another
good thing? I did my first tausch as a sister training leader! I hope it's okay
that I call it a tausch. Because I didn't even know that word meant exchange
until three months into my mission. But just so we're clear, tausch=exchange.
Sister Kriser and I both took the three hour train ride up to Rostock to serve
with the sisters there for a day. They just re-opened a sisters’ program there
last transfer and it's been pretty hard to find people to teach. The five
missionaries that serve there make up a quarter of the branch and their church
is above a ghetto-netto next to a belly dancing studio. Yeah. I know. But
Rostock is so great (I mean good?) and they are such hard working sisters. We
went in and were able to see some miracles there :) Namely...while trying to go
by some contacts, Sister Cluff (one of the Rostock sisters) and I got a couple
of new contacts, which has been rather scarce in those parts. One of the contacts
we had was a false address, so we decided to just klingle the building and
after most people not answering, a guy finally let us in. Sister Cluff gave a
two sentence summary of why we were here as he held back his barking dogs and
to our surprise, he told us to come back next week to tell him more! Then there
was another guy that we walked by on the street and he started calling after us
in French. Little did he know that Sister Cluff studied a little French before
her mission and she responded to whatever he said. And of course then we
started talking about Jesus Christ. Because that's what we do. Though Muslim,
he said he loved Christ and we got his phone number and guess what his name is?
Mormoni. Ridiculous.
The
tausch was a very good thing. I was so impressed by the testimony and spirit of
the other sisters, even when they are in a hard time of their missions. Plus we
got to run along the Ost See for morgen sport (morning exercise) :) I miss my
Colorado mountains, but Germany sure does a good job of providing its own
non-mountain beauty. I feel really blessed for the opportunity to get to serve
in this way on my mission and love it.
More
good news?
We met
with a lady named Frau Möbius, who has been going to church for five years but
has hitherto refused to meet with missionaries. However, she agreed to meet
with us on the condition that she can try to help our "schrecklich"
(terrible) German. (Sister Kriser: Can we do language study for an hour and
then have an hour for a lesson? Frau Möbius: You don't need one hour of
language study, you need twenty!). By the way, our German isn't that bad.
Anyways, we're glad for her help and that we get to meet with her (she gave me
a 1-, sort of like an A- in our grading system, on a German translation she had
me do, so not bad).
Conversation
Starting 101
We did
our sprach studium in some chairs at a mall one day because we didn't have time
to come home and do it. There was an old lady sitting next to us and both of us
kinda wanted to talk to her, but were stumped on potential small talk starters.
So after a few-dead end questions (she wasn't very talkative) and finding out
she was waiting for her husband, Sister Kriser asked, "So....how do you
get a man?" First time we've used dating advice as a conversation starter.
Unfortunately its uniqueness worked about as well as the other questions and
she anxiously awaited the arrival of her husband so she could get away from the weird, probing American girls.
Not So
Good Things
We had
stake conference this weekend and all the wards and missionaries in and around
Berlin gathered together and it was lovely! The not so good part? We had a
semi-sketch investigator show up (who informed us this week that he had to go
to prison next month because he was caught riding the trains “schwarz”--without
paying for a ticket), who was pretty dang angry at the world for some reason.
Plus he's not exactly all there upstairs. As the meeting started, he started
shouting some of his most choice German profanities at the surrounding ward
members and the stake president and was getting a little violent. We didn't
exactly know what to do since he refused to leave the meeting at first. But
Sister Kriser coaxed him out soon enough with some pixie dust and help from the
Lord and we walked him to a bus stop. Along the way, he kicked a couple of
fences and yelled at some more passersby. Which was actually pretty scary. But
we managed to get him on the bus, said a prayer together, and humbly returned
to the stake center in Tiergarten to assure everyone that we were okay.
Missionaries
just have weird experiences sometimes. Okay, a lot of times, because we talk to
a lot of random people, which most normal people don't do. And we see a whole
different side of society than what we saw as normal people. It's so hard to
explain what it's like to be a missionary, what it's like be a missionary in
your mission, in your area, in your companionship, in your life. But I am so
grateful that Christ knows exactly what it is like for every part of that
pyramid.
Marzahn
is nice--it's not the city/busy part of Berlin, so it's actually pretty quiet.
Sister Kriser is still good and healthy and funny and brilliant :)
Love
you all.
--
Sister
Claire Michelle Woodward
No comments:
Post a Comment