I
officially made it into my twenty-second year of life and celebrated the
survival of one score and one year by biking to Honey Man's house yesterday.
Honey
Man is a contact Sister Kriser found before I got here.
Honey
Man gave them some honey.
Honey
Man also lives way in the boonies of Berlin.
In a
dorf in the boonies.
But
we decided that bahns (trains) are slow and Germany is
beautiful and we are pretty fast bikers so we could do it no problem.
We
were right about Germany being gorgeous.
We
underestimated how long it would take via bike however. Meaning we spent 3.5
hours on our bikes (40 kilometers we think?) and then had to take a regional
train back because it was dark and there was no way that we would make it home
on time otherwise.
BUT
IT WAS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL AND GREAT ADVENTURE and we re-found Honey Man. Who had
no honey today. And who told us he's interested in our message, but doesn't
think he has time. Which was sad. But we still had a good little lesson with
him.
Here
is where you stop and ask yourselves how the heck we made it from Biesdorf to a
40km away dorf without a GPS or knowledge of German road system (especially
taking into consideration my past transportation fiascos). And here is where we
say we brought Mark, an amazing 25-year-old convert who got baptized in April.
Who has an iPhone with a GPS :) We told him about our adventure at church and
he accepted our invitation to come (thank goodness) because no way would we
have completed this endeavor without him. Plus he gave such powerful testimony
of how he came to know our church was true to Honey Man and testimony is always
better from normal people who speak the language natively. Not that our
testimony isn't powerful, but members really just send the message home.
We
made it home in time to eat quark cake with the other sisters in our apartment
and rejoice in life.
And
we aren't even sore today :)
It's
definitely been easy to be a happy missionary the past few weeks--Sister Kriser
is so positive and we just seem to carry each other, no problem, and work and
have fun and enjoy little things like finding wild fruit and eating it. We also
found a boatload (okay, a family-sized boat) of investigators together this
week, which was awesome. It's so good to just get some fresh people to teach
and try to be a better teacher from the start. One of the families we found
last week is from Macedonia. I found out this morning that we somehow don't
have the Book of Mormon in Macedonian. Hmph. That does not decrease the
goodness of the Naboosha family though, who are....Christianized Muslims. I
don't know how else to say it. They are loosely Muslim by culture but believe
Christ is the son of God and everything we taught they loved. They have a
19-year-old daughter named Sibella who asked if she was allowed to get baptized
even though she was Muslim. Ja klar (of course)! It was a super good lesson. They are all
looking for work and we prayed that they would find work and this morning we
found out they found work, which is wonderful except now they don't have time
to meet with us because of crazy auslander (foreign workers) work schedules. But isn't that nice that God
answers prayers? We shall find a time to teach them more that works regardless.
We
went on tausch (exchanges) to Glienicke (northern part
of Berlin) this week and just wanted to say that tausches can really help you
appreciate your wonderful companion and all that they do. It was still a pretty
successful tausch; they haven't had new investigators for a while but we found
a sweet lady from Ghana (#memoriesofAltona) and a Vietnamese man, plus a
Chinese contact! Marzahn (my area) doesn't have a lot of diversity compared to
other places I've served--we mostly have Germans but with a fair amount of
seasoning from other eastern European countries.
I
realize I didn't do headings this email.
Thought
I'd point that out.
For
those of you who have been counting, I'm almost half way through my mission.
And I was thinking about the beginning of my mission this week and how terribly
long those first several weeks seemed and how long 18 months seemed and I had
to work really hard at trying not to count every minute and simply rejoice in
little things. Time has since flown and I want every missionary still possibly
trudging through the first few transfers to know that it always gets better and
trudging will turn into joyful skipping (for sisters) and jumping (for
elders--not that elders can't skip or that sisters can't jump but...). Elder
Uchtdorf's talk from forever general conference ago has stuck with me my whole
mission: "Life is not meant to be appreciated only in retrospect. 'This is
the day which the Lord hath made...,' the Psalmist wrote. 'Rejoice and be glad
in it.'" Sometimes it was not so easy to appreciate the particular part of
the trail. Right now, it's pretty easy and I'm so grateful. Regardless of its
difficulty, I love the challenge to appreciate life and to celebrate the day. I
love being a missionary. I love my Savior Jesus Christ, who helps me find joy
in each step of the journey.
Watch
General Conference this week. In your language of choice.
Sister
Claire Michelle Woodward
No comments:
Post a Comment