The Christmas presents she mentions at the end was a reference to an actual Christmas from Claire's past when Santa brought her a bike instead of another American Girl doll. Santa explained in his letter that year that she would understand someday why he knew she needed a bike more than the doll. I'll have to forward this letter to him :)
Transfer calls sometimes make me feel like I'm on
some strange reality TV show and every 6 weeks, someone gets voted off the
island. And this time around, it was me that got voted off the Marzahn island
and then got voted onto the Bielefeld island. Yes, I'm leaving my home of the
past seven months and heading west again to “whitewash” (restart a
program--meaning no missionaries are there to welcome/guide/introduce the city
to us) in a dritt (aka I have two companions rather than the standard one).
Tune in next week to see what adventures the three of us will have on our new
island!
Before I leave this island though, I thought I’d
share some of my favorite Marzahn memories.
·
Running
for bahns (trains). Okay, that's like every missionary ever, but
pretty much at least once a day we are running to catch a bahn.
·
Biking!
Because I don't like doing the previously mentioned memory, I have had a blast
riding bikes all over east Berlin the past few months. Whether in daylight
chasing people down or at night trying to translate Taylor Swift in German as
we rode (I
assume this is some reference to singing some Taylor Swift song while riding), I'm so grateful for the chance I had to use
bikes here.
·
Wild fruit
and having a companion that always searched for apples for us in the Fall.
·
Africans
of all shape and sizes, but mostly men. A new African shows up for church every
week--yesterday it was our friend Nana from Ghana! We had an awesome lesson
with him on Friday where he said he hoped to join us in the "celestial
city." I've learned a lot about how to talk African-English too. For
example, instead of saying "you guys" when talking to a group of
people, Africans say "you people." I used to think this was just a
way of talking about people in our church, but this week we were with Collivan's
family and the kids were being a little rowdy and so Collivan said, "You
people need to stop that!" So now you know they aren't trying to distance
us when they say something like "You people look so good when you eat
fufu!"
·
Frau
Möbius. One of my favorite Germans I've met on my mission who didn't get
baptized while I was here but was in church every Sunday nevertheless. She does
funny things like translating obvious words in English to us and looking around
suspiciously whenever we go by to see if any of her neighbors are looking. We
went by this morning and and shed many 'a tear. #transfertyphoonoftears
·
Schwester
Kremer. Another one of my favorite Germans who got baptized last summer and is
such a great example of pushing forward through the hard times of being a new
convert in the church. She loves cats and is old and lonely, but so loving and
giving. She also loves crossing the street when we aren't supposed to and
giggles like a little girl while pulling us across and squealing "Schnell!
Schnell!" We had a good sit in the park last night to say goodbye.
·
Schloss
Park. A beautiful place by our house where we went running almost every day.
·
Dark days
during the winter. Those memories actually aren't that fond, but they helped us
appreciate light.
·
Going on
weekly exchanges with our sisters. Loved getting to know and serving with so
many different sisters as an STL.
·
Löwenburger
Strasse--a ghetto building with duct-taped windows and occasional blood stains
where we found 20 investigators/contacts. Most of whom turned out to be flakes,
but one of whom turned out to be Daniel! Blind Daniel who has faithfully been
coming to church and does all sorts of things that blind men usually don't do
like going to libraries and playing the piano and harmonica. He has a baptismal
date for the beginning of May and though I won't be here, I'm glad I met him. J
·
Joint
teaches. All of our best appointments had members with us. I love it when
investigators and members tausch (exchange) numbers and just become friend without us even
needing to be involved. I love the ward here and will miss each member dearly.
· Sisters Kriser and Rasmussen, who made me a
little more beastly and a little more sweet (respectively). Laughter and love
with them both.
I actually got voted off the Marzahn island
early--usually we get transfer calls from our APs (assistants to the president)
on Saturday morning, but President Kosak decided to give us a call on Friday
night. Only missionaries know what kind of panic goes through your head when
you see that your mission president is calling. We answered and he gave us our
transfer calls early, which is like spoiling Christmas (though the other
sisters in our apartment had to wait until morning for theirs). And admittedly,
whitewashing was the one thing I didn't really want to do. And it was kinda
like opening your Christmas present early and instead of getting an American
girl doll, you get a bike, which you didn't want. But just like I learned to
love that bike, I was excited Saturday morning for this great new adventure.
Bielefeld will be the smallest city I've served in (somewhere between
100,000-500,000 people from what our map says) and this will be my first time
with TWO companions.
So basically it's bound to be a great party.
This will probably be my last city on my mission,
though the dritt/whitewashing part could throw in a curve ball.
We'll see.
I love Marzahn and am so grateful I was able to
live here for so long. We sang in the choir on Sunday and so we sat on the
stand and it was cool to look out and see all the people that were there that
weren't there seven months ago, even if no one got baptized while I was here.
It was worth it.
So, “you people” have a good week and cherish all
good things and throw away the bad.
--Sister Claire Michelle Woodward
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