Meine Familie!!!
I feel like I haven't written in ages.
It was so fun to open up my email and find all your sweet messages. So much has happened.
I just can't wait to tell you all.
So Easter came and went. It was snowing like a blizzard and unbelievably cold but we still celebrated the springtime holiday.
We had a wonderful sacrament meeting.
We got recruited to sing in the ward choir too. They take it pretty seriously in this ward. We weren't just settling for your average hymn out of the green book. We were singing serious choral arrangements of Bach and Handel pieces in German. It was hard core. The Elders kept getting yelled at for singing too loud and throwing off the balance. Sister Thornton and I just prayed to get the German pronunciation right and just opened our mouths and faked all the high notes.
It was glorious!
Our ward members are so loving and generous too. We walked out of church with bags of chocolate and treats. It looked like we had just been grocery shopping.
We had an eating appointment with a family and we did a little activity with Scriptures about Christ's life in little plastic eggs. It went really well and the food, of course, was delicious. I wasn't sure how that particular eating appointment would go because two minutes after walking in the door the daughter came up and put her pet mouse in my hand. I was so stunned. I just kind of stood there with the mouse running around my palms. It was white with red eyes too so I was utterly freaked out. I just looked at Sister Thornton but she wasn't about to hold it. Luckily the appoitnment went up from there!
So the Easter festivities continued onto Monday as well. We got invited to a Brunch at a member's restaurant.
It was so fancy.
He sat us down at a table and let us order whatever we wanted. We seriously ate and ate and ate. They just kept bringing out more courses and more menus. It was all super delicious and I have honestly never felt so full. Thanksgiving doesn't even come close!
We also were invited to a little service project. We were told we would be helping make Easter cookies to take around to less actives. We were super excited and thought it sounded super fun. Our understanding of cookie decorating was frosting a couple egg shaped cookies and throwing sprinkles on top.
That wasn't really how it went.
Schwester Schultz helped us mix the batter and then poured it into big sheet pans and baked the cookie sheets. Then when they came out she cut them into little rectangles. She handed them to us with a knife and asked us to cut out bunny shapes.
What?!?! Sister Thornton and I are the most artistically ungifted pair on this planet. We didn't really have a choice though and she just was rapidly giving us more instructions in German. So we just went for it. We started carving bunny after bunny out of cookie sheets. They turned out alright. The really ugly ones we gave to the Elders to eat. We got some awesome looks when we took a box full of awkward looking bunny cookies on the bahns but it wasn't as good as the rug...
This weekend was conference. AHH! It was so great. The time change makes things kind of funny and we haven't had an opportunity to watch the Sunday night session yet. When the speakers would talk about the beautiful morning we we were looking out and seeing dark night time sky. When the morning sessions end at noon there it is 8 pm here. We watched the sessions at the chapel. The first session they had a problem getting the equipment all hooked up so we watched it on the senior misisonary couple's ipad. The speakers weren't very loud so we all had to be so quiet. We also watched a session with an American family from the ward. I was thankful for the opportunity to be able to hear the talks in English.
I loved all the talks about misisonary work. Elder Nelson's was a favorite when he spoke of the surge of missionary work starting with the restoration. I hadn't made that connection or thought of it like that before. I also loved Elder Anderson's talk. This is missionary fun!
So I saved the best news for last!
We found someone this week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We found sweet Helga!
Here's the story:
So we had been klingeling and street contacting with not much luck. We had had a fair amount of doors shut and klingels hung up on us. So we just moved down the street a ways and continued. We got klingeled into a building and walked up to meet a little old German Lady. We told her we were missionaries and we were speaking with people about Jesus Christ. She got excited and invited us in. I was shocked and not even sure what to do. This never happens! So we went inside and she brought out her bible to show us. She told us about what she believes about Christ. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. She looked through the Book of Mormon and then we read Moroni's promise with her. She just started crying. She shared with us her testimony of prayer and how she knows God answers her prayers. We were almost in tears too. She was an answer to our prayers! We made an appointment to come back and teach her more this week and I am so excited. She is so excited to learn more and I know the gospel will help her be so happy. She kept asking how we knew to come or who told us to find her. I don't really how things like that can just work out but I am so grateful. I know that Heavenly Father loves Helga!
So there's a little glimpse of how cool being a missionary is!
Have a great week!
Love,
Sister Brown
Oh and as an odd PS: We went temporarily insane and decided our lives here, talking to strangers about God in German, just wasn't adventurous enough . So we cut bangs. Sister Thornton and I were talking about it and agreed to do it if we both did. So yeah the adventures really never cease here in Dahlem!
That's all.
Oh and we found some pants on the ground. (I hope you are singing the song in your head right now!) I don't even want to know the story there...
Oh and I forgot to talk about the Cedar City temple!!!
I was so excited to hear that. When I was down there we had a stake conference and they promised us we would get a temple if we made a serious effort to do temple work. We would go down almost every week to do baptisms at St George and we all started doing our family history work and finding names. We set goals for the number of names to take to the temple by this April conference.
It was so cool to see that promise fulfilled. Those prayers were answered. I can't wait to be able to go to the Cedar temple!!!
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