I'm dreaming of a white Christmas!

But it is just a dream. We have blue skies and sun!  

No complaints from this missionary!!!!

We had a lot of appointments fall out.  A LOT!  Like record setting numbers.  We are thinking it was just because of the holidays.  We are thinking things will pick back up in a week or so.  

I had an awesome tausch with Sister Sykes. She is the sister who took me finding on my first day in Berlin.  We just had a blast.  

We had an appointment with B.  Her transition has gone so smoothly.  The members have taken over her new member lessons.  This week her home teachers taught her the first lesson.  They asked her what a prophet was. She explained using examples from the Book of Mormon.  Then later when they asked her about Joseph Smith she told them the whole Joseph Smith story and her testimony.  It was so powerful.  Nothing strengthens your testimony more than hearing the testimony of someone you have taught!  It was amazing.  It is moments like that, that make the craziness of a mission so worth it.

We got a referral from the office this week.  It was a lady who was in Berlin and just walked into one of the buildings.  The missionaries just happened to be there and talked with her for a minute.  They got her information and sent it to us because she lives in our area. We tried to contact it this week.  We were in a rural area with lots of little cottages and farm land.  We found the street but we couldn't find the number for the address they gave us.  It was tricky too because some of the houses didn't have numbers. We got to the end of the street and we looked up to see a huge house. It was seriously a mansion.  It had a courtyard and fountains and was so beautiful.  Sister Hayden and I both kind of joked that we had found the house.  

We walked up to it and were just in awe of how beautiful it was.  We decided we would do a door approach just to see if we could get let in. The outside was so amazing and we both wanted to see the inside of it.  So we klingeled.  

A lady came and answered the door.  We gave her our Book of Mormon door approach.  She told us that the head of the house wasn't home. Then a man came around the corner.  He asked what we were doing.  We gave him our card and he saw that we were Mormons.  He told us how he had just been reading the Book of Mormon upstairs.  

Sister Hayden and I both just looked at each other. We were shocked!  This was officially the craziest door approach ever!

He let us in and we had a good talk.  We found out that his girlfriend was the lady in Berlin.  We had found the referral!  It was a crazy crazy day!

(and the inside of the mansion is even better than the outside!!)

This Sunday was the farewell from L.  Zweig Osnabrück now has three Elders out on missions.  It has been quite a fun experience to watch them all prepare for their missions and to now see them go out all over the world to serve the Lord.  It has brought the missionary spirit to this branch. The members are so excited to do missionary work.  After church on Sunday a member came up and gave us a Christmas card.  Inside were the names of 4 of his friends and family members who he wants us to help him share the gospel with.  When the members and the missionaries work together like this the work just flies!  

We did finding this week.  Klar.  We do finding every week.  This week we tried to use Christmas approaches.  We thought it would be a good idea to talk to people about Christ and Christmas seeing as it is in just a few days.  We found so many Christmas haters.  

I wish you all a very merry Christmas!  Open lots of presents and drink lots of hot chocolate and build a snow man for me!! 

Love,

Sister Brown

Hamburg Zone Konference