Ich hab' euch Lieb!

Sister Brown

Pusteblumen

Helping alter this dress:

Sister Brown has some mad sewing skills

BE KIND

Family,

I heard from G and B this week. They are both doing well.  B just finished sewing a new skirt to wear to church and gave her first talk in sacrament meeting.  It was on following the prophet.  G just got to watch general conference and told me that he loved it.  He is still meeting with the elders in Rwanda as they teach his family. 

This week there was a ward sport activity.  We went with the Elders and some investigators.  We ended up playing volleyball and grilling.  It was a lot of fun, but got pretty intense.  The old German men of the ward were taking the game so seriously.  It was CRAZY!!  German swear words were flying, but then we were tied at 21 and the german words just didnt suffice, so the English ones were brought in. 

I decided to  remove myself and took a drink break when Lili, a four year old primary kid, came up with two dead baby moles on a paper plate.  I flipped.  It scared me so bad. I just reach for the apple juice and BAM there are dead baby moles in my face.  It was quite alarming. 

She told me not to worry because they weren't "echt" and they couldn't run anymore.  I worried anyways. 

We also had a good ZTM meeting, some good service projects, and a successful English class.

Dienst mit Dürrs (service with Durrs)

It was a good week.

Have a great warm sunny week in America!

I love you all

Love

Sister Brown

MTC comp reunion

 MTC reunion at ZTM

Elder Matthews

Elder Bingham

Sister Champenois

Sister Brown

Sister Hansen 

A Real Email

Meine liebe Familie,

Yesterday was amazing.  How could it not have been?  We got to SKYPE!!!!!!!!!!!

I love my sweet family and it was so fun to get to see them and talk with them.

We met K and M this week.  They are a young married couple.  Through a bunch of "coincidences" we ended up at the RIZ together and we taught him. He started out by telling us they were atheist and do not believe in God. Like we haven't heard that before...

We talked about God and shared with him what we believe. We shared that through prayer, we can all have our own relationships with Him. It was a really powerful lesson and the Spirit was there so strong.
At the end of the lesson we invited M to pray for us. He wasn't sure at first if it would work. Then his friend who introduced him to us bore his testimony. It was so powerful coming from his friend. Then M prayed. He told God he was thankful that He is there and that he now has the opportunity to learn more about him. He told us after the prayer that he felt really good. He just kept telling us how he never ever thought he could talk with God. 

We made an appointment and met yesterday with him and his wife. We taught about the restoration. They had kept their commitments to read the BOM introduction and had prayed alone and together. They told us how good and happy it was making them. M told us that he just keeps thinking about it and wants to know more.
We committed them to baptism and they both accepted.

It was one of the coolest appointments of my mission. 

It is really amazing to see the change that the Spirit and the gospel can make.Three days ago these two were atheist and now they are reading scripture and praying and want to follow Christ and be baptized.
It is watching transformations like that that make me love being a missionary!

English class is still going well. We have found some new students recently.   We made it a goal this transfer to invite all of our students personally to take the lessons and give each of them a Book of Mormon.  R said she would invite us over next week and U brings her book every  single week to class and marks what we talk about.  The other sisters are still meeting with T and he went to church this past week.

So there you have it. 
I just completed a real email. 

Have a good week okay?!

Lots of love!

Sister Brown

PS this week ritter sport AND milka were on sale.  WHAT!?!?! 

PPS The grocery store we go to gives little stickers or prizes for every 5 euro that you spend.  Today we got WORLD CUP trading cards.  We are SO ready!!!!!

I vowed I would always send good and uplifting emails home...

Yeah...not really happening.  

Sorry.

Schöne Woche!

Liebe Gruße

Sister Brown

Ich hab' euch Lieb!

Sister Brown

Because He Lives

Deswegen bin ich hier.  

Meine liebe Familie,

Ich hab' euch Lieb!

+ This week was Easter.  We got SO much chocolate.

+ We visited the Völkershclagdenkmal with a member.

+ There is currently a medieval Markt in Leipzig.  

+ I found a hippo mug.  (I have collected mugs from all my cities and this week I found my Leipzig one and it has a hippo on it!)

+ I got a lot of fun post this week! Thanks cute family.

+ I went on tausch to Chemnitz.  It was a surprisingly good experience.  

Alles Gute,

Sister Brown

Opposition in ALL things

Family,

This week was bad.  

Can I say that?

Our already minuscule teaching pool shrank, we helped this lady move which ended up being a total mess and we have received angry phone calls and mean texts the whole weekend as a result, and we had quite the "showdown" with the elders.  

We started playing a game.  The whole 3 positives to 1 negative game.  It isn't really even a game.  Anytime we would catch ourselves complaining we would have to find 3 positives.  

It didn't always stop us from complaining, but we sure did get creative with the positive things we thought of.

I already lost the game in this email.

So here goes nothing:

+ We have successfully made it to pday.

+ I got two packages this week.  (a maddie went on her mission package and an Easter one.  Both were amazing!)

+ Both Haribo AND Ritter Sport were on sale this week.

+ We got to watch some more of conference yesterday.  I have now seen almost all of it!

+ We had ZTM this week and got to have an uplifting meeting and see the other missionaries in the zone.

+ The small group of people we are working with is pretty solid.  Incredibly small, but solid. 

+ We got new I'm a Mormon cards.  This will give us something new to use this week in the hours of finding.

+ There was FHV sport this week and we had a contact and a less active there.   Plus it is always a good stress reliever to do some sport. 

+ And yesterday M got the priesthood! (picture attached)

So there you have it!

Leben geht immer weiter.

Kopf hoch :)

Sister Brown

And this from the email she sent home:

this came from president kosak's letter this week.  I'm holding on to it!

I promise you, this week will be special. You will see miracles; you will find those the Lord has prepared, and they will find you; you will increase your knowledge and wisdom, and you will enjoy your mission in deeper gratitude and happiness.

Thanks for everything mom. 

I love you so much!!!

Thanks for the letters and the packages of randomness.  It is great to have a new skirt to wear and some new stickers and paper to craft with.  Everything you send is always just what i need.  

I will put it all to good use this week.

Love,

Hills

on the plus side, my german DL told me that I have really good german...

and i finaly got stuff from maddie! It made my whole day to see stuff from her in my inbox.  she sent her address to so i can send her the letters i have written.  it sounds like she is doing really well.  we pray for her every day here in Leipzig and cute sister nilson prays for her every day in cottbus!

 A super windy day!

The DDR in Spring. It really is beautiful, not just broken down buildings.

 A Jane Eyre street we found.

it was a 3 ritter sport week...

...plus cookies, brownies, ice cream, and bakery treats...

family,

wasn't conference wonderful?  9 ft breadsticks, selfies, and tales of semis on fire?  it was a nice weekend.   Those sisters with the potatoes in their hair aren't the only ones who needed a boost. 

sorry.  I have no computer skills...

I loved all the talks that I saw.  My favorites were from President Monson about love and Elder Bednar about the atonement where he used the truck/snow analogy.  (That will be the next mormon message.   I am totally calling it now!)  I also liked Elder Holland's.  It was good in a keepspreadingthegospeleventhoghitissuperhard kind of way.  (German has greatly improved my ability to form obnoxiously long words...)

I also noticed some things this time around.  I will now share my conference observations with you.  There are now more conference shout outs than ever.  I have always secretly wanted a shout out at conference, but they have upped the shout out standards.  Since I don't often win Olympic gold medals, walk home alone in the dark, or become hysterical in aircrafts, I think I am out of luck! I will just have to find a new dream.

Also all of those video presentations?  Whatever cheeseball made those is has successfully made over 80,000 missionaries trunky this weekend.

I also diligently choir scanned but didn't see anyone I know.  Not even in the Orem institute group.  So that was a strike out.

Sister Nilson is in Cottbus.  I am in Leipzig.  

Sister Champenois is my new companion.  She is from Denmark.  Transfer Tuesday was insane.  Sister Nilson left before 10 am and Sister Champenois didn't come in until after 10 pm. I bounced all day  between members and missionaries. I think I had 8 companions total on Tuesday.  

crazy.

Now we are back to work!

Have a good week! 

Love you all

Love,

Sister Brown

Fixer Uppers

So family...transfer calls....they happened. 

Let me tell you a little something about transfer calls in the Germany Berlin mission.  If you are staying together they always start out with both names. "Sister Brown AND Sister Nilson." When you are being transferred they split up the names.
We got our call Friday.
The names were split up.
 "Sister Brown, you will be staying in Leipzig...  Sister Nilson, you will be transferred to Cottbus..."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 We were both crying before the call was even over.  We are such a great team!  They are splitting up our magical companionship.  I was crushed!
I love Sister Nilson so much!!  I have never had such an easy companionship.  I learned so much from her and we got so much done here in Leipzig.  

They always say that when you are fighting with your companion and not getting along that everyone else can tell.  The Spirit isn't there and people can tell.  Well, the opposite is also true.  When you do love each other and get along well everyone can tell.  The members on Sunday all told us how sad they were to see us split up.  They had all noticed how well we worked together.

So Tuesday I will say tschüß and she will get on her train.

 The good news is that we both fly home together.  So we can have a happy 14 hour flight to catch back up :)

We were able to skype with G this weekend too.  He is doing really well.  He has been meeting with the elders and preparing for the priesthood.  The elders have also been teaching his family. He told us how grateful he is to have the gospel in his life.  He bore his testimony to us and said that he would never fall away.  He just kept thanking us for knocking on his door and bringing him this message.

There is no feeling in the world like hearing the testimony of someone you have taught and grown to love.  Nothing else like it in the world.  It makes this all worth it.  All the rejection and disappointment and being far away and constantly tired.  It is all worth it  because my sweet G (and B) now have the gospel.  They have the truth.   That is why I am here.

So I learned something this week from the Frozen soundtrack.  There is a line in one of the songs that says "you can fix this fixer upper up with a little bit of love."  I think that is what I needed in response to my crazies rant two weeks ago.  Maybe these crazies just need to be loved.  That is something I have learned (am learning) on my mission.  I am learning to love people who are hard to love and to love without getting loved back.  Sometimes that is hard.

So now I have a game plan to combat the craziness of just about everyone here in the DDR.

I will fix these fixer uppers up, with a little bit of love!

Love,
Sister Brown

I don't really feel like writing...

But a picture is worth a thousand words, right?!?

Have a good week!

Liebe Grüße

Sister Brown