Hallo! Schöne woche nu?
THAT 'NU' was a confusing thing when I first got here....so I just said `beautiful week yeah?' so the Germans say 'nu' or 'no' when we in English say something like 'yeah?' or 'ya know?' So I would ask Sandy a question and she would respond saying 'nu' and I thought she was saying NO but she really was saying 'yeah.' CONFUSING RIGHT? Yeah you're tellin' me. But ive got it now. Luckily. The Lord is blessing me immensely with the language, I am understanding a lot and of course have my handy dandy translator (my companion) always with me. She is so great, we laugh all day and thta will be my goal for my whole mission, and I think my whole life, laugh everyday, enjoy the people I am with.
I know hard companions are going to come, its inevitable, but there is always something to laugh about...like today for example already so many hilarious things have happened on our lovely Pday. We went grocery shopping early (after cleaning of course which is MY FAVORITE) and we didnt have a euro to put in the cart thing. (Every grocery store, to get a cart you have to put a euro in the thing and then when youre done you put the little locky thing in and get your euro back- we should do that in America, then all the carts are where theyre supposed to go....I told you they do everything right here :) well except its hard like today when you dont have a euro obviously you have to carry everything..........well to make a long story short Sister Singer dropped the spaghetti sauce. Oh man it was so funny, so embarrassing and super hilarious.
AND THEN we got our haircuts. Sister Fröbel has a hair salon and cuts the missionaries hair for freeee! I was so grateful to get my haircut...she uses BED HEAD products which reminded me of home, and I told her which product dad uses, and she laughed and said that is for frauen :) and she said she would use it so I could feel my dad nearer :) WE took a picture with her, she looks cuter than we do, and we're like 20 years younger (how is that right at all?) oh well when we left the first thing Sister Singer said was 'I look like a mushroom.' hahaha, she doesnt...there was just some extra curl there. Well if those stories werent funny to you I apologize but they have already made my day and THAT is what I get to look forward to, everyday waking up and anticipating the laughs we will have....and more importantly the miracles we are going to witness....
I know hard companions are going to come, its inevitable, but there is always something to laugh about...like today for example already so many hilarious things have happened on our lovely Pday. We went grocery shopping early (after cleaning of course which is MY FAVORITE) and we didnt have a euro to put in the cart thing. (Every grocery store, to get a cart you have to put a euro in the thing and then when youre done you put the little locky thing in and get your euro back- we should do that in America, then all the carts are where theyre supposed to go....I told you they do everything right here :) well except its hard like today when you dont have a euro obviously you have to carry everything..........well to make a long story short Sister Singer dropped the spaghetti sauce. Oh man it was so funny, so embarrassing and super hilarious.
AND THEN we got our haircuts. Sister Fröbel has a hair salon and cuts the missionaries hair for freeee! I was so grateful to get my haircut...she uses BED HEAD products which reminded me of home, and I told her which product dad uses, and she laughed and said that is for frauen :) and she said she would use it so I could feel my dad nearer :) WE took a picture with her, she looks cuter than we do, and we're like 20 years younger (how is that right at all?) oh well when we left the first thing Sister Singer said was 'I look like a mushroom.' hahaha, she doesnt...there was just some extra curl there. Well if those stories werent funny to you I apologize but they have already made my day and THAT is what I get to look forward to, everyday waking up and anticipating the laughs we will have....and more importantly the miracles we are going to witness....
I witnessed a couple miracles this week, so that Indonesian family (sp?) we're teaching? The Widodos? You remember? Well we have continued meeting with them and its mostly just meeting with the dad because no one else can understand us... but they are Muslim (hard right?) well no, its just like teaching anyone else, we arent destroying and rebuilding their beliefs, we are just building upon what they know...which is very different, but we are making progress. The miracle was.....well the committment we had given Salamet (the dad) was to read the Joseph Smith pamphlet (the only other material other than the Book of Mormon we have in Indonesian) and when we showed up we small talked about the family etc and then asked him if he had read the pamphlet (and man that thing is more than just 'a pamphlet' is like 12 pages long! Sneaky) and he brought it out and proceeded to tell us about Joseph Smith and how he went to the forest and prayed, saw the angel moroni in his room and then Oliver Cowdery (yes he said oliver cowdery in broken English) helped him translate the gold plates that he got out of the hill cumorah (yes he said hill cumorah!) and I looked and he had underlined things in the pamphlet and really went above and beyond the committment we had given him. This 38 year old muslim father was sitting there telling me about our beloved prophet Joseph Smith and the miracles that happened to him. He said they were true and the Book of Mormon is true. There were other things we have to explain and clear up (obviously) and its a slow moving process (ive quickly come to realize) but isnt that a miracle!? Yes, I thought so too.
Also Schwester Guerisch! Remember her? Grasshopper lady? Well shes been coming to church, (she was the inactive one) we`ve seen her countenence (oh man my spelling is going fast... :) change. She is happier and the last time we went by on her, she had cleaned up her little apartment and she stayed to the end of Erntedankfest helping cleaning up etc....well shes doing great, and just when things get going good Satan attacks....and the Zeugnis Jehovas (Jehova Witnesses) went by on her and told her the Book of Mormon was from the devil la di da.....and really tested Schwester Guerishs testimony. We sat by her at a concert later this week (after this all had happened, and we didnt know) and she had felt the spirit so strong and was questioning whether the church was true etc, and the spirit hit her so strong through the music. Well we decided to go see her the same night as the concert, so we took a bus out to Brand-erbis-dorf (where she lives) and at the last minute grabbed a Book of Mormon to give to her. We had noticed previously that she didnt have one lying around, and then she said it was in the keller, so I taped a beautiful picture of Christ and a lamb in the front and wrote her name in it all purdy and we marked scriptures on the bus.....well we met with her and she told us the whole experience about the jehova witnesses and she new that the concert and us going to visit her and bringing her another Book of Mormon was an answer to her prayer, she said she would start reading again and bore her testimony of its truthfulness. It was a miracle. I am so BLESSED to get to be the missionary that can see this amazing things happen.
These two experineces among many more have reconfirmed my testimony of 'by small and simple things, great things come to pass.' Its true! Just reading a pamplet, and bringing by a book, how small and simple, yet these two actions could change the lives of many people forever! That is how the Lord is building his Kingdom all around the earth and especailly here in Freiberg.
Another witness I had of this was our ward here in Freiberg had a ward party....can I just tell you how lame ours are compared to over here!? These people do it right :) No offense :) The had the ERNTEDANKFEST. Invitations made that we the missionaries gave to many people, the members gave out and were stocked in the gemeindehaus (ward house) They had all the tables and chairs ready two days before, and the day before they went crazy. They put up a stage, and trees and sunflowers, lanterns and table cloths, and center pieces and that was only the decorations. We had an appointment right before it started (which I hope I get to tell you about) and so we were a little late, but when we got there EVERY seat was filled and apparently there were '30 visitors' and one of our investigators came too. There were two tables full of food and one of the sisters were singing. Then another sister got up and read a poem, then all the primary kids had costumes on, faces painted, and they did a little play about the fall. SO CUTE. and then there were a couple other musical pieces with different members of the ward and then the Bishop welcomed everyone and said 'gute appitit!' The food was super good, we brought crazy good american brownies, and there were a lot of visitors. Everyone had a lovely time and even a lady from our English class came yay missionary work! So those small and simple additions (invites, centerpieces, costumes) made a GREAT ward party come to pass...nu?
Quickly two other cool contacting stories then Ill let you get back to your facebook or homework (Kasandra) We were out taking invites to former contacts to this concert and I was praying immensely (wrestling with the Lord in prayer like Alma did) to please place someone in our path, to let us know how we can be more worthy of the spirit to come in contact with prepared people. As we were dropping an invite into a mailbox, (this is at like 1 in the afternoon) some guy rides up on his skateboard from up the hill...we werent even facing him and after he took off his huge headphones he says something like 'so, are you guys like...from a church, or what church are you from, what are you doing' something to that nature....We proceeded to talk to him, found out his name was Thobias, he had decided to be evangelish when he was 12 etc, we told him about our church, started in on the first lesson and invited him to church and etc....he said it was weird that he saw us cause he is usually never outside at this time of day, he is usually studying... we then said goodbye and he went back up the hill, HE WASNT EVEN GOING DOWN THE HILL, he like rode to us, talked to us and went back..... it was a miracle, a tender mercy of the Lord and an answer to my prayer.
We were also handing out invitations to this concert by this Chamber Choir made up of LDS young single adults from Germany, Danemark, Switzerland and the US. We were walking up to hauptbahnhof to check out the times for (tomorrow sister singer is going to Dresden for a trainers training and Im going to Chemnitz with the sisters there) so we were looking at times and we walked past this little old lady like 4 feet tall, white hair, big glasses and a really sweet smile. She kind of bobbed her head when she talked. . . we asked her if she needed help with her bags and found out she had lived in Freiberg her whole life and was really proud to tell us her mom had lived to be 105 WOW. Well she told us about her church and didnt seem to interested in what we had to say but we told her we diened gern (like to do service) and gave her our handy number (cell #) and also at the end invited her to this concert....and said goodbye not thinking much of it. When we got to the concert we greeted everyone and it was cool to see a lot of our ward at something outside of church, and a LOT of non members came, and then little Grandma Bahnhof came wobbling in. She was so cute, and she said 'my mann said I should come!' she also remembered my last name, she had asked me if I knew someone in Freiberg with the name of Rasmussen, and she said, I remembered my cousin married a Rasmussen! Which I thought was sweet she remembered my name. That was a tender mercy too. The concert was phenomenal it was held in the nicoli kirche and the accoustics were so great. The spirit was so strong, they sang hymns, latin songs, a spanish one, and a few Mac Wilberg songs, they sang Christus ist mein Herr at the end and the spirit hit me so strong...I had missed feeling the spirit so strongly through music. I recorded it, when I sent this SD card home, maybe Kasandra can put it on the blog? Well isnt my mission hard? Meeting awesome people, all day, making appointments, teaching, going to concerts, serving near the tempel, witnessing miracles daily, hourly! I am so grateful to be here and so grateful for your prayers. Danke Schön. Thank you very much for them.
Sorry my thoughts were all over the place but so much goes on and I cant give these people and stories justice through these emails, thanks for enduring through them :)
The leaves are changing colors and are all over the cobblestone streets (its a hoot hearing Sister Singer comment on the beauty of the leaves because apparently the leaves dont change and fall in Texas?) Crazy Texans :) They are beautiful, the son was out a lot this week and now the rain is back, its so fresh and so clean I love it. We are going to the Freiberg Museam today and we went to a mineral museam last week, haha yay! Such cool experiences....we were going to go to the Volkswagon factory museam amazing place everyone raves about today with the Dresden sisters and elders, but they scheduled the tour too early, so maybe next time :) Transfer calls are this saturday! We'll see what lies ahead for my next 6 weeks on this adventure....
Love you all, Schöne Grüße
Sister Rasmussen
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