This week I moved to Jena! It was pretty lowkey because Jena is 30 minutes away from Erfurt, so Wednesday night Sister Plett and I just headed off. Everyone else transferred down to Frankfurt the next morning, but we had an 8:30am appointment. With the cutest chinese girl. She's writing a paper about electromagnetic fields in a macro interface. If I understood correctly, she calculates what happens to light after it passes through or reflects off of bumpy or complicated surfaces. COOL. Oh and also she has wonderful, active faith in Jesus Christ which grows every day. Even cooler.
Jena is pretty small and the branch is even smaller. There are about 10-20 people in church + 6 missionaries (elders, sisters, couple). The missionary couple, the Schwendimans, are so funny. Elder Schwendiman is branch president and Sister Schwendiman is a Home Ec teacher. MAN can she cook!! On Friday they had all 4 of us over for homemade chinese food in honor of Elder Richards' birthday.
It's also really nice being in the same area as my zone leaders. I missed that. I learn so much from them and they push us to be better through their examples. And as a sister training leader we need to coordinate a lot of meetings so it's nice being in the same area for that.
A year ago Thursday I arrived in Dortmund, an angry confused Golden who didn't have warm enough tights! Ah, how the time has flown.
On Sunday we had stake conference in the form of a broadcast from Salt Lake. Elder Bednar gave his talk in German! I could tell that it was hard for him to keep his really good pronunciation up. I know from experience it can make your mouth muscles really sore! But he did it because he loves the German-speaking people and he wanted to tell it to them in their own language. What a wonderful man. It was funny to be back in Erfurt, the stake center, again. The branch members there were very confused to see me. "Didn't you leave?"
Sister Plett, my new companion, went into the MTC at the same time as me! And she was trained in Hamm, which is right next to Dortmund, so we've known each other a long time. She's from Canada and is really really good at drawing cartoons and doing word art-type graphics. Also, she's a clear minded, happy person who's looking forward to working hard with me. Scary!!!
It's a wonderful day in Jena, the sun is shining and there is food to be purchased. I love you all and so does God! (a little bit more than I do though.)
Sister Teusch
Monday, February 24
Monday, February 17
hiya!
I got transferred to Jena, which is about 30 minutes East of here (I think, you can check) and I am still the Sister Training Leader for the zone. Now I'm in the same area as the zone leaders which will be nice! And they redid district boundaries so now all 4 sister will be in the same district. Convenient.
This week I was so tired! We had a really fun Zone Training: we practiced approaching members with the Book of Mormon like a sports drill and then went outside for 10 minutes to try it out! And we also played some unity building games, and got permission from Pres to watch the scene from Space Jam with Mike's Special Stuff. Ah, gospel connections.
Love you! I'll be reading you from Jena next week!
This week I was so tired! We had a really fun Zone Training: we practiced approaching members with the Book of Mormon like a sports drill and then went outside for 10 minutes to try it out! And we also played some unity building games, and got permission from Pres to watch the scene from Space Jam with Mike's Special Stuff. Ah, gospel connections.
Love you! I'll be reading you from Jena next week!
Monday, February 10
still cold
Just a little bit from Lauren this week:
This week we spent 4 or 5 hours helping a couple move. They're having a baby soon and need a bigger apartment. We mostly cleaned the old apartment, which is really satisfying because it's completely empty and you get to attack scrub everything you see.
In church on Sunday Sis. Stout and I sang 2 verses of Lead, Kindly Light because our only YSA is moving to Hannover to get married. And then we sang Come, Come Ye Saints with the elders because the topic of the day was the saints in Nauvoo. And after church we were about to leave with the branch president's wife to go eat at their house, and a couple walked in! They saw our The Church is open, please come in! sign and CAME IN! So we gave them a church tour and we stopped and explained every single painting and picture, because they were so interested. We taught the first lesson through the pictures and gave them the articles of faith and a restoration pamphlet. They said they'd come to Stake Conference! Woot! They were a totally normal middle class german couple. Pretty weird.
love you! transfer calls on Saturday!
Sister Teusch
This week we spent 4 or 5 hours helping a couple move. They're having a baby soon and need a bigger apartment. We mostly cleaned the old apartment, which is really satisfying because it's completely empty and you get to attack scrub everything you see.
In church on Sunday Sis. Stout and I sang 2 verses of Lead, Kindly Light because our only YSA is moving to Hannover to get married. And then we sang Come, Come Ye Saints with the elders because the topic of the day was the saints in Nauvoo. And after church we were about to leave with the branch president's wife to go eat at their house, and a couple walked in! They saw our The Church is open, please come in! sign and CAME IN! So we gave them a church tour and we stopped and explained every single painting and picture, because they were so interested. We taught the first lesson through the pictures and gave them the articles of faith and a restoration pamphlet. They said they'd come to Stake Conference! Woot! They were a totally normal middle class german couple. Pretty weird.
love you! transfer calls on Saturday!
Sister Teusch
Monday, February 3
Maam
This week I went to a Heilpraktiker, so basically all of the types of doctors that Dad thinks are sketchy rolled into one. I'm getting some acupuncture for my neck pain tomorrow. Whee!
"There's always a way around the system. but there's never a way around God." Elder Gamble
"Oliver Cowdery missed the opportunity of a lifetime because he didn't seize it in the lifetime of the opportunity." Elder Holland
We had a branch game night and we had an investigator come and bring a friend! So we had 4 missionaries, 3 old single men, an 18-year-old girl, and her friend. We played Pictionary Telephone. Everyone LOVED it! Phew!
On Friday we helped the German alcoholic version of Daniel Radcliffe move from one part of a massive apartment building to a different part because his girlfriend was pregnant and they needed an extra room. His mom bought us ice cream afterwards. Oh and his friends who looked like a blue collar Neil Patrick Harris let us borrow his wheely thing!
In church on Sunday no one did anything mean or weird in Testimony Meeting, we got to eat cold german pasta salad after church because we were waiting for the font to fill because the Jena Branch had a baptism!!! And 3 of our investigators came! So proud!
Keep being cool.
Sister Teusch
"There's always a way around the system. but there's never a way around God." Elder Gamble
"Oliver Cowdery missed the opportunity of a lifetime because he didn't seize it in the lifetime of the opportunity." Elder Holland
We had a branch game night and we had an investigator come and bring a friend! So we had 4 missionaries, 3 old single men, an 18-year-old girl, and her friend. We played Pictionary Telephone. Everyone LOVED it! Phew!
On Friday we helped the German alcoholic version of Daniel Radcliffe move from one part of a massive apartment building to a different part because his girlfriend was pregnant and they needed an extra room. His mom bought us ice cream afterwards. Oh and his friends who looked like a blue collar Neil Patrick Harris let us borrow his wheely thing!
In church on Sunday no one did anything mean or weird in Testimony Meeting, we got to eat cold german pasta salad after church because we were waiting for the font to fill because the Jena Branch had a baptism!!! And 3 of our investigators came! So proud!
Keep being cool.
Sister Teusch
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