It's just becoming a thing

So this week was awesome! I had a great split with Sister Weber in Erfurt, and we got a new investigator on the street, that was fun. Finding with new people is always an adventure because you're not used to what kinds of things they say. Luckily the spirit converts, not us! Which sounds like Sister Weber is a weird finder. Actually I'M a weird finder. I just say the most random things. Sigh.

I LOVE what you said about Brother Chandler. Isn't that just it? Testimony meeting is just practice for the real world! Although I will say that bearing testimony in an appointment or on the street is sometimes easier than bearing testimony in church, just because of the microphone and stuff.

In church for the 5th Sunday the 4 missionaries talked about different aspects of how full time missionaries do missionary work, and then our mission leader compared what we do to what members can do, and talked about how we can support each other and how what we do can overlap. I think it was awesome, at least that's what our mission leader said about it. Granted he thinks everything is awesome. That's his favorite word.

I love you all, I'm staying in Jena another transfer! It's a 5-week transfer, if anyone's keeping track. My new companion is Sister Stoker. I hear she's from Virginia. Whoo! She goes home at the same time as me, though, so I doubt I'll be finishing my mission here. We can't both leave at the same time!

Love you!!!

Sister Teusch

A Tree-Herder! A Shepherd of the Forest!

This week has been a little strange. I don't even remember last week.

 

Our investigator Huiying got her wisdom teeth removed and so we dug out a box of orange jell-o we had lying around our apartment. She'd recently heard a reference to the green jell-o aspect of mormon culture and was curious to know what it was, so she was pretty excited when we made her some. And she loved it! Yay! 

 

Tuesday we helped a man clean up his garden for spring. He's the classiest man I've ever had an appointment with! It was nice getting our hands in dirt for a while. And it wasn't even cold outside. Afterwards we raced home, changed into skirts, finished packing up all our stuff, and took our suitcase for the week to the senior couple's apartment, where we left it while we borrowed their car to drive to a visiting teaching appointment. Last time we'd tried to show her and her husband how to do family history, but the site was down, so we wanted to go over it today. Turned out they were so excited to get their names entered that they'd figured it out on their own! So we had our visiting teaching lesson and then showed them a few tricks and were out of there again. After trading in the car for our suitcase we met up with the elders at the train station to take an ICE down to Nuremberg for the night. The Feucht sisters picked us up and took us home to their super cute apartment, all decked out with the exact same furniture as ours. Ah, the blessings of having so many newly-opened areas: nice new cookie cutter apartments.

 

Wednesday we got up super early to be at the Nuremberg chapel for a 8:30 leadership meeting with Elder Timothy J. Dyches of the Seventy. He gave a talk in October called "will you be healed?" or something, and that talk helped me out a lot over the last 6 months so I was excited to hear more from him. His wife and he are both wonderful teachers. Sister Dyches showed us a clip from a movie called "Taking the Giants" in which a football player bear-crawls an entire football field with another guy on his back, because he was blindfolded and didn't know how far he had left to go. Go find it or something. It made me cry.

 

At 10 am was zone conference, with the missionaries from Nuremberg Stake and Erfurt District. I learned a hundred things but most importantly, I left the meeting feeling like my entire life was a lot simpler and clearer, which was a feeling I had sorely needed. The thought that I'm most intrigued with from the meeting is that the Bible Dictionary says that we are all naturally inclined to renounce sin. I've been thinking that sometimes I'd love to stop doing something I know I shouldn't, if only someone would call me out on it. It's a hard feeling to describe. It also works with sins of omission: I know I should be doing something, but it takes someone suggesting we go do it to kick me in to gear. I'd love to be my own cheerleader but we're not perfect and we need other people to motivate us sometimes. The important part is to accept the extra help!

 

We stayed at the Nuremberg sisters' apartment so we could catch our 7:30 am train from Nuremberg to Frankfurt in the morning. By 11:30 am we were in Friedrichsdorf, where the temple is. The next session wasn't until 1:30 so we went and got pizza at a local hole-in-the-wall that members lovingly call Temple Pizza. It's so delicious. Dad and Ben have been there before! Ben probably doesn't remember :)

 

It'd been maybe 8 months since I'd been to the temple and I am so grateful I got to go, even though I forgot to mention that I came down with a really bad cold on Monday evening. I feel like something inside me has been re-inflated and I just feel peace.

 

Tonight we're staying with (reportedly) 6 other sisters in one apartment because tomorrow morning we have mission council with Elder Dyches. And Friday night we go home, back to dear old Jena and back to work!

 

Remember kids, the leaders of the restored Church of Jesus Christ are called by God to serve His children by revelation and faith. Listen to your leaders and get to praying!

 Love y'all, Tschüßi!

President said I looked chic in my blue dress

Well, last week was the best. I got my soul readjusted and I'm ready to commit myself anew. Everything is simpler and happier and I'm just full of energy. Spiritual energy, anyway.

I've realized that it really doesn't matter what character traits you have, or how sensitive you naturally are to the Spirit. What it all boils down to is whether you're repentant. Even if you're stubborn, do you give in eventually? Even if you're angry, do you apologize? Because no matter what you started out with, God can't do anything with you if you're not willing to come to Him.

Something I realized was missing from my prayers was apologizing for things. I know repenting is a constant, sometimes subconscious process of changing. But outright telling God you know that He knows that you could have done better really speeds up the whole process. And it makes me feel light and bouncy. Prayer is all about remembering who God is, remembering your relationship to Him, and realigning yourself to that truth.

And you can do it over and over and over! God's voice has changed in my mind. When I was younger, everyone in the scriptures had a monotone. But more recently I would read Jesus' commands in kind of a boom. "Repent ye, repent ye!", he shouted in their faces. And now I hear him like the way the actor talks in the biblevideos.org : calmly, lovingly, clearly, confidently, pleading us to listen and soften and obey. He begs us to accept that He truly loves us as much as He says He does. Isn't it wonderful?

Be good! Eat vegetables!