Heiße Woche

Hello there!

This week was another tougher one, but as always, still good!  It started off with district pday, which was truly paradise I tell you what. We went to Grindelwald and it was AMAZING. I wish I could put all the pictures on here but I can't, what a shame. It was sort of cloudy at first but then cleared up after we prayed and the view of the Alps was exquisite. So yummy.
 
Then after 4 weeks of rain, suddenly this week it was blazing hot and humid. Sister Tauche and I were so sweaty it was disgusting. Haha one of Sister Tauche's prayers literally went like this,"...and please forgive us for how sweaty we are...please help people to not be too
grossed out when we try talking to them..." We miraculously discovered 3 fans in our cellar that belong to our apartment though! Man was I excited about that.
 
But yeah, this week, we had all but one planned lesson fall through which was really a shame, but Sister Tauche and I aren't giving up! Don't worry! Haha at the end of almost every day this week as we exhaustedly walked home, a little discouraged, we started going back and forth saying what we were grateful for and pretty soon we were skipping all the way home! It was great! Isn't it great how no matter how hard your day is, there's always something to be grateful for? Heavenly Father really does bless us so much, more than we deserve I think sometimes :)
 
One nice thing this week is that we've been trying to leave daily "personal touches". Our mission president gave us a couple of daily things he wants us to be doing on top of other goals like 2 hours of finding, contacting 2 members asking if they need help, teaching at least one lesson, even if all your other ones fall through or you have no appointment... And then one personal touch. So Sister Tauche and I have been trying to do that! We left a couple notes with scriptures or quotes for members when we were nearby and one of the members on Sunday came up to us and thanked us saying that she really had been going through a hard time this week and was praying a lot for help when she got our note! She said it was exactly what she needed to hear. Isn't that lovely? It's a little thing but still. That actually happened a couple times this week, not just with members, but with all kinds of people thanking me and Sister Tauche, calling us angels. That was nice. Again, Heavenly Father blesses us so much, even if they seem like little things they really add up and make you realize how much he truly loves you.
 
Have a wonderful week!

Crow pose by Grindelwald Sea

Photo cred: Sister Lehmann

Grindelwald

Here's my awesome district! Burgdorf sisters, Bern Elders (our zone leaders) and Interlacken Elders.

The clouds were being dingy with us for a little bit there but then decided to leave us alone, thank goodness

Bad quality pic, but some high quality content: a fan‚ sister Tauche's homemade fruit and yogurt fake ice cream invention (using all our oldish fruit and yogurt haha), and watching Legacy, a movie about a pioneer woman's story--this is as close as a girls chick-flick night as we're gonna get.

A Catholic Mormon

Hi there!

This week was really great!

The highlight would have to be when we were knocking on doors (once again in an insane thunderstorm) and met a man from Ecuador. He wasn't too interested at first, especially since he could only speak really broken English, but we showed him a video in Spanish and he said we could come back and bring him a Book of Mormon in Spanish. So we went back a couple days later and his wife was there too! They let us in and we got talking. She spoke a little better German but it was still a little difficult to understand one another.

They told us they were Catholic. They also told us they had a lot of friends and contacts that were members of the church. The wife started talking about how she had been taught by the missionaries before and that was cool and then she started talking about how she'd been to church and been to a baptism which was even cooler. And then, a good half hour later, as we're still talking  and she talks about baptism again, it suddenly dawned on me what she was saying and I asked her, "Wait, are YOU baptized? Into the Mormon church?" And she says, "Yes!" Hahahaha Sister Tauche and I were laughing so hard. She just identifies herself as Catholic because of her family, and the Mormon church seemed like a nice option at the time! And she wants to come back to church again! She said she misses it, and would love to review the lessons again with her husband because she was only a member for a short time before she stopped going.

This week we also had zone conference in Zurich where President and Sister Kohler came and all the missionaries in Switzerland met up. That was fun! And really inspiring. Loved it :) We also had exchanges this week which is also fun. Really, we never see the other Sisters so that was nice. I was with Sister Hancock, from Utah. Fun to spend 24 hours with an American for the first time in a long time haha. That's all for this week! Have a great week!!

-Sister Lehmann

Here are some fun pictures of Interlaken. It was really rainy so we decided to cancel our plans to go hike in the Alps and just went through the town. Not that pretty actually, but Sister Tauche and I love our postcards so we were happy :)

Trying on tourist hats in Interlaken

G Tauche

Interlaken suburbs

Swatch store featuring a crazy cow

Heart Softens and Opens up

Hello there!

Hope everyone is doing well! All is well here.
Last Pday Sister Tauche and I went up to Lauterbrunnen, a canyon/valley
branched off from Interlacken. It was beautiful! And miraculously we
had sun! That was seriously the only day in the last two weeks with
sun. We also met a family from Salt Lake City up there! Haha it was so
funny. Twice actually, people called out to us and said, "Hi
Sisters!!" So we ended up spending a little chunk of our pday with the
Jones family. Now I get a little taste of how missionaries feel in Utah.
It's nice to feel appreciated, have people come up to you, rather than
part the Red Sea every time you walk down the street hahaha.

Then later this week, Sister Tauche and I went to Munich for two days
for a missionary leadership conference. We're the sister training
leaders for our zone so we got to go! (Haha don't think we're all
great or anything, there are only two sister missionary companionships
in our zone, so there was a 50% we would be sister training leaders).
It was really really great. We rode on an extremely stuffy bus for 5
hours, bought some very disappointing burritos (there is no Mexican
food here. And try as you might to find something that comes close to
what we have in Utah, you are always disappointed) and had a
devotional in the evening. We all stayed in a hostel and the next
morning played soccer and had a lot of training and lessons about how
to be the best missionary leaders we can be! It was great. It's so fun
to be with other missionaries every once in a while. I wish I had a
picture of the group of missionaries all together, but I don't, sorry.
Also it's really wonderful seeing your mission president and his wife!
We rarely get to see them on our mission so that's always great. And
then we went back home! This time on an even stuffier bus for 6 hours
because of traffic and they stopped us at the border to check every
single passport on the huge bus haha.

And as far as missionary work miracles this week, on Wednesday we were
going from door to door for a couple hours in pounding rain (I'm
serious it was on the verge of hail for an hour straight) with no
success. A lot of times when you ring at apartment buildings, people
don't bother coming down, they just open the window and yell down at
you and we have to yell back, which is really hard when you're having
to stare up at them with the hail-like rain pounding into your eyes
haha.

Annnyyyway, now that you get an idea of the conditions, you can
imagine how completely elated and relieved we were when a family let
us in!! We spoke to the father, everyone else was busy, but he was so
open and great. At first he said that he has his religion and he's
good but then the more we explained and bore testimony, the more you
saw his heart soften and open up. It was amazing to see. We're really
excited to go back.

That's all for this week! Hope everyone is doing well.
Tschüss!

-Sister Lehmann

View from the lift

Yo yo yo

Hey there!

This week was the big move! Pday we walked through Solothurn for the last time to say a little goodbye and headed off to Bern to tour around a bit. Then Tuesday and Wednesday, we moved over to Burgdorf!

To answer some questions that my dad asked that I might not have explained very well: There were Elders and Sisters in Solothurn, so even though we had to clean and lock down the sisters' apartment, the Elders are still there and have our investigators now. Burgdorf has its own church building, it's a pretty big ward, maybe 150? There are no street contacting areas here, it's all dooring. We did dooring before too, but liked street contacting more. And we go all over, trying to stay in one village or town per day to use our time better and not have to travel all day, but yeah, there are quite a few towns in our area.

And this whole week has been pouring over the records that they have from this area that let us know who has been taught and who might be interested in being taught. I was pretty nervous coming over here since it's really a collection of fairly small villages and suburb type areas, but there is so much work to be done here! I love it. Really, once sister Tauche and I were moved in and could just go to work, all my fears, anxieties and dread washed away. That was really cool to see. The secret to missionary work really is work!

I will say though, this week was truly the pits number wise hahaha. Oh man. Sister Tauche and I were considering just not answering the phone when our district leader called to get our numbers and progress this week.

But not to worry, we made appointments for next week with several people, the ward members here are super great and ready to help, and of course, most importantly, the Lord is with us (or I hope so or else sister Tauche and I would be quite hopeless here haha).  Also saw the Lehmanns (my dad's younger brother's family) this week at stake conference yet again!

And as far as the German, it's getting there haha. Sometimes we walk away from a conversation and sister Tauche lets me know what I had in fact said or what the person had said and I realize how completely off I was haha oh man... It's also funny, whenever I talk to people on the train or at church or whatever, they sometimes translate some words into French for me and think I'm from France. Apparently I have a French accent??? What's funny is that my French isn't even that great. It's pretty funny seeing their reaction when I say I'm American. 

I read from Sister Oscarson's talk from this conference and man do I love this talk! The whole thing is just a long testimony of the fundamental truths of this amazing gospel and church. 

"We believe that this Church is more than just a good place to go on Sundays and learn how to be a good person. It is more than just a lovely Christian social club where we can associate with people of good moral standing. It is not just a great set of ideas that parents can teach their children at home so they will be responsible, nice people. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is infinitely more than all of these things.Think for just a minute about the profound claims we make as a religion."

She continues on through a couple points, but ultimately states:

"We claim that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the kingdom of God and the only true Church on the earth. It is called the Church of Jesus Christ because He stands at the head; it is His Church, and all these things are possible because of His atoning sacrifice."

Isn't that just beautiful? I mean, just think for a second if that statement was true.

And the best part is that it is true! And we can each found that out for ourselves! Just some things to think about :)

Thanks for the emails and updates, it's really great to hear how everyone is doing. Have a wonderful week! 

-Sister Lehmann

Solothurn Stadt, really going to miss street contacting here

And the beautiful cathedral there

Antiques store in Bern. Every single wall and everywhere you looked was this full of dolls. Seriously I had to lean over another precarious heap of dolls and puppets to take a pick of this tiny shop just suffocating in creepiness.

Sister Lehmann went white girl basic and bought herself a fjallraven backpack last week

More antique store goodness. Haha I really wanted to buy this for Andreas.

Antique record from 1968! Haha notice the sticky note on it that someone wrote "very old, don't know what to do"

Sister Tauche found herself a nice bath tub in the streets of Bern.

And here are the bears of Bern! #mascot

The inspirational quote I wrote up for us after reporting our numbers this week