Thursday, June 29, 2017

91 years old, no reading glasses!

The days are just flying by, it's pretty crazy.

Started off the week with a nice temple trip where we happened to run into a bunch of Sisters so that was fun :)

We got to visit a nice lady in our ward again, her name is Schwester Pitriboni. She's 91 years old and is just so healthy and happy haha. The lady doesn't even need reading glasses! She can't hear super well though, so you just have to speak up. Sister Bécsi has her Hungarian accent and is kind of soft spoken so every time she tries saying something, Schwester Pitriboni looks at me and says, "She's really sweet but I have no idea what she's saying."

We've been visiting a nice Malaysian family that has a restaurant in town and have been able to share the Book of Mormon with them. They invited us for lunch on Sunday and it was so yummy. They're also Muslim, so Sunday was their end of Ramadan celebration. They didn't fast or anything, so it wasn't anything big, but later the mom showed us how she prays. First how she cleans herself and puts on the white clothing and then the rather active praying. Super interesting and cool to learn about all kinds of cultures. 

Pray for us this week! We have a lot of appointments set up with new people so hopefully they'll work out...
Have a great week! 

Temple trip

Couple weeks ago with Sister Jones...

This week was our mission wide deep clean all the apartments day. We had to send these pics to our mission President. (Delphine, tu vois ton dessin dans le coin là? ;) )





Apfelkuchen mit Silvia
Cleaning the empty Elders apartment for them with Silvia...

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Avoiding Groundhog Day

Hey!

Had our very last Zone Conference with President and Sister Kohler this week and that was sad. They gave great talks though. I've really been so blessed to have both of them my whole mission. They have just been incredible examples to me of how I want to be when I'm older. 
Also got to see Sister Jones again which also made me so happy. I hadn't seen her since her first transfer, so it's so amazing to see how much she's changed and grown!

I had an exchange with Sister Cullimore in Luzern which was beautiful. We also got to go there a couple days before for p-day so I'll include those pictures...

We had a really fun ward activity on Friday too! 
I woke up the other day this week and a thought came to me, "This feels like Groundhog Day". Haha it doesn't help that my companion has the exact same efy song set as an alarm clock every single morning. Haha jk, it's not really that bad, but a missionary has to be careful and not let the mission become like that. That's why the activity was good though. Sister Bécsi and I are trying to stay creative and think of new things we can do. So we planned this activity a couple weeks ago and went by every single member in the ward giving them an invitation and another one to give to a friend to invite. 
It went well! We had two investigators come and there were friends of members there and practically the whole ward came! Which is good, cause if one family doesn't come, then we're a very small crowd. 
The initial plan had been soccer but the ward kept making comments so we decided to plan some activities and games and grill. And even though no one wanted to before, we got to organize a fun little soccer game. 

We also had the challenge to shake hands with and greet 25 people every single day which may not seem that hard but that's quite a bit. It went well though and we did it! We even shook hands with and introduced ourselves to the people who told us they didn't have time or weren't interested and they always had this expression of surprise when we still made sure to shake their hand and wish them a good day. It was fun:) Made sure to wash our hands very thoroughly at the end of the day though haha 

Oh and Pa, yes I saw Tour de Suisse while it was in Schaffhausen. Lots of people were in the town so that was good for us, but there was also no buses running so we had to walk quite a bit to get everywhere. 

That's all, have a great week!

Luzern

Luzern

Luzern

Her zodiac sign is a lion

Luzern eating beet and cinnamon ice cream sorbet...

Luzern


Last pic with the Kohler's...  Haha every time someone asked President Kohler if he was tired, his response was always a peppy, "Only for the last three years!"

Luzern

All my mission sisters.... we all were trained by Sister Tauche!
Comp sleeping in a member's car

Ward activity...










Monday, June 12, 2017

Seeds do grow!

Hey!
This week was really great!

-I had a talk on Sunday. Don't know why I was nervous about it haha, there were only 15 people there. But it went well! I think it was just a really great exercise for me to see how much my testimony and understanding of the gospel has grown. 

-We also lucked out and were asked to give the Relief Society class! Haha it went great though. I'm really grateful for the opportunities I've had on the mission to just be able to teach people, members or investigators. I love being able to boldly testify to people. I was thinking about it though and it dawned on me that that's something that might be very special and unique to being a missionary right now,  yet I'm still so grateful that I get to do it.  

-Have I talked about the man that we've been teaching that studies theology? He was on vacations for the past couple weeks so I haven't had much to say about him but yeah, that's going well. He finds it all very interesting but isn't such a fan of us bearing testimony of the truth of what we're saying. But we do it anyway. The Holy Ghost is what converts us, not the facts.
Fun fact. Apparently when you study theology in Switzerland, you automatically are a certified pastor for the Reformed Church, the national church. I didn't even realize this for a month. And then I asked him if he has his own church where he gives sermons and stuff and he totally does! Haha I'm just glad I didn't know this when we started teaching him, I think I would have freaked out and felt intimidated. But he's way cool and asks great questions that we somehow are able to answer. Jk, not somehow, we all know how :) there's no way we could do it without God's help. 
Invited him to come to church but unfortunately he couldn't. He was bummed that he couldn't come I'm pleased to say. Haha he said he really wanted to hear my "sermon". :)

-The lady that came to church last week is so great! Turns out she's watched the whole  Joseph Smith movie, and was even quoting some parts she remembered from it to us. It was a really spiritual lesson and we look forward to teaching her again.

-Talked to a lady on the bus and I'm so glad I did! I started by just complimenting her on her sunglasses and asked her where she got them and stuff. They were really cool! And then she takes them off and hands them to me! I felt so embarrassed but she was seriously so nice. Looking into her eyes was like looking into Jesus's eyes I'm not kidding, she just had that glow, you know? But she also looked sad. Turns out she knows the church but has had a really sad past with religious institutions in general and is going through a divorce and has 3 jobs and says now is not the time. I hope we see her again though. She was really lovely. 

-Updates on Linz Österreich!!---ok so since I've been gone, Asghar, the way cool Iranian guy we started teaching got baptized! And guess who baptized him.... KAIS!! (The guy Sister Frenkel and I got to baptize with his wife together.) Isn't that just beautiful? It's really a chain reaction. The first Iranian family in Linz invited Kais and Huda and then baptized them, then Kais and Huda invited Asghar and Kais baptized him...so so cool.) I was also so happy to hear that some others my comps and I found together are also progressing and showing some great potential. Great to know that some of the seeds we plant really do grow!

Have a great week!

Kohler's visit last week at church
The new shades
Asghar' baptism ❤️️
Sister St. Laurent
Switzerland why are you so beautiful.
Stein am Rhein last Pday, just about made my life so pretty.







 






Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Open Mic Meeting

Hey there!

Another crazy week in Schaffhausen! But also really good.

Some highlights:

-Michaela, the mentally handicapped member in our ward told us on Saturday that she really wanted to bear her testimony in sacrament meeting but that she was scared and didn't know what to say. Sister Bécsi told her that she could go up with her and ask her questions to help you know what to answer or bear testimony about. And she did just that! It was so great. I was so proud of Sister Bécsi too. Her German and all around confidence has just gotten so much better and it's wonderful to see. 

-The Köhlers, My mission President and his wife made a surprise visit to us in our branch and that was also a blessing! See, we invited this lady to come to church and she totally came! She had no interest to meet with us personally but said that she would like to visit a church service. It went really really well. It was fast and testimony meeting, aka, open mic for whoever wants to share, which not going to lie can be very scary for missionaries when they bring someone new to church. You're never quite sure what the people may say :) but it went great. Especially when Sister Kohler shared her testimony. The lady even started crying next to me it touched her so much.


Ok kind of short, but hope that everyone's doing well!


Made a lemon meringue pie at Sister Bécsi's request





Hiking last pday



The cutest little injured bird we found  one night and brought to the vet the next day. Kept trying to fly away and ran into the wall kinda sad


My favorite flower absolutely everywhere seriously makes my day I tell you what

Cane (pronounced shannay) and Schwester Bilge made us delicious dinner and a lot of dessert