Tuesday, May 30, 2017

The Church is True the Book is Blue

This week man...
Oh wow.

We started off pretty confident, excited for the appointments we had
set up with some new people we found. Those all fell through. I still
have not grasped the concept of telling someone you will meet them
somewhere, even giving them your number, and then not coming and
ignoring all their calls. But it's OK. We're good. I'm over it....sort
of :)

Then with all the investigators we do have, Sister Bécsi and I left each
appointment looking at each other saying, "....yeah....they are not
ready yet. We should stop meeting them."
We did have a spontaneous exchange with the St. Gallon Sisters though
and that was fun! No one had called us all transfer for exchanges or
anything so we just kind of figured we'd been forgotten out here in
Schaffhausen but then suddenly the sister training leaders from the
neighboring zone called us and said we had to do exchanges with them,
the very next morning. That was way fun. Got to work with Sister
Svovadova from the Czech Republic.

It was just one of those weeks where you get the feeling that no one
wants you here haha. We just had several conversations where people
try to throw you off or tell you you're wrong or pat you on the
shoulder and say, it's really cute what you're trying to do here but I
don't care.

Yesterday we had district finding day and a man grabbed sister Bécsi's arm and
told her he was taking her to the police. Haha oh man. He demanded to
see our ministering certificate and called the police and then they
came and it was all messy and poor Sister Bécsi had no idea what was
going on and I was just trying to handle it with my limited German...
but all is well.

It's moments like these when you treasure your personal study time
where you remind yourself of what you know to be true. Sister Bécsi
and I were talking about it a bit. We both agreed, there are lots of
things where your testimony kind of wavers and you're not always 100%
sure. But that's OK. Because then you rely on the things you DO know.
I think that's different for everybody. Sister Bécsi and I are similar
and say that the thing for us that we will always know to be true is
the Book of Mormon. I really know it's a true book. And not just that
the people that wrote it lived and all that, but that the teachings and
prophecies in it are true. I'm so grateful to have a book that I can
study and trust to be absolutely true. I think in difficult testimony-
shaking-moments of life, it's so important to remind yourself of what
you DO know, not what you're not sure of. And I'm so grateful that in
shaking moments this week, the Book of Mormon could help me stay
strong in my calling as a missionary.
Have a fabulous week!!

(Oh wait, transfer calls came and we're staying her in Schaffhausen
and I'm super pumped. Sister Bécsi and I have fun together haha)


-Sister Lehmann




Yummmm

Distrikt pday playing soccer and eating water melon

Saw the ad at Bahnhof and immediately went to the next kiosk to buy some. So good.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

God Provides Little Miracles

This week was cool. 

Saturday was pretty crazy. We went to Bad Säckingen to do some District finding. That went well. Well, for the rest of the district :) After a long while of finding, sister Becsi and I said a little prayer for the last thirty minutes and we found someone! She was really cool. We'll see if that amounts to anything. We gave her number to the other Sisters. She told us that she's Jewish and that means that she's part of God's chosen people. And I was like, I know! I read about you all the time in the scriptures! Haha

Later though, we had to drive over to a member that lives pretty far away. We had already forgot to call and cancel our appointment the week before so I was feeling really badly and wanted to make sure to be extra punctual. But then all the roads had to go and be closed. It was so so frustrating I tell you what; we had to make so many u turns and detours for all these randomly closed roads. Our GPS was going crazy trying to reroute for us but nothing seemed to work out. We ended up being a solid 45 minutes late and to make matters worse our phone wasn't working so we couldn't even call to warn her. The whole time I was just praying and saying, "God, why is this not working out?" 

Well we get there but first let me give some background on Michaela. She has Down Syndrome and is so so sweet and funny. She has really great German and I always take notes because she uses the best words. Like the other week it was hilarious. We asked her if she had the opportunity to serve someone that week. She had to think about that for a little bit and then finally said, "Well I don't know if it counts but I posted a comment on facebook the other week and said, "Alle Elders auf der ganzen Welt sind kanner süß." ---"All Elders around the world are ...haha how do you translate kanner .... are super adorable" hahaha sister Bécsi and I were laughing super hard and then I was like, um yeah? I think that counts as service. You are complimenting someone. It works! So this is Michaela.

So we get there super late and she's sitting on her bed and we rush to give her a big hug, apologizing profusely and she just starts crying and crying. Oh man I felt so badly but then she started explaining herself. She said that she had just been with her roommate in town and they had just got back about 10 minutes ago. She said that she had been begging her roommate to go back home because she knew we were coming, but her roommate wouldn't listen. She told us that she was crying in town, thinking of us standing in front of her door not knowing what to do...

That was so so cool for me. I mean, God really was looking after his daughter Michaela there. She had been so sad and worried, and He made us nice and late so that everything worked out. 

My testimony was strengthened that God provides us little miracles like this for his children. He loves Michaela so much and knew what she needed and provided it for her!


Have a great week!


Last pday running into my beloved Sister Tauche...


Raclette in our bedroom cause the power goes out when we try to eat it in the kitchen

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

The Lord Supports us When we Share the Gospel

Hi!  This week was super great! 

On Saturday we had our Distrikt meeting and interviews with our mission president. Sister Bécsi and I had the assignment to talk about effective studying. We shared our thoughts and a lot of scriptures that talk about how the Lord will give us the words we need when talking to people, if we take time to study. 

My personal favorite was this one in D&C 100:
"5 Therefore, verily I say unto you, lift up your voices unto this people; speak the thoughts that I shall put into your hearts, and you shall not be confounded before men;
6 For it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say.
7 But a commandment I give unto you, that ye shall declare whatsoever thing ye declare in my name, in solemnity of heart, in the spirit of meekness, in all things.
8 And I give unto you this promise, that inasmuch as ye do this the Holy Ghost shall be shed forth in bearing record unto all things whatsoever ye shall say."
To be honest, when I read that in my study, I thought to myself... hmmm... sometimes I really do just feel "confounded before men". Has the Holy Ghost really been able to bear witness through me? I prayed about it and every single day after that I really felt that scripture fulfilled. 

One day we met a Hungarian guy. Haha he could speak English but couldn't speak German, sister Bécsi can't speak English, and I can't speak Hungarian so that was funny. It was great though. He tried asking us all theses zinger questions and I know before my mission I would have been like, "Hot dang! He makes a good point!" But I don't even know how but it was great because I just felt so calm and simply addressed his question. And what made it even greater was that he had to translate what I taught and testified of to Sister Bécsi in Hungarian. Then he would try asking Sister Bécsi a zinger and then I could tell she was also speaking by the Spirit back to him. And then he had to translate what she told him back to me in English.  The next day I met a guy named Friday who had a question about organized religion and the lack of a purely Christian church. As he spoke, some verses I had read in my study that morning popped into my head and I was able to share them with him.  Neither of the guys accepted the invitation to learn more but I still just felt the Spirit and felt like what I was saying weren't my own words. 

The best though was on Saturday, meeting with one of our new investigators. She's a funny one. She is one of the more interesting persons I've met but our lesson was so spiritual so it must be important that we keep teaching her. We read Jospeh Smith's first vision together and asked her what she thought. She read it about three times again on her own and then looked at us, "Naja das ist aber wunderschön! Man spürt es, im Herz, wenn man es liest."---"well that's beautiful! You really feel it in you're heart when you read it!"

So yeah, my testimony of that was really strengthened this week, that the Lord is there and supports us in our words when we share his Gospel. 

Hope everyone has a great week!


Walking around Schaffhausen...











Hahahaha there was a bee and I didn't even notice this picture until now.