Made it to the 8 month mark.

     You have to provide your own grocery bag but the weird thing is they are super heavy and you see everyone carrying them on bahns (trains) and stuff. I got sick woops haha. Sister Miller is better. I am determined not to get ask sick as she did haha. Thanksgiving will be a lot of fun! Only a couple more days till it is here! Ok on to the weekly report!

 

      Monday was really fun last week because the Sisters from Herne came to Essen and we went shopping. The Christmas markets were not open, except for a few and one of them was this place where you can buy hot cocoa and such. They have a cool thing where they give it to you in this really cute mug and if you bring the mug back you get some money back but if you would rather have the mug you can just keep it and seeing as I love mugs I kept it :) It was really fun just to drink Hot Cocoa with the other sisters. They all had Kinder punch with is basically cider of different flavors. I didn´t like it but they did :) After p day ended we went to Sister Neu´s house for dinner and she was super nice. I love her! She is a great member and she invited us over for either Christmas or Christmas Eve (in Germany Christmas eve is more important). We were able to teach a lesson about prayer and it was really cool because her granddaughter is living with her and she is 18 and she isn´t a member. I could tell even though she didn´t want to show it she was touched and that was cool to see.

 

     Tuesday we were able to meet with Margret and she wasn´t feeling too good. She had a headache and she was super distracted! Half way during the lesson she asked to see Sister Millers face....she made her hold up her bangs and after she said oh it is fine (and that means pretty ...it wasn´t offensive, just strange) Then she went away and we started talking with her husband and he has some pretty strong opinions but he was grateful to talk about God with us. So that was good. After Margret we went on a super short split (3 hours) and I went to Herne with Sister Bauer and that was awesome! We had an hour before her first appointment so we went into a park and used QR codes to talk to people. Basically anyone we saw that we thought might have a smart phone we asked them if we could show them a short clip (Mormon Message) and every person we went up to didn´t have a smart phone but it started a conversation.  We ended up getting this younger girls number and giving this guy a Book of Mormon and giving a Book of Mormon to this family and getting all their information. It was so cool! After our hour of miracles we had an appointment with the same people I met with last time and it looks like they are doing good :) After them we came back to Essen to do a split with our ward council and that was AWESOME. I highly suggest to do it with the missionaries in your ward. For ours we had other missionaries in the surrounding area come so we could have more of our members work with the missionaries. I went with Sister Kozlik and that was super cool. I went visiting teaching with her and we went to find out if one of the members address was still good. The best part was the time in the car together she told me her conversion story and I just felt like I got to know her a lot better it was really good! 

 

      Wednesday was my 8 month mark. CRAZY! Time is going tooooooo FAST! We had our cleaning check that day and then we had lunch with one of our members, Sister Schmidt. That was really cool. She is from South America and so she spoke English with us. She told us her conversion story and that she is the only member in her family. But she trusts in Heavenly Father that if she tries to do missionary work here someone will touch the hearts of her family members! Isn´t that an awesome testimony!! I think it is really cool that she has that much faith. After her we met with Angelik for a super short time because we had to go to ward night together. Ward night was funny. The theme was trees/ Woods haha. It was all these stories and poems and songs about woods....I guess Germans like the woods. It was fun though. We sang some pretty funny songs haha.

 

      Thursday we had District Meeting, our last one of the transfer. Sister Miller and I talked about accountability and it was interesting to learn more about that. The others talked about companionship unity and member work. It was a good last District Meeting. After that we met with this AWESOME older lady. We sewed a button on for her and she looked through our family pictures and talked about how she misses her family. But she was super nice and super funny! After that we went to Relief Society activity and that was fun....the theme was poems and short stories. The short stories were fun but I cannot understand German poetry! AT ALL! haha it was still fun to be with the Sisters and laugh with them even though I didn´t know what we were laughing about half the time haha.

 

      Friday we did another split this time it was with the Sisters in Münster. And guess who I was with in Essen....Sister Leonardson! My MTC companion! That was fun haha. It was good to see how she is doing and how she has viewed her mission so far. I was happy to hear that she has loved it (she has been in Münster her whole mission). We were supposed to meet with Jemima but she wasn´t picking up her phone so we couldn´t instead we went to this store where this one lady we met works at. We found her! She gave us hugs and said she is interested in the English class but not about the church...I hope she will come then we can soften her up :) Then we went to the member’s house and we gave her a spiritual thought and she gave us hot cocoa and apple cake :) It was cool to meet with her because I have only seen her at church before so it was nice to get to know her a little better. Then it was time to split back. We headed out early because there was problems with the trains and good thing we did because everything was delayed big time. It ended up that we caught this train that was supposed to leave an hour earlier but it was delayed so long if we hadn´t have caught that train it would have been awhile till the next one. So we ended up getting to Dortmund early (that is where we were splitting back) and so I got a Nutella marzipan crepe :) probably my favorite thing EVER! Then we went to the Christmas market really fast and got a mug with hot cocoa :) Then we split back and made our way home.

 

     Saturday....transfer calls!!! So we went to Dortmund to have breakfast with the Missionary couple and some other missionaries while we listened to transfer calls. They were super nice they had eggs cinnamon rolls, potatoes, fruit salad and hot cocoa. So we all ate some food and talked for a little and then the transfer calls began and guess what.....I am .......Staying in Essen and will be serving with........SISTER MILLER!!!! WOOT! WOOT! Best day ever. I am so happy that I get to spend Christmas with Sister Miller in Essen! She is really happy too haha. So after that excitement we went back home, did some weekly planning and then met with Sister Küpper. I love this lady she is so awesome! She had bread and cheese and meat for dinner all ready for us and she is trying so hard to share the gospel. It is really cool and apparently she likes us too because she asked us for our names and addresses haha

Waiting for the transfer call.

 

     Sunday we had church and this girl we have been trying to get in contact with the whole time I have been here just showed up at church! She loved it and she wants to come to all the activities but she doesn´t have a phone right now and is living with her parents who aren´t that big of fans of the church. So we can´t really meet with her but I think we will try to after or before the activities. We will see how it goes. Then after church we went to the Roch´s for lunch and that was fun. But it is also kind of strange meeting with our ward mission leader and investigator at the same time haha but it works. We decided whenever we meet with them with the Elders we teach Brüder Roch and when it is just us we teach Schwester Roch. After the Rochs we went and met with Sister Miller’s favorite members (she says that about many haha) the Wojtkowski we just call them by their first names haha. And oh my goodness they were so awesome! They gave us marzipan hot chocolate (I love marzipan if you couldn´t tell haha) and they invited us over for Thanksgiving! And I have been sick for a little while now and the were like parents and they gave me all these drugs (don´t worry they speak English so I know for sure what I am taking haha). They are so nice. I am sad they are going to England for Christmas or else we would have gone over there. Anyways that was my week!

 

That's a lot of drugs!

     I know that I am out here to help these people and I am excited to use the Christmas Spirit! LOVE YOU ALL!

 

Sister Wrathall

Getting into the Christmas spirit with the snowflakes in the window.

 

A week with a sick Sister Miller.

     OK first before I forget answer the questions MLC is Missionary Leadership council 2nd cycle is the same as 2nd transfer. Transfers are this Saturday. I think when I come home I will be pretty much fluent but not good grammar. There are a lot of people that live here that are not native Germans but in our ward I think most are. Something different is a lot of the women wear pants to church also not members (hopefully haha) but everywhere there are SMOKERS!!! SO annoying also you have to carry your groceries home in a bag. Umm ya that is all I can think of now. Ok now on to comments!!!! I like your choice of car it looks really nice! Also good color choice! That is so awesome that you got to go to an Elton John concert I am so JELLLY! It looked so cool. Ok now on to the week!!!!

     Tuesday was kind of boring, first I must say Sister Miller was sick almost this whole week, ok so on Tuesday she started to feel worse and it was funny because we had 3 appointments but 2 of them fell out. That gave us time for Sister Miller to stay inside and not get other people sick and it was really good because we got to catch up on some of paper work. We did meet with Sister Wieker though and she was super nice. She ended up giving us a referral and making us right then make a card to put into the referral´s mail box haha. She is so cute and she was super concerned about Sister Miller and how she looks sick. After Sister Wieker we got to be in charge of the mutual which ended up being just one young women but it was still fun. We did a scavenger hunt that used preach my gospel. I think she had fun and learned. We had this one stop where she read about the fall of Adam and Eve and about how they had to partake of the forbidden fruit to progress and then we cut up an apple and wrote forbidden fruit above of it and she had to eat some before she could finish the hunt haha. I thought it was cute. It was really fun to do it. I hope they ask us again.

     Wednesday Sister Miller was felling worse so we wound up doing some more paper work and making a lot of phone calls, which was good. Then we had ward night where everyone told Sister Miller she needs to stay home and SLEEP so Sister Miller canceled the split we were supposed to go on and Bishop and his wife drove us home but not before buying prune juice for her to drink the next day haha and Sister Miller went to sleep

     Thursday Sister Miller slept 17 hours! It wasn´t so bad for me except feeling like I didn´t get much done. I got to read a lot in the Book of Mormon which was good. And I organized the pantry the cupboards and the fridge so now our apartment is super clean :) Good thing Heavenly Father knew what she needed because we did have 3 appointments scheduled but all except the last one fell out. The last one was Sister Kozlik and I didn´t care how sick Sister Miller was we were going to that appointment haha. Sister Miller felt the same way so she woke up in time for us to plan a lesson and to get there on time. We get there and she had forgotten that we were coming haha. She let us come in none the less and we had a really good lesson but she told Sister Miller to go home and go to sleep haha. All the members are soo nice here. They all were giving Sister Miller things that they thought would make her better and all said if you need anything CALL ME I don´t care what time of the day it is CALL! So sweet! Love this ward!

     Friday Sister Miller still wasn´t feeling too good but we had Zone training where she was part of so we had to go and I am glad we did. I always love those meetings I love to hear from all the different missionaries and get new ideas and find out what I need to change so that I can be more effective. It was also funny because in the morning I said to Sister Miller I am going to miss watching the Polar Express this Christmas and at Zone Training during the break we listened to the story the Polar Express while drinking hot chocolate! Heavenly Father is taking good care of me haha. After Zone training we went and taught our English class and that went well except Sister Miller and me don´t know enough about ´´´´´those things apparently whoops! After we played ping pong with the Family that always comes. I don´t know if I have told you but Ping Pong is SUPER popular in Germany! They have ping pong tables all over the place in parks it is crazy!

     Saturday Sister Miller was feeling better but not all the way and one of our appointments fell out so she took a short nap. It was funny after her nap I asked her how she felt and she said like I have been hit by a truck...so not too good ha-ha. At one point she just stood looking out the window and said HIMMLISCHER VATER! (Heavenly Father) ha-ha she is tired of being sick. But then we had an appointment with Angelika and we talked about service. It was a really good lesson. She talked a lot and that always makes the lesson better when the person we are teaching talks a lot. After Angelika we went by on our referral again and this time her mom/grandma (we don´t know) answered the door and said that she would tell her to call us so hopefully we get a call this week or else we will have to go out there again. She lives about an hour and a half away so three hours total that is a lot of time!

      Sunday was cool. We were able to give the thought in Relief Society and that went well. We talked about Family History and how it is super important to read D&C 128:15 and you will find out why. Then we were able to teach the investigator class which was on Baptism and it was fun to hear what people thought and said about it. Then in sacrament meeting one of our investigators just showed up and we were able to set up an appointment with her and it was nice for me to meet her haha. Then we went to the Skopek´s for dinner and that was really nice. They are the cutest couple! So nice. Yup that was my week hope you all had good weeks too LOVE YOU ALL

Sister Wrathall

Sister Clendon's birthday.  Hot chocolate and Pavlova.

Poor Sister Miller

Life in Germany

      Your pumpkins all look cool and thanks for the recipes :) Thanksgiving I don´t know what is going to happen. I know Sister Miller and I want to make some things but we will hopefully go over to a member’s house or something :) You did tell me about Sarah (Her cousin who is serving a mission in the Philippines) was going back. That is crazy that there was a huge storm there. I am glad she is okay. That would have been so scary. That is crazy that Dallin is giving his farewell talk so soon! Every member here knows that Dallin is serving a mission haha. I tell everyone! That is funny it will be the same time Tim Brannon comes back. This week was pretty cold and rainy but I try not to think of it as cold yet because I know it is only going to get colder. I am excited for Lauren and I am sure she is too. Now on to the week

     Ok so first of my mom told me I should explain how it is like to live in Germany. So the thing I think is the most different is that we ride trains and trams and buses everywhere and that you see them everywhere! I think that is really cool in every area the trams are a little different. In Frankfurt and Darmstadt I had a ticket that would last a month and then I had to get a new one every month. Here I have a ticket 2000, which is an actual card which doesn´t expire for a long time but it doesn´t work before 8 and in some areas. So sometimes we have to buy tickets and get them stamped before we get on trains and on trams you stamp them in the tram. There are people that sometimes wear official uniforms that check your ticket and then there are the undercover ones that are dressed normal and sometimes no one checks your tickets but if you are riding without a ticket you have to pay 40€! So always have a ticket is my way haha. Another thing is most people don´t have houses most live in apartments. Almost everything is closed on Sundays and any day after 9 it is crazy! Yay so that is some detail into German life. Ok now on to the week:

     Tuesday we had a split with the Herne Sisters because the next day Sister Miller and Sister Bauer had to go to MLC the next day. So Sister Clendon and I were together and on Tuesday we tried to cover 2 areas....that didn´t work. We first went to one of her investigators that has a baptismal date. That was really cool the lesson went really well. The only bad thing is that it took too long and made it so we couldn´t make my appointment which was with Sister Kozlik, our Relief Society President, whose sick non-member husband had made dinner for us!!!!!!! I ALMOSTED CRIED I felt sooo bad! The worst part is she told me this was the second time this had happened so she was kind of upset. So we saw here at ward council that night and we said sorry like 10000 times and she said she forgave us but I could tell she was still upset. But she brought us the food her husband made and drove us home. She was still so nice that made it even worse! But ward council was really good. This ward is amazingly missionary minded. It was really cool to see how everything they talked about related back to missionary work.

Sister Clendon

 

     Wednesday was the full day with Sister Clendon and guess what? She is from New Zealand! So she has a cool accent and she is in her second cycle so still pretty young. We had a good day though. It started with going to a member and she was super nice she made us brownies ...American brownies ( much better than German brownies) and then we went to a less actives and she made us lunch and gave us chocolate.  Then we did service at another member’s house and she also gave us food! After that we had a little time before ward night but I didn´t have key to the church. Sister Miller did so we stood by the church in the cold and rain and read the Book of Mormon with a flash light haha. That was fun. Then for ward night we had a pumpkin themed dinner and sang German Christmas songs and played instruments it is soooooo fun!

    Thursday was fun haha all except one of our appointments fell through but it really did turn out to be great first we went to this Mensa (student cafeteria) which didn´t go too well. Then we went to go to the church and we started talking with this lady and turns out she had been taught by missionaries before and is willing to learn again so we got her number and hopefully will meet with her soon. Then we talked with this other lady that was super nice! She wouldn’t give us her number but we know where she works hehe. Then we made a pumpkin pie to give to Sister Kozlik to say sorry and went to our appointment that didn´t fall through it was with a member that is super nice. We taught her a lesson and then invited her to share a Mormon Message on FB and she said yes! Sweet!

     Friday we had this Leadership meeting that took up the whole day! Thank goodness it was really good. So the first couple of hours all the leaders and their companions (ME) brainstormed of ideas for different subjects. The first one how can we have a white Christmas ( lots of baptisms and using Christmas as a tool) second how we can find more YSA and third we have a mission finding day so ideas for finding on that day. It went pretty well we came up with lots of good ideas. The next part was President and the A.P.s that was good of course and third was we went to areas that were struggling and tried to find people for them. So Sister Miller and I were walking in this big shopping area and we saw this lady walking a ferret. So I went up to her and asked her what the word for ferret is in German and she told us and we then introduced ourselves and we ended up giving her a Book of Mormon and getting her address ( because no Germans know their cell phone number!). So that felt nice to help out the Elders there. Then after that we went and gave Sister Kozlik the pie and she really liked it and said sorry that she was so mad and now I feel like it is all good again which makes me really happy.

Saturday we did weekly planning and then we had an appointment with Angelika who is a new member and that went really well. She asked if she can go out teaching with us! We said of course! Then we went to Sister Neu´s for dinner again and that was fun.

     Sunday church was great and after we had tons of coordination meetings and then we ate at bishop’s house for dinner and that was really fun. He is a really sweet guy. I like him as my bishop.

 That was my week it was a pretty good one :) Hope you are all doing well too LOVE YOU ALL

Sister Wrathall

 

Kent and I found this statue on Google Earth and we challenged her to go and get her picture with it. 

 

 

Week of November 4th

For Halloween they don´t really celebrate it. I saw a couple people dressed up but no trick or treaters and we don´t have and different rules about having curfew. The only time I think we do is New Year’s Eve. I can´t believe it is NOVEMBER. Sister Miller and I talk about how time is going so fast all the time! I don´t know what is up with cleaning on birthdays but I think it is funny haha (on her birthday and Sister Miller’s birthday she spent a good amount of the day cleaning) Anyways onto the week.

 Monday night we had an appointment with Sister Küpper. That was really cool because the whole day I was looking for new boots because mine are falling apart but Germany doesn´t really carry my size in most places. So we get to Sister Küpper´s and she is super nice, made us dinner and was super funny we shared our spiritual thought with her and then right when we are getting ready to leave she looks at me and she asks what size shoe I wear and I told her and she said I have some boots for you! Miracle!!!! So she shows me the boots and I try them on and the fit! And they are pretty cute I think and the feel like they will last :) She also gave us tons of clothes and this coat that is way too big for me but it was nice haha.

The miracle boots. 

 

 

Tuesday we had a lesson with Margret and we were all ready to talk about how God has a body and we start talking and she was just accepting everything it was really weird but good so that made us both happy. Then after that we went a visited a less active named Sister Fox and we get to her house and she gives us this really strong fruit tea. I was just glad it wasn´t caro coffee. That stuff is nasty! She was pretty nice and funny. We asked her how work was and she said “oh I stopped working” and we were like “oh why” and she just said “because I didn´t want to anymore”....wouldn´t that be nice if that was how it worked haha. After her we met with Angelika, the lady that was baptized last week, and we talked to her about family History. We were surprised to find out that she already had a lot done. She pulled out fan charts and all sorts of stuff it was really cool :)

Wednesday we met with Eva which is this lady that has been investigating forever. She wants to be baptized but can´t because she is living with her basically husband. But it just isn´t legal so that is sad and she isn´t willing to move out and he wants to save more money so they can have a big wedding....lame. She does have 3 kids though and her oldest daughter is baptized so that is cool. After Eva we stopped by this less active sister but she wasn´t home. But we left her a note so hopefully she will call us or at least feel loved. Then that night we had ward night which was super fun. We played all these mission related games. First we all got letters and had to write things starting with that letter that we would take on a mission. I got W and I said a couple of things and I also said me, Sister Wrathall and everyone thought that was funny haha. Then we played the packing a suitcase game and that was fun. My turn was second to last so I had to remember like 15 things, but I did it woot woot!

Thursday, Halloween! Sister Miller and I both dressed up in orange and black and we started the day by going to get me anmelded to the city. Let me tell you that was fun...So first we walked to the place and it really isn´t that far, but we get there and they say I need this sheet that I didn´t bring. So we have to walk all the way back and then we get there for the second time and they keep telling us we need this thing that we both have no idea what the word means and the lady is getting mad at us and we are like sorry but we don´t know that word we finally figure out it is my visa then all was good from there. After that fun adventure we go and meet with this less active couple the Pinks. They are super nice. The husband calls us his angles and he would go to church but he has a fear of going outside. I think that is sad and the wife she just needs to build up her testimony again. We asked them to start reading the scriptures together so we will see if they do that. Then we went to Sister Neu´s house for dinner and she is so nice! Her 18 year old granddaughter lives with her and she is not a member but Sister Neu is super patient with her. Sister Neu treats us like her kids. It is so nice and she feeds us a ton!!!!! She had prepared this huge thing of meatloaf and potatoes and cauliflower and peas and carrots and gravy thank goodness it is good food  :)

Crazy sundae Sister Neu made them.

Sister Neu and her granddaughter.

 

Friday we had breakfast with this young family and it was super nice they made us an American breakfast with eggs and french toast and peanut butter! It was super yummy. Then after they gave us a take home bag with tons of stuff in it. They were really nice. After them we went to the Roch’s. Sister Roch is investigating and Brother Roch has recently became active again. They gave us this HUGE mug of caro coffee but even though it was nasty I drank it and it was worth it because the lesson we had with her was really good. We taught the plan of salvation and it was really cool to have Brother Roch there to give his testimony. She accepted everything really easily too so that was nice. After the Rochs we went to the Schmidts and that was really fun. They are a couple that just moved into the ward and they speak English, so that is always nice. We learned a lot about them and I am excited to meet with them again :)

Saturday we went to Margret’s daughter’s birthday party and that was really good because we met a man there that has interest in the gospel. Too bad he doesn´t live in our area but it will be good for the missionaries in that area. Then we went to Sister Kremmen´s house and she fed us dinner and was really nice. Then we went to the Gabriel´s and they were nice too.

Sunday we went to church and this week was really good. Sister Neu gave a lesson about love in Relief Society. Our Sunday school class was about faith and then sacrament was testimony meeting. After church this man came up to us who happens to be president’s councilor and he was super nice and was just checking up on us making sure we were ok. He told us we need to start eating at the Mensa´s which I am excited to do again. After that we went to have lunch at Sister Kretzschmann´s house and it was super funny walking there because the wind was so strong it was pushing me backwards at time haha. Sister Kretzschmann was super nice and I am liking getting to know the members better. After her we went to go see Sister Halbfell and that was an adventure. So we ride a train to her town and then we walk and walk and walk and walk up this hill and get to the house and it is the wrong address and then we call and thank goodness she only lived 20 mins away so we walk even more and we get there and she had bread with meat and cheese and these yummy desserts waiting for us. She was really really nice. Sister Miller and I both felt so comfortable around her it was awesome.It was worth all the trouble haha. The way home we found a bus and that was a lot better haha.

So that was my week full of adventure haha. This was really cool because the ward became my family this week. I am grateful for the experiences I am having and that I am able to serve the Lord for this short period of time

Love you all have a great week!

Sister Wrathall

Sister Kreztschmann.  She was super sweet and helped Allison celebrate her birthday the day after.

Chips that are for that wild girl's night out.  Only for girls not for boys!