Sister Allison Wrathall: 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!