AHHHHHH CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So excited!! Sad you haven´t gotten my package, i hope you have it by now :) DAllin went through the temple! Now we are all wearing those weird mormon underwear haha. Oh dad leaving his bag i am glad they found it that is a miracle! I am glad you are having so much fun with the family and i can´t wait to talk to you!

Monday we went to the Lichius´s house and we had fhe it was so fun we gave a spiritual thought and then we played the game of life! It was so fun! They are one of my favorite couples :)

Tuesday we had a lesson with Sister Roch and everything is going smoothly we also had our german lesson with Bonnie and that went well. It was also MADO`s Birthday so we made cookies for her and we heart attacked her door...we made her cry hehe :)

Then Wednesday i went on my first of 3 splits this week this one was with Sister Bauer in Herne and it was pretty good she is really fun and super easy to teach with we taught 2 less active members in her ward and made a dvd with mormon messages it was good.

Thursday i had a split with Sister Clendon in Herne and that was...fun we met with one member and the rest of the time we were on busses! I hate busses!!! I felt so sick after we were on this one bus for 50 mins!!!! But it is good for talking to people.

Friday i had my split with Sister Kearl in Essen and that was fun because she came out the same time as me and it was our 9 month mark to celebrate i got a crepe with nutella and banana ( i would have got marzipan but they didn´t have it :( ) Then we had our full study and then we made cookies then we taught angelika and that is always a pleasure she is so SWEET i love her and then we went to see if anyone was at our English class...there was no one so we did a couple of drop bys and had no luck

Saturday i was finally back with my companion SISTER MILLER it was too long going with out her! I had an interview with President wich is always nice and then we went to this baptsim in Herne of these people i have helped teach like 2 times and 4 investigators were suppose to come but none showed up in the end. So then we had a coordination meeting in Mcdonalleds with the Elders ( because we can´t meet alone haha) And then we did some weekly planning

Sunday we went to church and our lovely members showered us with gifts they are so nice. Then we had a meeting with the zone leaders and STLS and then we went singing with our Bishop and his wife and with our old ward misson leader it was soo fun!

LOOKING FORWARD TO CHRISTMAS!!! ENJOY YOUR CHRISTMAS WITH YOUR FAMILLIES!!!

LOVE Sister Wrathall



On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 4:32 AM, Ann Wrathall <wrats6@aol.com> wrote:
Dear Allison,
Can you believe it?  It is almost Christmas.  How are you doing?  Hope you are not too sad missing Christmas with us.  But so glad that we get to Skype with you!!!!!  Can't wait.  Bad news first.  We haven't got your packages yet.  Kayla thought we got them from you but really it was from Grandma.  Which was actually good that we got Grandma's since she bought all of Dallin's temple clothes and since he went through the temple yesterday! he really needed them. But we still have a couple more days and it may show up.
So anyway this week has been busy busy!  We got here on Monday of course and our flight was an hour late. So that was a bit hard when we were still flying and we were like we could of been there by now but we survived.  The bad thing though was dad didn't notice that he left his black work bag at the airport.  He didn't figure it out until the next morning.  It had his work computer in it.  If something happened to that he would be in super bad trouble.  But Kayla took him back up to the airport the next morning and thank goodness it was there.  Plus I brought one of my WII controls.  That would of been bad to lose.  LOL
So I have been loving playing with Carter.  He is super fun!  And he had absolutely no problems getting to know me.  He is always wanting me to pick him up and chase him around.  So much better than a crying little baby.  He has been really good.  Most of the time we have been shopping for Christmas presents since we didn't want to buy them before except online and carry them on the plane.  Plus we have been food shopping. We are feeding a lot of people. Dad, Kayla and I went up to Salt Lake to see a live Nativity.  It was outside and boy was that an awakening to the cold.  Soooooo cold!  We had to wait in line for like an hour to start.  Maybe if we were moving around it would not of felt so cold but  just standing in line brrrrr.  But it was really good.  We went around to 7 different groups and they sang an original song.  Some of them were Daniel, shepherds, scholar, wise men, the inn keepers (my favorite) Mary Joseph and baby Jesus and then a choir of angels.  Was that seven?  Well that was pretty good remembering what I did.  They also had live animals: donkey, sheep, goats, and a camel.  Good way to feel ready for the Christmas spirit.  The other thing that we did was go to Temple Square for the Christmas lights.  So pretty but also so crowded which made it not so enjoyable.  We also went to the Joseph Smith Building to see it decorated.  Plus it was warm in there!
Then yesterday Dallin went to the temple.  He went to the Oquirrah Mountain temple.  It is a pretty cool temple.  The dressing rooms are downstairs and the ordinance rooms are upstairs and what I thought was really cool was that there were windows in the ordinance rooms.  So pretty!  The Celestial room was beautiful of course.  I'm glad that he got to go there.  But he loved it and wanted to go to the Salt Lake temple when we were up there looking at the lights.  We will have to try to make it there before he goes into the MTC.  Uncle Eric, Aunt Cathy and Uncle Charlie came too.  And of course Kayla, Jared and Rachel.  Just missing a certain Allison.  Some day we will all be together again but it is going to be a couple of years I guess.
Well, guess I will leave some things to talk about on Christmas day.  I hope you have a wonderful Christmas Eve.  And we will talk to you soon.  We are now on the countdown to you coming home.  LOL Can you believe that? It really doesn't seem like you have been gone that long!

Love you and talk to you on Wednesday!!!

Mom

Lots of meetings this week.

OOO i miss 5 guys! The burgers here are just not the same! THANKS FOR THE PICTURE!!! ... haha i will get one in almost 9 months so no worries haha Zaxby´s sounds good too but i am lucky and can go to the Christmas market and buy a bratwurst :)  I can´t believe it raining 9 days in a row! That is a lot! sister Miller and i decided this week that we would never rake leaves because they just fall on the ground again right after you rake them!!!!  Also random question i know but it has been bugging me for a couple of months now but what is the name of the river we lived by in orting? Ok now on to the week!!!!

Tuesday we had ZONE CONFERENCE!!!! That was fun we had to wake up at 5:30 and head out to Düsseldorf because Sister Miller and Sister Bauer the Sister Training leaders in our ZONE (STL) had to meet with the STL´s in the other zone and plan a lesson for zone conference but i had my other compainion Sister Clendon with me haha so it was all ok. It was also cool to see people that i haven´t seen for a long time i love seeing everyone greet eachother it is like a family reunion! The actual Zone Conference was good i always love hearing from President and then the AP´s and the STL´s did a good job too :) After the meeting part we went to the Düsseldorf Weihnacht Markt and we sang Christmas songs and handed out wrapped Book of Mormons Sister Miller and i ended up handing out 3 and to some really cool people. Then after that it was pretty late but we went on a "split" but we were all still together because the AP´s drove us to the Essen appartment together and we didn´t have enought time to travel to Münster so we just spent the night in Essen woot Sleep over to bad we are always so tired haha.

Wednesday was the split Sister Erickson and i did studies in Essen and then traveled to Münster and by the time we were there we had about 3 hours and we still had to grab a couple of things from their appartment in Münster they only have buses??? KOMISCH ( weird) that will be weird for me to go to a smaller place also their Church building is just an office space in a building she told me they have like 10 active members! So any how once we did that running around we had 2 hours left so we went to this Dorf ( small town) and we tried to stop by on some less active members but they ended up living to far away and we had to catch a train so we were waiting for a bus to go back to the train station and we waited and waited and it NEVER CAME so we had to rush back and when we were almost there it was really quite and then i heard something and i turned to Sister Erickson and said" Did you hear that? It sounded like a train stopping!" So then we booked it and missed it by literally 2 mins but it wasn´t too bad the nest one came in 30 mins just a little bit of a bummer haha. Once we were back in Essen we switched back and i went to ward night with my awesome companion Sister Miller. This week we wrote Christmas cards and ate chocolate and drank tea and hot coco pretty relaxing night.

Thursday we had our lesson with Bonnie again and this week was pretty helpful, she is super nice to be doing this German help colass for us :) After that we had a little meeting with the District leaders in the zone and the Zone leaders we were there because the SLT´s it was a good meeting trying to figure out how to fix the problems in our zone. After we did a finding activitie at the Mensa no luck this time. After that we went to our lesson with Angelika and that went well we taught about eternal families and she liked that lesson her testimony is so strong it is cool to see how quick she has developed this strong testimony oh how Heavenly Father blesses you whe you do the right thing!

Friday we had a lesson with Sister Roch and it went pretty good we talked about repentance again and i feel like this time it really clicked in her head and that was cool to be able to notice when she was understanding us. After her we met with the YSA in our ward named Daisy and she is the sweetest thing EVER! We just needed to build her up some. Then we used our computer time to look a Mormon messages and bibile videos to show people.

Saturday we had a little meeting with the ZL and talked about how the Sisters are feeling in the zone it was a really constructive meeting. When we got home from that meeting we got a call from an unknown number and guess who it was KRISTIN the wonder girl she finally got a phone and she called to give us her number and to tell us she was coming to the christmas party that night! I LOVE HER! So then we finished our Study and head out to the Christmas party and that party was a miracle night we had Elizabeth there Kristin there and this hopefully new investigator and one of the Elders hopefully new investigators. The party it´s self was interesting....it started off good with singing songs and the christmas story and then Santa came or ( the Weihnacht Man) and he gave a present to every kid and they were 25 kids and they were like books and dolls and candy and nice things! I was like..that is strange and then when they did all the kids and then they were like i think there are 4 more kids and we were all like what? and then they said the missionaries! and we were likeWHAT! Santa made us go up and sing a song to everyone and then gave us a present haha it is a i love Essen hat and a note book and some chocolate ( which had Alcohol in it haha good thing i read things before i eat them) It was really nice of them to think of us. Ok now this is the really strange part the hiered some dancers that were not really good or approprate lets just say i was glad the Elders had to leave early and they missed it Sister Miller and i were in shock the whole time it was sooo weird. But i don´t know maybe that is normal for them.

Sunday we had church and Sister Roch was there and it was really cool to see how all the lessons were perfect for her the addressed her needs dirctley! After Church we went over to there house and we taught about some of the commandment and asked if she had prayed about a day to be baptized and she said yes Febuary 14th and she said she had a good feelingg about that day and that is good enough for me so i hope i get to stay and see it happen :) I love Sister Roch this week she made sister Miler and i some jelwery :) So sweet after that lesson we went to the Rösler family and taught there he said it was cool because it reminded him of when the Sister missionaries taught him when he was investigating the church. After that we watched the christmas broadcast and that was fun to see.

Overall this week was pretty good got to go to a lot of meetings but got to accomplish a lot of things as well :) Love you all and hope you are all doing wonderfully i know that this church is true and that our Heavenly Father loves us!

Love 

Sister Wrathall 

 

December 9th

      So Sister Miller was sick and then I was sick and we thought it wouldn´t be smart to go running in the cold rain so we have been slacking off but we decided we are both fully healed so we started up again today so we will go back to our normal running every day don´t worry and we eat oatmeal every day for breakfast a 1\4 a cup with coconut milk so don´t worry :P Ya the big thing now is the Christmas markets but today we are just playing games with a bunch of Elders haha hopefully good games. Ya the weather here isn´t quite like the weather there haha but that is ok you just have to laugh at it.

     That is funny about the Church cleaning (It was the Wrathall's turn to clean the church last week) today we did a lot of cleaning! The dishes alone took me an hour haha. We had guest over this week and no time for dishes...bahhh. It was so annoying to have to wait till today to do them but now I feel so much better having a clean apartment! Anyways on to the Week

     Monday night we went to the Lichius´s house with Angelika to teach Maneula a coworker from Annika Lichius and that was fun haha this lady shows no emotion! That made it a little hard to teach her and when we asked her questions she would give the shortest answer possible haha. Well we will just have to see how that goes in the future haha.

 Angelkia and Sister Miller

 

     Tuesday we went to the Mensa to talk to the young people and we had SUCCESS!!!! We were wise and sat by this girl that was sitting alone and she was super nice! Too bad she lives in Köln so not our area but good for the Köln Sisters haha. Turns out she is from Peru and she is pregnant, don´t worry she is also married. We got her number and later in the week gave it to the Köln Sisters. She told us if we ever come to Köln to call her and we could meet up. I thought that was nice. After that we met with Sister Roch and we asked her the big question of when she thinks she will be ready to be baptized and she said February...I think she will be ready before that but we will have to see. We will be meeting with her 2 times every week now so that will speed up the process and plus we don´t want too much time in between because that is when Satan tries really hard to get you to not do the right thing. After Sister Roch we had our ward council and that went well. This ward is really missionary minded. It is great.

     Wednesday we had a split with the Herne Sisters because Sister Miller and Bauer had to go to Frankfurt for a meeting (mlc). So Sister Clendon and I were together in Essen. All of our appointments fell through...YAY!...So we tried to go by on this potential investigator but couldn´t find her house so then we went and talked with Wayne, the Fudge guy, and we made a deal with him. We said if we went and got him a drink he would read a pamphlet and the introduction to the Book of Mormon and he said deal so that is progress haha. After Wayne for our weekly ward night we went to an Old People Home and sung Christmas Songs haha. That was fun for the first couple we knew the tune but after that I was just like haha this is horrible and at the end one of our members asked if someone had a song they wanted to hear...they did and we had no idea what the words were haha but at the end they had us and the Elders sing an English Christmas song we sang jingle bells haha. It was fun and the people were really appreciative. After every song they clapped and in between the Missionaries read the Christmas story and they clapped after every time we read so that was cute haha.

 

     Thursday was German improvement day haha. It started out with Sister Miller and I going to one of the Members in our wards house Bonnie Tewes and she told us she would hold a German class for us once a week if we wanted and we said YES we could always use some more help. So this time she wasn´t really sure what we wanted to do so we made a plan for the coming weeks and then read in the Book of Mormon and she helped us with pronunciation. Did you know that in German a word like Brüder is pronounced like Brüda? I think I like German even more now haha. After that fun lesson where we found out we have been saying things wrong our whole mission we did some planning. Then we went to a less active family the Pinks and they were super nice haha. They are really funny they just need to strengthen their testimonies and they will come back. Then we went to the Lichius´ house again and this time we did role plays with them. Tthey helped us with our German and we helped them with teaching. It was really cool. They are becoming some of my favorite people in the ward haha :)

     Friday we were supposed to have Zone Training but it fell out because there is a storm or something so it wasn´t safe to ride long distances on trains but guess what!!!!!! IT SNOWED!!! The first SNOW it wasn´t very much but I took some pictures haha. So since the Zone Training fell out we thought we would go to the Mensa again since we had success last time. Guess what we had success again! Woot! This Mensa is GOLDEN! We once again were wise and sat by this girl sitting alone and she was from China but has been in Germany for about as long as we have and didn´t speak very much English. We told her about our church and she sounded super excited when we asked her to come to our Christmas party she asked if she could come to church because it would be nice to purify her soul....SWEET! Only problem is she has no phone but she gave us her email. After that we stopped by Jemima and woke her up from a nap whoops! But she was really nice and set up another appointment with us. Then we taught our English Class....I wish I paid more attention in English haha my grammar sucks.

 

     Saturday once again all of our appointments fell through but lucky for us we still had sport ( which no one showed up to, sad) and Sister Kretchmann invited us over for lunch. By Sister Kretchmann that was fun she is like a mom haha. She is also crazy and super sweet haha. It was fun. After her we had the Herne Sisters come over because Sister Miller and Bauer have to speak at Zone Conference so they had to plan for that Sister Clendon and I made dinner and dessert for them. It was fun :)

     Sunday we had church, very surprising I know haha. It went really well. The Elders had one of their investigators there so that was nice to see them have some success. After church we went to the Heerhost´s house and ate lunch there. They are really nice we are going over to their house for Christmas Eve. In the German culture is more important than Christmas. They call it Heiligen Abend (Holy Night). Then we did some go byes and did German Study and made lots and lots of phone calls my favorite haha.

Any who this week was kind of crazy but it turned out to be ok. Love you all and you are in my prayers!

LOVE

Sister Wrathall

Keeping up with the traditional candy advent calendar.

A neighbor's dog.

Guess they had a sleep-over

Ready for Christmas!

 

December in Germany

     Monday we went to the Christmas Markets! It was so fun and we went to this one stand that said FUDGE. I was super excited because they have tons of places here that look like they would have fudge but they don´t so we start looking at it and the guy starts talking to us. Turns out he is from England and he is super cool. He asks us why we are here and we tell him and end up giving him a Book of Mormon and he said we could stop by and talk to him whenever we have time pretty cool. Too bad the fudge was not good haha.

     Tuesday was really good we started by having a lesson with Margret and her husband Daniel (from now on I will just say family Ollawa). The lesson started off a little shaky. We wanted to show the Restoration video but they said they had already seen it and would not watch it again because they don´t want to hear about Joseph Smith they want to hear about God. At that point I told them why we are here as missionaries is to teach people about the gospel and when they don´t want to listen to us then we have other people we could teach. Then they said no no we want to hear please stay we will listen. Then Sister Miller followed and said then you need to keep the commitments because that is the way you know if these things are true or not. By the end of the appointment Daniel asked...how can I believe? Golden question! So it ended up being the lesson they need. Hopefully they will make progress now! After family Ollawa we went to the Lichius family for an appointment. She is super nice she is about our age and she has a brother on a mission in Scotland. She showed us the package she is putting together for him. She is a good Sister. We taught the restoration because next Monday (today) she set up to have a family home evening with us and she invited her friend that is interested in the gospel! How wonderful is that? She is such a good missionary :)

     Wednesday we went to the Mensa where the students from a music school eat and that was really cool but we had no success but we are not giving up! Then we had an appointment with Angelika and that was ...fun haha Brüder Roch was there...we talked about him coming but he never told us if he actually was coming so we assumed he wasn´t so that was a surprise. Then Angelika had 2 of her grandchildren there too...it was CRAZY! Good thing Brüder Roch is awesome and had a whole lesson planned haha. It was weird to be the ones adding things in here and there. But he did wonderful and it makes it so she will have relationships with actual ward members so it was nice. After we went to Ward night and that was so fun we made sugar cookies together and Kristin was there. I tell you this girl is GOLDEN!! She is so nice and she got to the activity before us and it was like she was already a member!

 

      Thursday WOOT THANKSGIVING. It ended up being wonderful and with me being STUFFED FULL OF FOOD! First we went to Sister Neu´s where she made hamburgers and Cheesecake (German Cheesecake much different). She made me eat 3 burgers and 2 pieces of Cheesecake. The only thing that was saving me is that the food was really good :) Then we went and had an appointment with Sister Roch and we talked about Joseph Smith and she started to cry once Sister Miller gave her testimony. Then I asked her if we could make a calendar with her and pick a date for baptism and make steps to prepare leading up to it and she said YES! So next time we meet we will make this calendar! Then she gave us these "snowball" things because she was just at the Christmas market and was thinking about us ....awww how cute!!! After Sister Roch we went to Bart and Mado´s for a real Thanksgiving meal. It was really nice Bart had cooked the whole day for us and made all out favorite things! I love this couple they are so AWESOME! So my Thanksgiving was AMAZING! Oh also this transfer Sister Miller and I are speaking only German so we started this day.

Snowballs

 

     Friday we got to meet with Jemima for the first time. That went really well. We set up expectations and asked her if she would be baptized when she knows the things we teach her are true and she said yes. After we answered a few of her questions and guess what she has a family a boy that is 21 and 2 girls 19 and 13! We get to meet them this week hopefully! She is really nice and interactive in the lesson so that is really cool to see. After Jemima we had English class and guess who was there...Kristin of course! We started with teaching English and ended with setting expectations and a little of the first lesson. She also said when she knows the things we teach are true she will be baptized! SWEET! I love this girl she is like a friend she told me that on Thanksgiving Day she thought about us the whole day because on Wednesday I told her what we were doing to celebrate :) She is cute!

      Saturday was pretty boring. We had District meeting and that was really good. I got to meet the new members of the District both came out the same time as me so that was fun. Then we just did weekly planning a lot of phone calls and went by on a couple of people that were not home.

      SUNDAY! This was the December 1!! The day I got my Mission call so that was cool. So first we had church and Sister Roch gave us a present that was really nice and then guess what? during the testimony meeting she bore her testimony about how she is excited to be baptized! "ich bin fro mich taufen zu lassen" SHE IS AWESOME! Church was simply wonderful. After church we went to Herne to coordinate with the Zone leaders and the other Sister training leader for Zone training. There was only one new person that is Elder Liman and he is cool. After that we went to Sister Kremmen (the grandmother of Kristin) And we told her about how it is going with Kristin and had dinner.

Yup that was my week it was a wonderful one! Hope you are all doing well love you all!

Sister Wrathall