Frohe Ostern!!!
This is one major holiday that I only get one of on my mission, so I'm doing my best to enjoy it while it's here. And really, it's not that hard. Flowers are blooming literally EVERYWHERE and the Sun is now rising at a normal time in the morning (which is to say at some unholy hour when the missionaries wish we could still be sleeping). Spring is definitely in the air, and life is good.
This week I went on a full day split with a member of our ward. We had two appointments for the day and a list of go-by's to keep us busy and I was excited! First, we went to the wrong address for one of our go-by's. Then as we were trying to correct that error, our first appointment called and cancelled indefinitely for the next few weeks/months. Okay. Well, not exactly preferable, but it can still be a good day! So we went off to go try and go-by another person who lived in the neighborhood. But me, being the blonde that I am, got us lost for 20 minutes. But good news, we found them eventually!!! And they were home!!!! We had a lovely hour-long chat with a less-active family and shared a gospel message. Missionary work! All is right in the world! Woo!! Feeling quite invincible, Sch. Kreuzmair and I decided to go do some street contacting in the park by the church house. Person one we tried to contact said they had no interest. Person number two also had no interest and would we please leave her alone? Person number three was a JW who argued with Sch. Kreuzmair for 30 minutes about God and the bible. After the incidents in the park, we called our second appointment to make sure we could still meet, and she had completely forgotten! So now we're down two lessons, possibly an investigator, and no one wants to talk to us. Perfect! I will admit, it was a rough day. I was struggling, and when my companions called to ask if we could split back a bit early, I jumped at the chance. I was so tired and so done with the day and just wanted to go home and collapse that nothing else even mattered. When we met Sis. Riser and Sis. Clifford at the church, Sch. Kreuzmair proceeded to tell them all about our day and what we had done. She talked about how happy she was that she had been able to help with missionary work and feel the special spirit of missionary work. She just talked and talked about how great the day had been and how much happier she was knowing that we had touched the lives of some people for good and helped them feel the Spirit. It was really cool to hear her talk about it. Especially since that's not how I was feeling at all. I was tired, discouraged, and embarrassed that all of this had happened when I was supposed to be having an awesome day of appointments with a member and building ward relations. I was upset. But Sch. Kreuzmair was absolutely impressed. She kept saying that the work is hard, but we are "the army of the Lord." It was really cool to see the impression that the day had made on her, compared to how I was feeling. It was a rough day, but it was a good day. Sunday was the best!!! I don't know what it was, but we had the best Sacrament meeting of my life today, and I was super happy. We had three awesome talks about Easter, Hope, and the Atonement. It was super great and spiritually uplifting, which was fantastic! Feeling the Spirit in German is occasionally hard, so it was a really great experience.
We had Zone Conference Tuesday and it was awesome!!!! It was almost entirely auf Deutsch, and I got to translate for the first half of it!!!! Never mind the fact that my voice was still barely above a whisper, but you end up whispering for translations anyways. It was a ton of fun, and I learned a lot about how to learn German better. The only bad thing that came from the conference is that now that I've translated, Elder Clawson said that next week I get to start translating Sacrament Meeting. That is really stressful. But it will be fine, I'm sure. It's usually only the Hart's who listen anyways. We had a street display and it was super cool!!! Elder Ault was trying to learn how to contact people with me (which is a horrible idea because I'm not very good at contacting) and we were picking people for the other one to contact. So Elder Ault told me to contact this man who had just purchased a Nürnburger (a roll with three little sausages in it that is absolutely DELICIOUS) and was eating it when he walked by us and I asked him if he believed in God. He said that he did, but more importantly he believes in Christ. By the way, NO ONE SAYS THAT HERE. We then proceeded to have the best conversation about religion that I have ever had on my entire mission. I even messed up my German and then discovered that this man is American!!!! It was quite literally the best moment of the week. It was awesome. We shared some scriptures from the Book of Mormon with him and he told us that he appreciate what we were doing and to keep it up! He was cool. I hope he reads the book we gave him.
Right now there's this thing called Volksfest going on here in Nürnberg and it's awesome! It's basically just a giant carnival (think Lagoon, but German) with tons of food! It's amazing. Also, they have the Wild Mouse!!!! It's just a normal carnival ride here, but it's exactly the same as the one in Utah! It's great. I'm so excited to (hopefully with permission) ride it next week. I just want to get some clarification on what we can and can't do from President before I do anything crazy.
Anyways, that's it for this week! I love you all! Have an awesome day, and a fantastic week!!!
Liebe Grüße,
Sister John
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