A girl with a mission: March 17, 2014 - "Strahlen"

Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Family! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We did get theSpanish package this week! Thank you!! So far we have just given our Spanish Family one of the Liahonas (There is a a monthly church magazine called the ENSIGN that is published in English....the Liahona is the version of the magazine that is published in other languages) but they were way excited about it. We love our Spanish family. They fed us empanadas on Saturday and were just so good to us. This Saturday they said we will celebrate my birthday. I've been trying to put down some hints that my birthday is coming up. Some people just don't get the concept of birthday week/birthday two weeks/birthday month. Sister Siems is still struggling to understand the concept. (okay....this is kind of a family joke because I started out celebrating "birthday week" when Lindsey was little because her birthday was so close to Christmas that sometimes it got lost) Also Sister Siems didn't get anything special for her birthday from members. She didn't tell anyone it was her birthday (Her first mistake. I believe in telling everyone.) So, we are expanding my birthday to include Sister Siems. It can just be OUR birthday. I guess it started yesterday because we went to a member family's house for dinner and they fed us homemade Mexican Food, which we have talked about having before and they know I really wanted. So when we ate they said, "We're celebrating your birthday today!"

They're such a cute family, but hard. Their oldest son wants NOTHING to do with the church. He still has to come to church with his family, but there are very few members he will even speak to. My nametag gives me no chance of being one of them. Yesterday I went in to where all three of the Kids were sitting and one of them was playing x-box. Immediately this kid basically hid himself in the beanbag. It was obviously ridiculous so the younger son said, "Why are you hiding?" I answered for him, because he didn't say anything. "The scary sister missionary came into the room." He agreed that was the reason. The other son is nice and I really love their 11-year-old daughter (see all the pictures of me smothering her). And of course I love the parents. And I admire the way they are raising their family. They seem to be handling their oldest son quite well and maintaining their relationship with him while staying true to the church.

Katie played lacrosse in High School so I bet this was especially fun!

So the mother and daughter in our Spanish family have been to the temple to do baptisms one or two times before, but not for a long time. We're hoping that we will be able to accompany them to the temple to do baptisms with some other members sometime very soon! First we have to wait for the mother's member record to arrive . . . Which will hopefully be very soon.

Guess what because I'm a Swiss citizen and I'm in Switzerland I had to file income tax. Cool, huh? Luckily there is someone in the Mission who helped me put Zeros in all the right places and all I really had to do was sign it.

We had a good lesson with Hannah just about faith. That was nice, to just talk about faith in Jesus Christ, something we are all very passionate about.

One of the Highlights of my week was seeing a SOBER SYLVAIN. He has made the leap of faith and is checked into the hospital. He stays there for 10 days to get clean in a safe way, and then he will go to the clinic for who knows how Long. And we went and visited him in the hospital after he had already been there a week, and HE WAS SOBER. You take one look at him and you just know. Every other time I have seen him he has been drunk to some degree. I didn't know what he was like sober. He's still very much himself, but you can just see in his face that he is also different. And in the things he says. He says all the write things and is reading in the BOM, Bible, the Joseph Fielding Smith book, and he recently requested that his wife also bring him Preach my Gospel. And he is just being his normal natural-missionary self, but that works better when you're not drunk. When he bows his head to pray in the hospital Cafeteria nurses come up to him to ask if he's okay, and are shocked when he explains that he was just saying a Blessing on his Food. He reads his BOM and People ask him about what it is.

Other random Highlights:

I just like feeling like I have friends in Schaffhausen. I live here. I preach the Gospel here. I have a family here (the darling Schaffhausen branch). One time this week twice in one day I sat somewhere on the train or the bus and didn't notice one of my friends that I have already talked to or taught at some point waved to me and wanted me to come sit by them. That happens sometimes, but twice in one day was cool.

When the bus Driver gave me a peace sign as we were Boarding the bus from our stop because he knew I would wave at him before getting on the bus. He is one of the bus Drivers who drives the bus that we ride at least twice a day every day, so we're friends too.

When a random lady walked by me on this full train and said to me, "Hübsch" (pretty). I said, "Wie bitte?" (excuse me?) She repeated, "Hübsch." Also a random woman told me she liked my outfit. I think she was also referring to the fact that I was dressed up and looked different from everyone else.

Oh super cool experience this week. I got the confirmation that one of our investigators WILL ACCEPT THE GOSPEL. I don't know when, and I don't even know if it will be in this life or the next, but HE WILL! Cool, right? We had a lesson with Steven where Lea and Nico were there too and basically Steven was happy to finally have someone who didn't grow up in the church to shower with questions. Nico and Steven got along fantastically. Based on Nico's testimony, Steven agreed to read the Book of Mormon. We gave him another copy since his older sister hid the last copy. The beginning of Nico's conversion Story is much like where Steven is at now, and Steven could see that. Steven always talks about how Mormons "strahlen," or shine, and that's exactly what brought Nico into the church. Nico approached Lea on the bus one day and said, "What's so different about you?" She told him about the church.

Quotes of the week:

Me: "If you have Google, you don't have to know anything. If you don't have Google, then you have to know everything."

Sister Siems: "And if you don't have Google and you don't know everything, then life is hard. And that's us."

Sister Siems was on the phone with Elder Becker (also German so this conversation was in German).

Sister Siems: "We found such a cool family today!"

Elder Becker: "That makes me happy!"

Sister Siems: "They live in your area."

Elder Becker: "That makes me even happier!"