"We will sleep in a tent" - July 28, 2014 - From Solothurn

Hiiiii! Transfers! Today is the first day of my 10th transfer in the field as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a.k.a. der Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage. I'm getting a new companion on Thursday. Sister Blohm is going to Wels, Austria.  Sister Judd (Katie’s trainer) also served there. Sister Blohm is going to work with Sister Brinck who I was in the MTC with.

I'm getting Sister Bognar. She was trained in Zollikofen (Switzerland) and there for three transfers but has been serving in Germany since then. She is from Hungary and she is one transfer younger than me, but I’ve never met her.   I know at the beginning of her mission she couldn't really speak German or English so let's hope she just speaks really good German now! That would be great for us to talk mostly German together! So on Thursday I will go all the way to Munich with Sister Blohm and all the way back with my new companion. At least I think so.

F. came to church again yesterday!! But he came late and missed Sacrament meeting because he missed his train. 

I will tell you a story that happens every once in a while. Losing potentials is a missionary tragedy. It can happen in many different ways, but it is not good when someone shows interest in learning about the gospel and the missionary never contacts them. Well this time the story was like this. I was talking to someone on the train. First I told her I liked her earrings. Then I asked her if she was from Solothurn. And then she talked and talked. You can tell pretty fast if someone is willing to have a conversation or not. And then I have to get out of the train soon because Sister Blohm and I were planning on going by an innactive in this town. So I have to wrap things up. I tell her I have to get out here. She said something like, "Hopefully we will see each other again." So I said something like, "Well if you would like to see each other again I am actually serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I love to talk to people about faith in God. Would you like to meet another time to discuss about God and Jesus Christ?" Something along those lines. I really can't remember. And she said yes and she started telling me about how her daughter has never been baptized and this is something that they have been thinking about. Here's the problem: we are now at this town and the train has stopped. And the lady is saying, don't you have to get out here? And Sister Blohm is standing at the door. We're supposed to sort of have this code where if someone is talking to someone and they don't get up to leave the other companion should just sit back down and pretend we're going somewhere else. Ha ha. But this did not work. Sister Blohm stood at the door and kept opening it and then it would close and she would open it again and she was just trying to stall the train. But here's the thing: we don't even have an actual appointment right now. It would be no problem to stay on the train. But Sister Blohm is not getting the hint. But this lady already knows I need to get out here, but I cannot leave without her number. So I tell her it's no problem I will just stay until the next stop. I'm trying to play it cool because that might be kind of weird, you know? But then I end up just getting her number really fast and leaving anyway because Sister Blohm is not leaving the door even though I haven't moved. But I was way stressed we are holding up this train and I should have just done the awkward thing and went and told my companion, "Look, we can't get off the train right now." And then gone back and made sure I had all of her information. But I didn't. And I was frustrated with Sister Blohm for just not getting the hint. The code thing did not work. And then I get off the train and you know what I realize? The number I have for her has one digit too few. And yeah that was not the best moment. A missionary tragedy. But she does have a card with my number on it. But yeah these things happen and afterward Sister Blohm and I prayed so many times that we would feel peaceful and okay about what happened.

Kate says there are lots of cornfields where they serve, so it was time for a photo!

Sister Blohm and Sister Kate with Ivanka 

This week we did a lot of service helping with a wedding party that took place in the church. And today we helped a less active clean her house and she made us lunch and then we went to an appointment with a new investigator and gave her a Book of Mormon in Hindi. We will have to shop for food tomorrow.

Guiseppe, remember him? He is pure gold. He wants to help everyone and is visiting less actives and he is just an absolute gem.

The elders have an investigator named Osas who we actually found and gave to them to teach. He is planning on being baptized and he is making such good progress. He asked such good questions yesterday.

Sister Blohm made Elder Kelly and Elder Cottam promise to be good to me after she is gone. We all have no idea what to expect from Sister Bognar, but Elder Kelly isn't so excited about her. So the quote of the week:

"Sister Blohm, we will sleep in a tent on the grass outside the sister's apartment if we have to."

Sister Blohm is so sweet. She wants to make sure I'm taken care of.

Looks like these Elders are "armed" too! 

Mom, you have asked what it is like to try and learn High German in a country where you just don’t hear it that much!  It’s hard! This week we had some members from Northern Deutschland come to our ward. Talking to them was refreshing. The Swiss try their best with hochdeutsch (High German) but it was just nice to hear someone speaking clear and understandable German. I was loving their accent. The language issue just really does make things tricky. In church, people are supposed to speak High German in lessons and talks. So they do speak high German a lot but they also speak Swiss German a lot. And the only way to ever speak Swiss German is to live here for 25 years.  I think for prayers it's sort of an unwritten rule that Swiss German is allowed. But mostly they still pray in High German. Or Highish German. They still don't sound like Germans.  And it's funny for example sometimes someone will be bearing their testimony and then they will be trying to say something and then they will realize they can't say it in High German and they will say it in Swiss German and then return to High German.  When I hear Swiss German I can get the gist. It depends how Swissy the Swiss German is and which dialect (yes, there are also many variations on this VERY STRONG dialect….it’s actually more a different language than a dialect) but yeah I can understand some!

Well life is good. I loove you all and I have to go. I got your package and I was so happy!!

This picture scares me.  I'm gong to have ask about these

damaged feet.  I've seen the shoe tan lines before, but this looks scary. 

"Ships have to go places" - July 21, 2014 - From Solothurn

Heyyyyy Family!!

I want to tell you a nice story. So remember the man from last week we met at a train station and then we rode the train together? Well here's the whole story (so far!). So his name is F. That will make things easier if I have a name (but I don't think I'm supposed to use names so you might have to leave out names on the blog). And he was actually in our phone as a potential because Sister Blohm met him on the bus once and he talked to her and said he had met with missionaries before so she got his number. So that's why I ended up calling him. Then he recognized us at bahnhof. Since we met him we have had 3 lessons. On the second lesson we set a baptismal date. It came very naturally and baptism is something that he really wants. But we set this baptismal date on Tuesday and we set another appointment for Saturday and he wanted to meet at this park that is easier for him to get to than the church but I told him we would talk about it again on the phone because I really wanted a member at that lesson and it's easier to have members come for lessons at the church than at a park. But it turns out he only has a home phone and he is never home. But we did not know this when we were calling him all week, getting really worried we would have no lesson with him on Saturday. Even starting to worry if he was avoiding us and if he didn't want to get baptized anymore. So what to do when it comes to Saturday and we're not sure if our appointment is at the chuch (in which case we would have to have another woman there) or at the park, or if our investigator is even going to come? Well what we did was we asked our dear friend Sister Pang who lives across the street from the church to keep an eye out and see if Fadil was there and to be our joint teach if he came and to call us either way. And we went looking for him at the park he suggested. But this is a big park. So we're walking around the park and there's these people having a picnic and this girl says hi to us. And who is she? I’s daughter! Who never really wants to talk to us and who is verrryyy innactive. But she said hi to us and we met her boyfriend and talked to her for a minute! Good. Then we kept looking for F. It's after the time our appointment should have started, we're still walking around the park, not hearing from Sister Pang, and getting pretty sad about F. But then we get a call from a flustered Brother Pang telling us to get there as soon as possible because Sister Pang is outside the church with our investigator. Sister Blohm and I were so excited. We hugged after that. Seriously we thought we had maybe lost him and all the information we had for him was this one phone number. By the time we got there with the bus F was in the Pang's home with them and we were able to have a good lesson. He still wants to get baptized. He came to church yesterday. He sat with the Pangs. Oh and what happened on the bus on the way to the church? An old man sat next to me. I started a conversation and he said, "Hey, you left me a note in my mailbox." Well we've been leaving a lot of notes in mailboxes. We do that for a lot of people who have showed interest but we just have their address. So I said, "Oh, really? What's your name?" Yeah we had totally left him a note. I remembered all about him and he is busy for the next two weeks but he gave me his phone number. Coincidence that we were on that bus at that time and in the park at that time? Nope, don't think so. God knows what he's doing.

What else. The elders now have 4 baptismal dates. But all of them speak English. F speaks German, which is wonderful for him to be integrated into the ward. Some of them still might be baptized on the same day. And one of the elders' investigators with a baptismal date Sister Blohm and I actually found and gave to them . . . just for the record. ;)

Yesterday at church Elder Kelly basically handed me the microphone and headphones for translation and basically said, "Look, Sister Lewis. I've been doing this almost every Sunday. You're up." And I said, "Sister Blohm?" She always talks about how she did it every week in St. Gallen (translated from German into English) and how she was good at it. And he said, "Uh no. You." So I translated Sacrament Meeting for one of the elder's investigators and two members who speak English. And it went okay. I usually try to avoid translating at all costs so I haven't done it very much.

Quote of the week:

Elder Cottam: Sister Lewis, don't think I'm discouraging you from translating but I just want to tell you my favorite part of today (this is something I said): "Ships are safe in the harbor. But ships have to go places."

Except that was a pretty good translation! The high councilman was giving this whole analogy on how ships leaving the harbor is like us leaving the pre-mortal existence and coming to earth.

After Sacrament Meeting the investigator sincerely thanked me for translating and one of the members said he wants me translating every week. I think I made Sacrament Meeting more entertaining for him.

Then it was Sunday School and I don't know what happened to the investigator class (Somebody seriously dropped the ball. Actually more than one person.) so we were all in the Old Testament class. Minor disaster. Brother Pang said later, you should have just taken your investigator for a lesson if there wasn't an investigator class. He was probably right. Hopefully it was all for a reason. But I was supposed to translate Sunday School too but it didn't take very long for me to say, "Yeah right, Elder Kelly. Here you go." And then I gave him all the stuff back. My knowledge of German/Kings and Chronicles was not sufficient.

We visited the referral from Hal! They are the best people ever. I want to know if Hal heard about our visit and what he heard! I hope good things. They treated us like queens and invited us to dinner and we ate Majestic Herring and Wild Boar. And not only were they just in Denmark, Jorgen is actually Danish! It was perfect. We talked about Denmark and how much we love the Tueller family. I really like them. We gave them a thank you note but their mailbox is hidden so we just stuck it in their door. I hope they got it. Tell Hal thank you from me for the referral! I hope the couple liked me and our visit. I really like them. (Hal told me that this couple – she is the president of the company he works for – really enjoyed them and thought they were “awesome”!)

Love you family! The church is true. The plan of salvation is real. Take the opportunity to share it this week. Pray for opportunities to share it. Byyee.

Do you remember this adorable family from Schaffhausen?? Sister Siems and I were the first to have contact with them (well, in Schaffhausen). And Fabrithio just got baptized!! Yaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy. I love this family.

"Almost the same in Danish" - July 14, 2014 - From Solothurn

Hi Family!  Soooo . . . I will tell you some stories. On Thursday we were out and about as always and I just had a day where I felt really led by the spirit. Those are the very best days. So I will tell you two stories.

We were with our joint teach. The appointment fell out. So our joint teach actually came with us and we went and tried some different referals. For one of them the address was wrong, and the other was not at home. So then we were on our way to the bus but I wanted us to check this little train station right by where we were for some reason. So we went and checked it and it was coming soon so we stayed there. And this man apparently recognized my voice? He came up to me and said I was the American he had talked to on the phone. So apparently I had called him before because he is a potential in my phone and I call them sometimes. But we set up an appointment after riding the train to Solothurn Hauptbahnhof together. And we met and another joint teach was there and he has actually met with missionaries before. We talked about the restoration and encouraged him to start reading in the BOM again and it was really good. God definitely put him in our path.

Same day we're on our way home but we have 12 minutes until our bus comes. So were were walking around trying to make some friends. No one wanted to talk to us and then I poked my head down this side street to see if there were any people and if there weren't we would just keep heading to the main road. But one lady was there. A cute girl in her 20's. So we went and talked to her and we gave her a book of mormon and she said we can call her in a week and a half. Her name is Cindy. And she is clearly Swiss. I like her. I somehow knew to go down that street and I definitely feel like we were led to Cindy.

For my 4th of July fireworks, God sent me a lightning storm.  Wasn't that nice of him? But on the fourth I actually ate Pakistani food with (X) and Italian food with Guiseppe.  X is turning out to be tricky because he doesn't speak any languages beside Urdu and some Greet.  But he is a strong Christian.  The ward does have a difficult time sometimes with auslanders.

Last Monday we had a Sister's P-day in Thun.  We took the boatride on the Thunersee. It rained for the last part but it was really beautiful.  I love that area so much! Afterwards we were invited to a FHE with a ward family and it was their daughter's birthday and they would have a non-member cousin there so they wanted us to come.  It's great when members invite us to things where we can get to know non-members in casual situations where they can get to know us a bit as well! 

Sisters Lewis, Oswald, Hoareau, Page, Couper and Blohm

Sister Blohm and Lewis - companions in the work

So my new mission president is great. I have seen him once and he had about a 2-minute interview with Sister Blohm and me. And he gave a great zone conference. The whole family seems awesome. I'm grateful they're here. But honestly, I still feel like I hardly know him.

Sister Blohm and I gave the RS lesson yesterday.  We were originally supposed to speak on baptism from the President Ezra Taft Benson book, but the relief society lady also said we could choose another topic if we wanted. So after preparing a lesson on baptism, we changed out topic to why bad things happen to good people. Hopefully another incident of being led by the spirit. I think it was the right topic.

Sister Blohm had another really hard week . . . especially since the elders have apparently scheduled three people for baptism. When she was all upset about the elders I just had to say, "I know Sister Blohm I really hate it too when people decide to come unto Christ and be baptized. Isn't that just the worst?" I know, I know, sarcasm isn't exactly ideal but it was in that moment.  I just couldn't help myself.  I want her to realize that we are all in this work together, reaching out and bringing the Gospel to the world.  We are each needed in our own way and the Lord uses us each differently.  

Quote of the week from Sister Blohm:

Esther Jäger taught us a word in German and Sister Blohm says, "It's almost the same in Danish but another word!" Ha ha almost the same . . . I love to hear her talk Danish. 

You asked about whether it was true what you've been told about mission days being slow but weeks being fast... it's actually true.

Also last week I sent you a letter because I felt so bad about my short email. Sorry . . .

Picture explanations . . . We made yummy stuff with Tatyana (the new convert) for Elder Kelly's birthday (it's today). 

The elders actually watched the Switzerland game, I just saw them at the Bahnhof and was sad with them.

Well I love you all. Things are good. I am happy no matter what. The church is true. Thanks for being such a supportive family.

Randoms

Embracing skiis.....Sister Kate loves to ski! 

Never one to miss a chance to play! 

This says "Barefoot Lane"

Yogurtland ! 

Pictures and more pictures

Sister Kate has uploaded some pictures these last few weeks, but I really don't know much about them!  

So I'll just post them to get a glimpse of what's going on in her world.

These photos were taken from the Cathedral of St. Ursus in Solothurn

Sis. Kate had written about this day . . . being caught in the pouring rain.  But she's always
loved walking in the rain, so it's looking like she's holding true to herself!

Yes, we have a fairy garden at home, but here she has stumbled across gnome gardens!

NEW FRIENDS

MISSIONARY FRIENDS

So we know why Sis. Kate took THIS picture!  A climbing wall on the side of the house!
Climbing is one of her passions.

OUT AND ABOUT

Not sure where this was, but here is what it says!

"Here we:

-don't want to buy anything,

-don't want to spend anything,
-don't want to change our religion,
- are already insured,
- and our bills are paid.

All right then: GOODBYE!"

This billboard is of one of our favorite places in Switzerland ...

the village of GUARDA in the Engadine. I'm sure she was tickled

to come across this! 

Ward Activity 

World Cup Enthusiasm - "Hopp Schweiz!"

It's a beautiful road back to our Heavenly Home! 

"Explain to me in English what is going on?" July 7, 2014 - From Solothurn

Hiiiii! So guess what we had 3 investigators at church yesterday. We really tried to invite everyone to church and some new friends came! All three of these people were in church for the first time.

Hey I forgot to tell you that I was so happy to get a referral from home! (a neighbor who does business in Switzerland sent her a "referral" . . . the name of a friend in Switzerland that they suggested that Sister Kate visit). Something keeps getting in the way of us going by to see them but I think this week we really will! And I'm really excited.

Elder Cottam, our new missionary who Elder Kelly is training,  is just like an elder they would draw a picture of in the friend. He has big black glasses and he's really blonde and he always has this big grin on his face. Quote of the week from Elder Cottam: "Will somebody please explain to me in English what is going on?"

A fun story to share . . . One time we met this lady in her store. We actually went in there to use the store's bathroom. And she was very nice and we talked about the church and offered to bring her a BOM in English. She didn't want to give us her information because she said she was almost always at the store. We went by the store many times but never found the store open. Then one time we went by and it was literally shut down. So we thought we would never see her again. Then we got on the bus one day and I said hi to this lady and it was her and now we know where her new store is. She will get her BOM this week.

Sorry this is so short. I love you all and I know the church is true. I'm grateful to be a missionary.