At the Swiss temple in Bern
Sister Bloem, Sister McEwen, Kate, Sister Siems
Hi Family! Mommy this link is for you. I just really like what
it says about making sacrifices to read the scriptures.
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/heritage?lang=eng
It was also my inspiration for the ward email.
Soooo where to start! There is a convert baptism in our ward this week!
He's the elders' investigator but obviously we're good friends with him too.
His name is Guiseppe. He's the one who took us to the gym that one time. Actually, I don't know if I ever told you about that. Apparently he met a member at the
gym and got a ride home with him once and then it became a regular thing and
then the member referred him to the missionaries and . . . here we are today!
He's getting baptized and he's so ready. He has been coming to church almost
every Sunday for 6 months. He's Italian and the bishop, who went on his mission
to Italy and is married to an Italian, is baptizing him. And the Bishop’s wife,
who is Italian, happens to be one of my
very favorite people. Actually the whole family is my favorite. I'm skyping you
from their house later today. Anyways we're really excited about this baptism and
it will be great to invite people to attend and the whole ward should be
there. If everyone in the ward isn't there I’ll actually be
really disappointed because Guiseppe has been to church so many times and to so
many other things and this is a really big deal to him and he needs their
support. I'm so excited to meet his Italian family.
Joceline and her daughters as well as Adiam (the less active who brought
Joceline to church) have also promised to come.
We got to help a member with her garden this week. Loooots of weeding.
But fun.
We meet with lots of less actives members this week. Not just the ones
the sisters before us had been seeing regularly, but new ones too. It was
rewarding to find a less active again who thought the missionaries had just
forgotten about her.
One of the things Elder Dykes told us was to make sure that when we
decide to no longer teach people that we do it the right way and with kindness
and guided by the spirit. We should make sure they understand why. That's
actually not always easy but it's something that I know is important. And it's
something Sister Blohm and I are going to have to do. Mom you actually
mentioned this to me about this once that you hope we write the people we won't
be visiting anymore a note with encouragement but letting them know and stuff. So yeah in the near future Sister Blohm and I are
going to try to write some of those hard notes and have some of those hard
conversations. It's time for some people. I never want to give up on anyone but
sometimes we just have to put our efforts toward building up and supporting
those who are more willing to work to be closwer to the Lord and to keep commitments.
I hope you know that we are working hard, but some of the missionary to
missionary dynamics are just so funny. So we're going to try and really focus
on teaching referrals (especially since sometimes the ward struggles with embracing the people we bring
to church that really are interested in the Gospel, but don’t speak German and so forth). So Elder Kelly has
this sheet called "My Record of Friends" that will help us see what
missionary efforts our members are already making and help us know how to
support them and what the next step for their friends is. And so we discussed
in GMK that we need to really focus on referrals (And this sheet is super
perfect. Good thing I had already made Elder Kelly give it to me so I could
copy it). So ever since then we have been in a little bit of a friendly competition.
Here are some quotes to illustrate:
Elder Kelly: "Sister Lewis your tip for today is to read all
of Preach my Gospel by tomorrow" (as if!)
Me: "Yeah right. My tip for the day is to ask for referrals."
Elder Kelly: "No! That's what I'm doing!" (this makes no sense to me, which further illustrates that this is some
kind of secret missionary to missionary talk that I just don’t get).
At church I start noticing that Elder Kelly talking to A LOT of members
with his planner out. And then it dawns on me that he's stealing the whole
ward. So I confronted him, with a smile of course.
"Elder Kelly! We haven't exactly talked about who was going to
visit who! You can't just steal the whole ward!"
Elder Kelly: "I decided that I need to."
Later . . .
Elder Kelly: "So let me tell you who I made appointments
with."
Me: "Well it's a little late now!"
Elder Kelly: "Okay so the Weidmanns . . ."
Me: "You can't just take the Weidmanns!"
Elder Kelly: "There was no way YOU were getting the Weidmanns! That
is my territory!"
(I'm sure these quotes will make her laugh years from now when she rereads them...but I'm thinking it's one of those "you just had to be there" incidents :-) )
Keep in mind that the Weidmanns are just the best. He's the GML I never
got to have (Another thing that made coming here a little hard. What I heard
from missionaries about Solothurn is how epic the GML was. Turns out he was
released the Sunday before I got here.) He is a former bishop, stake
president, and area 70. He was released as GML because he and his wife are
going to be mission presidents this summer. We're really grateful for him for
filling in some of the gaps our current GML has left. Yesterday Bruder Weidmann
taught the investigator class and it was great. There were so many people
there. It was translated into Russian, French, English, and Italian. And it was
originally in German. One of the Weidmann's daughters was translating into
Russian and another into Italian (they served missions in these
countries).
Yeah it's really just funny. Sister Jäger (the bishop's wife) caught on
and said, "We have such good missionaries for them to be arguing about
this!"
It was so funny to see Sister Blohm skyping her family in Danish for a
second. I loved listening to her talk!!!
Well family I'll see you soon! Love you!
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