Monday, March 18, 2013

Piano Man!

      Guten Tag!! I hope everyone enjoyed seeing every shade of Green yesterday! I however, did not participate and felt the results of it when I was greeted by my fellow American missionaries. I hope you all had a great week! Mine was full of a little bit of everything. Lots of good appointments and lots of traveling. Welcome to mission life here in Germany :).
      Most anticipated event this week, was definitely transfer calls. The results were.....shocking. I will be staying in this tiny town with Sister Schneider. She has been one of my two companions the last transfer. You would think that would be predictable results, however, it was definitely not what any of us were expecting. We are also getting elders in Frankurt Oder which was one of the towns we were assigned to. So now, we just are in Eisenhüttenstadt. We can walk around the entire city in an hour so this should be interesting. So prayers are welcomed :) haha.
      On a more positive note, a very pleasant surprise came yesterday! We had stake conference in Berlin yesterday. The stake is very large and many people were there. However, one I didn’t expect was Jon Schmidt!! Yes, I got to talk to him. He was like, "Oh my heck, you have grown up sooo much! How is your family? They are just my heroes!!" He was the first familiar face I have seen my entire mission. It was so fun to see him there. All the missionaries were freaking out that I knew him. He was definitely the celebrity of the day! He even got ATTACKED by my branch president’s wife who just started talking German at him a million words a minute. His face was priceless. I felt like his bodyguard.
      Stake Conference was just fantastic! Not only was Jon there, but we had a visit from a member of the quorum of the 70 named Elder Herbertsen. He is from Scotland, which meant....HE SPOKE ENGLISH! Oh my heavens I can’t express how incredible it is to hear the gospel in English where I can understand everything. Both he and his wife gave amazing talks and I was suuuupppper grateful for it!
      We have seen some great things with some investigators this week. I will start with CLaudia. She is a single mom who is 28 and so awesome. She has been working with the missionaries for a few months now. She is busy, but makes time for appointments when she can. She accepts things so humbly and has already read through the book of mormon almost 2 times now. Last time, we taught her about fasting. She showed up to Stake Conference and....was fasting!!! She said she knew it wasn’t a fast Sunday, but she wanted the experience. It was sooo cute to see her! She is developing such a strong testimony :). We are hoping to get her on baptismal date this week!
      On Friday, we had an appointment with a less active named Katrin that we have been working with. She is also a single mother with an autistic son. Alex is hilarious. Katrin asked him to say a prayer, it went as followed; "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you that we can pray. Now can I hurry up and eat already???? AMEN!!!" haha we were all laughing so hard :). We also got Katrin to say that she would return to church for Easter. She hasn’t come in a long time, so this is such a big step!! We are even going to get together and make muffins for all the members to take with us for Easter Sunday!
      Spiritual Thought: Today's will be short, but I had a thought that really hit me hard yesterday. Too often we fall into a trap of saying we believe in Christ. But, too many believe in Christ, but find some exception to apply to their lives about his promises. Don’t just believe IN Jesus Christ, BELIEVE JESUS CHRIST!! Believe what he said......believe what he promised. Thanks for all the continued love and support! I miss you all tons, but 4 months will come soon enough. I hope this email finds you well. I pray for the amazing people I have back home every darn day! KEEP THE FAITH!
-Sister Linford

Kirche Jesu Christi
Sister Jessica Linford
Glashütten Str. 1
15890 Eisenhüttenstadt
Germany

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