Kori's Alpine Stories: 19 August 2013: We Thank Thee Oh God for a Prophet, and our Mission President and Germany and Chocolate...

Dear Family & Friends,

Man, I am just feeling extremely grateful after this week! I end every day super excited and happy and loving life. Mensch, missions are great.

We went on an Austausch with the Singen Sisters this week (Sister Henry and I are just so excited to finally have more Sisters in our Zone to Tausch with!

No more lone Freiburg Sisters!) and Sister Henry went to Singen to work with Sister Allman, and Sister Freimann came here to Freiburg to work with me.

At first I was super intimidated to work with Sister Freimann for the day, because she is a native German speaker, and I was worried it would be hard to communicate with each other. Psh, komm schon Sister Peterson, you've been living in Germany for 4 months now, you can communicate with a native.

Silly me lol it was actually super fun to work with her for a day, I always love doing Austausches and learning from other missionaries.

BUT funny story! We have this super great investigator named Greta, and last time we met with her she asked us what our favorite scriptures in the Book of Mormon are so that she could go home and read them.

I gave her 2 Nephi 4 to read, you know, Nephi's Psalm and relying on the Lord and overcoming feelings of inadequacy, all of that beautiful, amazing stuff. Well, she thought I said 1 Nephi 4, which is the story of Nephi going to get the plates of brass and cutting off King Laban's head.

Remember what I said earlier about the Germans HATING violence? Poor Greta...so now Sister Henry and I have the fun opportunity to explain that chapter. Clean up duty calls!

We also had Zone Conference on Friday in Singen, which is always so fun because President and Sister Miles come for Zone Conferences!

We talked a lot about different ways that they want us to approach contacting (starting out the conversation with 'Wie geht's Ihnen?' instead of 'Entschuldigung, wir sind Missionarinen...') which was an interesting change, but I am excited to try!

They also talked a lot more about how important members are and really utilizing the ward in our work (and y'all at home catching that?) The AP's also made a slideshow with a bunch of pictures that missionaries have taken in this mission, and I am daily amazed at how beautiful and glorious this area is! *Sigh* best mission in the world!

I also just want to say how great the Elders in this mission are. There is just something about going on a mission that changes these young men into responsible and wonderful caretakers.

Sister Henry and I stayed behind in Singen after Zone Conference on Friday to help the Sisters out with a lesson, so we had to catch a later train to Offenburg, and then catch another train to Freiburg.

We got into Offenburg at 8:50ish, but then quickly realized that the 9 o clock train back to Freiburg didn't run on Fridays, so we would have to wait until 10 to catch the train back, putting us back in Freiburg at 11, and home anywhere between 11:30 and midnight.

We were kind of nervous about going home alone that late, especially with it being a weekend, and ESPECIALLY with there being a soccer game in Freiburg the next day, so we knew there would be a lot of drunk people on the streets and public transportation.

So the Elders in Offenburg waited with us at the train station for over an hour until our train came in, and then the Freiburg Elders were waiting for us at the Bahnhof in Freiburg for us to get off the train and walk us home.

Those poor Elders stayed up super late and went out of their way to make sure that we were safe getting home. Germany is already a super safe place to be, but I feel so much safer knowing that the Elders are only a phone call away. To all of you mothers who have sons on a mission right now, just know how wonderful your sons are! They are becoming amazing young men.

The Lord does pay us back for our sacrifice, hard work, and faith, and we definitely saw the blessings on Sunday. We were waiting at the bus stop Sunday morning to go to church, and a lady approaches us, beaming from ear to ear.

The lady turned out to be one of our investigators, who hasn't been making any progress for 3 years! We have been inviting her week after week to come to church, and all it took was a phone call from a member to let her know that she is wanted.

If seeing her didn't make our day happy enough, we got on the bus and met a less active mom and her son on their way to church! The teenage son has been struggling for a while with the motivation and desire to come to church, and he just recently came back from EFY, and I've never seen such an immediate change in the countenance of a person!

He passed the sacrament, which I have never seen him do before, and as he walked back to his seat he was absolutely radiating! It is such a blessing to be able to see the change that the Spirit brings to people's lives, and I am so grateful to be able to take a part in this work!

-Sister Peterson