Buses, Baptisms & Brrrr...

16 September 2013

Dear Friends & Family-

It's finally fall!!!  

My favorite season!

Brrr... it's getting cold outside

I cannot wait to see the change of colors and hope it happens while I am still living in the Black Forest! It has made me so happy to be able to put on my tights, scarves, and fall coats :)  

'Tis the season of tea, melted chocolate, and sweatpants :) 

But also 'tis the season of Rotkohl, Kartoffel Knödel, and interesting German food.  

I don't think Sister Henry will be enjoying food appointments for the next few months :P  

I have had a lot more time to get used to German food than Sister Henry has, but she will learn to love it!  

Considering the fact that Sister Henry and I are together 24/7, I am pretty sure that we tell a lot of the same stories in our emails home.  But its always fun to hear a funny story twice, especially this next one :P

Sister Henry and I were walking to the bus stop after an appointment, and we saw our bus turn the corner ahead of us.  It was later in the day, so if we missed our bus we would have had to wait a long time before the next one came, so we started BOOKING IT to make it to the bus.  

As we were running, a big van drives by and an old German man shouts something out the window at us.  

At first I thought he was just making fun of us, after all, we are two young girls in church clothes running after a bus.  

We almost made it to the bus stop in time, and we saw the bus pulling away before we could reach it...but then slowed to a stop.  Thinking that the bus driver had seen us and stopped for us, we kept running and started desperately pressing the 'door open' button to get in, but the doors weren't opening!  

But for some reason the bus stayed stopped.  I then heard a lot of honking coming from the bus, so we peeked in front, and the van that had driven by us had pulled in front of the bus and parked in the middle of the road so that we could make it on time!  

It was a nice gesture, but the bus driver was still stubborn and wouldn't let us in! 

It was the funniest (and nicest) thing to see the old German man in the van stop a bus for two young American girls.  Teehee, old men love us :P

I also know how much people at home love language stories!  One would think that after spending 6 months in a foreign country doing missionary work, the language mistakes would cease to exist.  Nope, NOPE, NOPE!  

We were at an appointment with a less active member, and we had just shared Doctrine and Covenants 6:34-36 (one of my favorite scriptures EVER!) and we talked a bit about how the Lord is our Shepherd and how we should never feel like things are too hard, because the Lord is always there to give us comfort and help.  

The sentence I WANTED to say was 'What brings me comfort is knowing that we are the Lord's sheep', but the word Schafe (sheep) is really close to the word Strafe (punishment.)  

How sadistic I must have sounded to say 'I recieve a lot of comfort in knowing that we are part of the Lord's punishment!'  

Luckily, the majority of my language mistakes take place in members homes, so all she did was laugh.  I guess when you live in a foreign country and all you have to deal with is missionaries who are learning German as a second language, you become pretty used to language mistakes :P  Oh, no...But I swear I have been improving as well!  

We met this older lady this week, and she was convinced that I was German!  

I kept trying to tell her that I was born in America, lived there all my life, have only been here 6 months, and that I didn't learn any German until I came here, but she didn't believe me. 

She kept saying 'You must have ancestors from here, you just look and sound too German, I swear you are a German, look at that beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes!'  

I have never gotten so many compliments on my blonde hair and blue eyes until I got here!  

Its kind of funny :P  But it was a nice compliment to get that I sound like a native!

Our Favorite S-Bahn ride

When Freiburg Zone was first organized, there was (and still is) a lot of emphasis placed on turning Freiburg Zone into Freiburg Stake.  

President Miles keeps talking about how this area is just going to explode with baptisms, and how there is so much potential here!  

This idea has always given me hope and excitement, but this week we actually got to see this promised blessing in action. 

We just recently started teaching a Nigerian family, the husband and wife's names are "P" and "S". Sister Jenson and I would always going by on them, but they were always busy and never really interested.  

Just a few weeks ago, Sister Henry and I went by on them, they invited us in, we had a really great introductions lesson, they came to church (despite not being able to speak German) and told us that they want to keep meeting with us.  

Well, on Tuesday, we taught them the 1st lesson, about the restoration of this Gospel and the Book of Mormon.  At the very end, we invited them to be baptized and strive to become prepared by October 12th.  

They both accepted, saying that they want to learn more about what we believe and find out for themselves, but they would LOVE to be baptized into our church!  

President Miles has asked us to call him every time to set a baptismal date, just so that he can share our excitement with us.  

After we got out of the lesson, we said a quick gratitude prayer, and then we RAN to the church so that we could call President Miles!  

It's only about a 7 minute walk, but we ran the whole way from the "O" family house to the church because we were so excited to call!  We saw the Elders walking out of the church as we ran up, and they told us that they had set 2 baptismal dates for October 12th as well!  

We were all so happy, Sister Henry and I were jumping up and down and screaming and being typical sisters, and calling pretty much everyone we knew and sharing the news.  

It was a really exciting day, and it has been so great to keep working with "P" and "S", and their family.  And what a great birthday party it would be to have 4 people baptized!!  

I will leave my email on this note: Missionary work is the most rewarding and amazing thing I have ever done, and it is such a blessing to see the change that this Gospel makes in peoples lives.  I love feeling the Lord work through me, a weak and tainted vessel, in order to bring His children back into the fold.  There is just nothing else on Earth that can compare :)

Love you all,

Sister Peterson

That's quite the snail

Missionaries aren't always all business

Miracles, Elders & Trains... Story of My Life

*** This is the letter that Kori wrote the week she missed her p-day
To mom's chagrin, it took a LONG time to get here...

Dear Friends & Family,

By now you have probably heard what a weird week we had.
It was so odd not having p-day on Monday. I feel like our whole week has been off because of having p-day on Wednesday! Before I go on to this week, I want to tell you about our amazing week last week.

So this transfer has been wrapping up to a close and during our weekly planning on Friday, Sister Henry and I talked about things we have done well, miracles we have seen and things we can do better moving forward. One of those things was contacting and finding potential investigators-we have hardly found any one this transfer! We were starting to get a little discouraged, so we were praying for ways to find more people.
As we were planning the next days' activities (for Saturday), we realized that we had the entire day open! No appointments, no people to visit, just 10 hours to plan for and keep busy!

We looked through our area book and mapped out all the potential investigators that live in areas we never go to, or Dorfs that are super far away. We decided to have a companionship finding day, and use all of that time to take care of the people we have already found. We prayed for help to reach these people, meet our goals and find more! I will admit, I was pretty nervous on Saturday morning- 10 hours is a lot of time to fill. But before we left the apartment, we said another prayer asking for help to meet our goals. We found 10 potentials that day, go a new investigator family and we were able to be the answer to a members prayers!

The new investigator family is a very cool story. The "O" family comes from Nigeria and they were found by Sister Jenson and Sister Smart five transfers ago (30 weeks). But every time Sister Jenson and I would go by, they were really busy and seemed very uninterested. Sister Henry and I went by on them for the first time this transfer and they invited us in and FED us (food is always the true sign of a good lesson!). We gave them them an Einfuhrungs (introductory) lesson. He told us that his brother had just been baptized in Switzerland and how much of a difference the church has made in his life. He told us "I was never ready to listen to you and your colleagues before. But I want to know more about your church now. I'm ready to accept this gospel!! Wie Toll! Day Made!!

But the day continued to get even better. We went to a Dorf called Schallstadt, which we never go to because the train from Freiburg to Schallstadt doesn't run very often. We got there and had two hours planned to be there. Unfortunately, both of our potentials weren't home. Instead of getting discouraged that we had ridden all this way for two people who weren't home, we felt like there was a purpose to our being in Schallstadt that we just didn't know yet. So we stayed for a bit and went contacting. 

Maybe 10 minutes after we started dooring, we got a call from the "H" family, members in our ward. Bruder H asked where we were and what we were doing. When we told him we were contacting in Schallstadt, he got all excited. He asked what street we were on and said, "Stay right where you are, I'm coming to get you!" and hung up. A few minutes later, he shows up in his car and gives us directions to his house, which is right around the corner from where we were! When we got to there, his wife explained that she was very sick with the flu but had to teach primary the next day. She had called everyone in the ward who could normally cover for her, but everyone was on vacation and nobody knew our phone number or how to get a hold of us.
Sister H had prayed for a miracle, so that she could find someone to teach her class. Her husband called around to get our number, called us, only to find out that we happened to be in the Dorf where they live. It was such a testimony builder to me that everything we do, every step we take, is inspired of the Lord.

So you know now about our fun week and why I couldn't write on Monday. I can't believe how much work was needed to get the apartment ready for the new sisters.

I am super excited to be spending another transfer here in Freiburg. It is a great place to get to spend 4 transfers (24 weeks). And I know once I leave here, the time will only continue to pick up speed! So maybe I will never leave :)

I almost forgot to tell you, in our mission we do something called "personal touches", which are small little acts of service or gifts that we are supposed to do for others (the members, our investigators, our companions, etc). Well, the Offenburg Elders were trying to think of ways to help us get into the habit of doing our "personal touches" to our members. They decided that in order to get into the habit of serving our members, we first needed to learn to how to serve each other. So we did a "personal touch" game together in our district. We each got two names of people in our district, a "whenever" name (someone you could to a PT for whenever) and a "whoever" name (anyone in the district you wanted to personal touch, but you couldn't do this until you had already been PT'd). Once someone gives you a PT, you tell them the name of your whenever person. So it's just his never ending cycle of service and gifts and love and excitement! It was actually really cool. It forced us to really pay attention to how we could serve each other and it made you feel so good when you got PT'd. 
This honestly has been the most fun week of my mission- going about doing our missionary work but also taking time to serve the other missionaries int he district. We have such good Elders :) What are we going to do when they leave?

So Sister Henry and I will be together for another 6 weeks (so excited). Elder Stricklin is staying here until his release home (that's called dying in the mission) and he will work with Elder Kingrey. Elder Sumsion is going to Dornbirn, Austria. Elder Steed is going to Stuttgart International ward and Elder Davies will be getting a golden!! I'm excited for this transfer.

I hope everything is going good at home! Thanks again for all your love and support and especially all your prayers.
Love you all,

Sister Peterson

** Kori's companion told the story of another incident with crazy bees in her letter home. After reading Sister Henry's version of the story, I can see why Kori chose not to tell it- but it is a funny read.
You can read it on her blog, just click here. 

9 September 2013: Was fur eine kommische Woche...

Dear Friends and Family- 

I am guessing that my letter from last week hasn't gotten to my mom yet, 

so many of you may not know how CRAZY this week has been!  

Let me briefly overview what happened this week...

Monday, our district was in Lahr ALL DAY to set up a new apartment for the new Sisters who will be moving in.  We literally started from ground zero, nothing was in the apartment at all, not even the kitchen!  Those Lahr Sisters better love us to death, we basically dedicated our whole week to them!

Tuesday was Zone Training, so we woke up, got on a train, had Zone Training, got back on a train, ate a little dinner, and went to bed. There are days were we wondered how much easier it would be to be a missionary serving in the states where all you would have to do was hop in a car and drive a few minutes to the nearest church meeting house for a Zone Training.  

But Sister Henry and I have also concluded that we have the funnest and prettiest mission in the world, so train rides and learning a new language are small sacrifices to make that we are willing to make!

On Wednesday, we had a district Pday.  

We went to a fun little place called Hausach, where we rode a Rodelbahn!  (I am not sure what I called it in my letter, but it is called a Rodelbahn, which means Tobbogan run..oh my gosh, I cant spell in English anymore!!)  It was really fun!  Imagine riding a mini little roller coaster in the middle of the Black Forest...and that is our life :)  

Sister Henry and I also spent all of Thursday in Lahr to finish up the Wohnung.  

Transfer days are Thursdays, and the The Bignalls (our Senior Couple) were kind of worried that the apartment wasn't going to be ready in time for the Sisters to move in!  

But we finally got it all done!!  And then we were able to greet the new Sisters and Elder Davies new Golden at Bahnhof.  

As Sister Henry and I are the only companionship that stayed together this transfer, we have made it our duty to be the cliche Sisters welcoming committee!  I love having the excuse of being a Sister missionary, we are allowed to be as giggly and excited as we want to be and nobody can say anything about it!  There is a reason why Sisters are loved!

As fun as this week was, we didn't actually get out of the apartment to do missionary work until Friday!  It was so weird, we felt completely off of our game!  

Funny story!  So we visit a part member family every week, but they live a little dorf that is in the middle of a bunch of wine vineyards.  Normally we take a train and a bus to get there, but the train and bus aren't running for the rest of summer, so we had to take a small little bus to get there on Friday.  Because the bus is so small, it didn't list the Haltestelles (bus stops) so we just had to keep our eye on what time it was and what time the bus plan said that we should be getting to our stop.  We saw the time, quickly pressed the STOP button, and hopped off the bus.  

As the bus pulled away, we looked around...and realized that we had gotten off at the wrong stop!  We looked at the bus plan and saw that the stop we were supposed to get off at was only one Haltestelle away, and it was only 2 minutes away by bus.  

Us, being the two little blondes that we are, decided, 'oh, it is only 2 minutes away by bus, that means that it will only take 5 minutes to walk there, right?'  dumb, dumb, dumb!!!  

2 minutes away by bus on a winding road in the countryside does NOT mean a 5 minute walk!  30 minutes later, after walking at least 2 miles with no phone service, we finally arrived at the bus stop where the member was supposed to pick us up.  

Luckily they have a really good sense of humor and so they were not upset at all!  Oh, die Arme Missionarinen...lol

Another funny thing, so Oktoberfest is coming up!!  Sister Henry and I were a bit worried that because Freiburg is a Universitat Stadt that we would have to be careful around Oktoberfest.  But we asked a lot of people on buses and on the streets if Oktoberfest is big here, and they all looked as us really confused and said "Why would we need Oktoberfest when we have our wine?"  

We just thought it was funny how Germany has so many stereotypes for their beer, but Freiburg is actually very popular for its fine and sophisticated wine.  Teehee but we are glad that we wont have Oktoberfest to deal with next month!  

Next week I will have tons more amazing fun spiritual things to share, I promise!  But for now y'all will just have to be satisfied with how much fun we are having here in Germany :) 

And BIRTHDAY SHOUTOUT TO SISTER HENRY!  For a month she will be a whole year older than me.  Eww, 20 is so old...Ich will nicht daruber denken!  That will be me next month!  

Anyways, I hope everything is going great at home!  

Love you all!

Sister Peterson

Our district in Hausach on the way to Rodelbahn

A group of missionaries en route to a fun p-day outing

The beautiful countryside in Hausach

A funny picture and words on a popular smoothie drink in Germany * see below for translation

 "The yellow-5 world facts"
1. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
2. When you chew gum, you can't cry
3. When your tongue is outstretched, you can't breathe through your nose
4. You have just tried 3 of those things. You look ridiculous
5. Now you are laughing at yourself! That is good because laughing does you as much good as the smoothie in your hands does!
I am glad to know that Germans have a fun sense of humor!!

Sister Henry walking to Oberbergen... not a 2 minute walk

... the two minutes was really 2 miles- silly girls

seriously, that was a long walk

Cardboard Canoe

Construction at the new apartment

Two mamma's are glad to see such happy girls

... always time for silliness

Elder Stricklin, me, Elder Sumsion & J- a member from Stuttgart

Personal Touches Discovery

Kori's companion sent this video about their little
service gifts that they are giving to each other. I still don't
know a lot about this fun little activity, but I loved getting to
see Kori and hear their voices.
They seem to be really enjoying each other and their time
together.


This video is one of taken with the church bells ringing
in the morning- calling them to study.

Enjoy,
Treisha

A Momma In Withdrawl

Dear Friends and Family-

By the time 9:00 a.m passed on Monday morning, there was some serious anxiety in the Peterson home! Those who forgot to email Kori got on quick and repented of their wrongful ways-
but the Mom in the house, who wakes up EARLY on Monday mornings hoping to get some "chat" time with Kori found herself a little anxious.

Luckily, Sister Henry's (Kori's companion) mom was just as anxious as I was. The two of us burnt up the email lines until we realized that Monday wasn't going to happen. Besides all of the completely psychotic thoughts running through my mind- I tried to be okay with the "No Email" for the day- and maybe the week-

Luckily, we had the safety of the internet and faithful Facebook- where truly all knowledge comes through safe and sound. Transfer calls had come out and Sister Peterson and Sister Henry's prayers were answered and that new apartment they went shopping for (if you missed that story read about it here) was getting a new set of Sister's moving in. That means two sets of sisters in Freiburg!!
So mama Sister Henry and mama Sister Peterson decided the girls and the Elders were helping get the apartment all set up and ready for the new Sisters arriving on the train the next day.

Kori was able to get a few minutes in this morning before they missionaries were heading out for a special Zone P-Day (she sounds like she is having a blast). She assured me that she would use her train ride to write her weekly letter and send it on home!

She did however send some pictures and a short letter-
Enjoy-

Dear Momma,

Sorry we didn't give you any warning on Monday, but thanks for your patience :P  Sister Henry and I were teasing all day about how you and her mom were probably calling each other all day and comforting each other lol 

Yes we did get to set up the new apartment!  It was so much fun :)  It has just been a really fun week!  But it feels like a never ending play date with the Elders...seriously...its kind weird. 

Monday we were together all day setting up the apartment (and we didn't get back until midnight because of the train schedules...) 

Yesterday we were together all day because of Zone Training, and today we are doing a district Pday together.  

So 3 days of nonstop seeing each other...before they all get transferred away! (tear tear) but Elder Davies and Stricklin are staying, so thats ok!  

We do not have a lot of time today-we are going to be going to a fun little park for our pday!  It's just a really big slide type things, and you go down in carts in the 'rolling hills of Schwarzwald' lol but it is a long train ride, so I am writing my weekly blog update on a letter and few letters home to the family as well, so you will get a lot more detail later!

 
For now, can I redeem myself with pictures?
The first one is our daily routine for planning time. We gather our tea, our blankets and our warm socks and get busy :)
The next two pictures are from a fun little game. I will explain it in my letter home I promise. But it's a fun thing we do with the Elders in our Zone.
The flowers for Sister Bignall came from behind our apartment- 

Getting ready for our planning time

the "personal touches" from the Elders

Sister Henry and her "personal touch"

German MacDonalds- Yup mom, it's true

MacDonalds: a world wide obsession

Flowers for Sister Bignall's "personal touch"

Don't worry Elder Sumsion, these aren't for you...

Language Study- I was so tired, all I could do was draw pictures!