March 17:The Longer I'm Here, the More Confusing it Gets

Well, my abilities seem to be growing.

Being put in extremely new and confusing situations seem to be the norm now. 

This week we were asked by our ward to put on a little presentation for the ward activity. After 2 hours of blank stares and no ideas, we decided to do a day in the life of a missionary. A slapstick comedy about all the different types of missionaries: the newbie, the trunky, the glutton, the perky, the helpless, and the cryer, all working together in a day in the life.

Sorry I don't have it filmed, maybe I will get it from the members.... But it would need to be translated into English. Naja. 

So not only are our abilities as a missionary limited to spiritual stellarness, but also my acting skills have been improved. Especially since we had 30 minutes to practice. 

Blessings. The ward loved it.

We taught some of the investigators and new members we have been trying to get to know. I wanted to highlight two of them. 

First of all. Dillen.

Dillen is 11 and he is straight out of Ghana. 

Holy moses I LOVE this kid. We were planning for a lesson at the church, when he randomly walked in and said, "Sisters. It's boring at my house. So I just came here." Well, Dillen, let's play hangman and learn what it means to Endure to the End."

He is stellar and basically belongs to every family in the whole ward.

I think I mentioned Sonja last week, but she is amazing. We had a wonderful lesson with her this past week and she has decided that she wants to make time to meet every week. 

We also had an awesome tender mercy. 

So the bus stop by our house is seemingly close. We can make it from our door to the bus stop in about 3 minutes. Well,on Sunday, we left with about 5-6 minutes to spare and noticed that the bus was already at the bus stop. The bus only comes once every 30 minutes... So we were toast. 

Because the bus came early, we had no other option than to walk. So we started.... And then the bishop pulled up, asking if he could give us a ride to church. 

Thank you, God!!! 

Just one of those things. 

I found a few gems in the scriptures this week!

First gem:
 17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sonsof ^athunder:
This is in Mark 3 where Christ calls his apostles. The footnote of this verse goes to a verse that explains why they were called the sons of thunder. This stuck out to me because even Christ had nicknames for those he loved. The funny situation that happened awarded them the nickname "Sons of Thunder". I feel like it just personalized Him a little more for me.
2nd gem:
Christ says repeatedly "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear". I thought about this phrase, and realized that everybody has ears. The gospel is literally meant for everybody. But that's not it. "Let him hear" indicates that it is up to us to use our ears for their intended purpose. Sometimes we "hear" something, but we aren't really "listening". Just like a lot of people when they hear His parables. Are we really listening?
Thanks for letting me know about the miracle that happened in Summer Ridge. I will be praying for Caden and for the families involved. Something like that makes us think and shakes us out of our routine of just "going through the motions". We realize what is important to us. 
I love you!!
Sister Babbitt

Also! Miracle!!

So a few months ago, I wrote about a guy named Anas from Morocco that I met at an internet cafe?

Well, he moved from Chemnitz to Dresden, and I found out from the zone leaders there that they are now teaching Anas, that he is getting baptized and has read basically the entire Book of Mormon!!

Whaaaaat???!

I am stoked. He is awesome.

March 10: Olives from Christus

So this may be short because I am using a keyboard that is from the stone age...

This week was another roller coaster week. I need to stop saying that because every week is like that, and yet, somehow I forget that it just doesn't ever calm down!!

We had a lot of lessons lined up this week and on Tuesday, I definitely thought we would make it!

We left the house early because we had an appointment at the church, but she ended up moving it to later that day... And we realized that in order to teach one of our investigators that day, we needed a joint teach - which we hadn't thought about. So it was about 11 and our appointment was at 1... Short notice usually isn't the best, but we remembered a sweet girl in our ward named Jenny (I am still trying to get to know the names of everyone. Two weeks doesn't allow you a ton of time to know a big ward. However, I am getting there and even got a compliment yesterday about remembering names... It's worth it!!) who told us that she would be willing to come to lessons. So we called her, not sure if she was working or not and she basically jumped out of her skin with joy when we invited her to come to a lesson with us. Huh?? Why wasn't she used before?!?!?

Anyway, we meet Jenny and get a little of her background story. She has had problems with her legs basically since her childhood and has had to get several surgeries to be able to walk. She wobbles a little bit, but that aside, it is an absolute miracle that she doesn't need a wheelchair. Miracle 1. Finding a last minute joint teach. Miracle 2. Jenny is a PERFECT joint teach for our friend Paulin. Paulin had a severe accident about a year ago where he had to be in the hospital for 9 months and they told him he would never walk again. He has been working on it since then and still walks slow with a little roller crutch thing, but he can walk. We get there with Jenny and there is a woman with Paulin that basically told us to leave and that he doesn't want to learn about God. We found out that this woman is his cleaning help and has no responsibility for Paulin... So we set up a new lesson with him for later in the week. Jenny came and it was absolutely stellar and he is so excited to learn more. And Jenny is now our best friend ;)

That same day we also taught several different people, One of the women we taught works on cruise ships as a nurse and is a huge believer in God. She said she will get baptized when she finds out it is true. The other is an Italian that has studied philosophy and came to Berlin for a 4 day vacation, liked it so much that he decided to stay. And our ex-drug dealer was an hour and a half late because he was lost, but he is looking to turn his life around.

What miracles. It may be hard sometimes, but the people you meet outweigh any bad experience.

Since our day was so crazy, we didn't have time to make lunch, or go back home for lunch, so we decided to eat out at a Greek restaurant. I introduced Sister Sykes to souvalaki and it was goooooood... Ha, but while we were ordering, there was this waiter that kept coming over and seeing if we were okay, asking if he could get us anything, etc... I realized that that is SO STRANGE. I guess it comes with the culture. You are probably reading this and thinking, "so what?" because that is how it is in America! Well, here in Deutschland there is no such thing as customer service. Nobody checks up on you, nobody asks if they can do anything for you... So the missionaries are the weird ones, always offering help. Anyway, we liked him so much we bought a bunch of Greek olives to take with us. And get this. His name was Christus. Which is the German version of "Christ". So we bought olives from Christus and talked with him about how it was so ironic that his name was Christus and we talk about Jesus Christus!! He took a card. We will go back and buy more olives.

Wednesday after zone training meeting we decided we needed to meet some of the less actives the sisters before us were working with. So we hopped on a train off to a little place called Königs Wusterhausen. If you didn't think Berlin had boonies, think again. This place was WAYYYYY out there!

We met one of the less actives who is from Kenya and a total sweetheart, and her friend that was visiting from Hamburg who is not a member. We started teaching and her friend received a phone call... When she takes her phone and says, "I wish they would stop bothering me when I am trying to learn about God!! You always need to make time for him."

That was cute :)

Then... Thursday and Friday came and of the 10ish lessons we had planned, they all fell out except for 1. (When Jenny came with us to Paulin)

So the rollercoaster of emotions went from feeling on top of the world, helping everyone make progress, to waiting in the church all day for someone to show up. Oh missionary life.

We exchanged with the Sisters in Dresden and on our train ride there we saw a field of yaks!!! Like, the long haired, horned ones you only see in movies. That was cool.

In church yesterday we learned about Abraham and Isaac (which was taught to us by a 17 year old!! Best lesson I have had in church, ever. This kid is legit.) and about how the sacrafices in our lives help us remember how merciful the Lord has been. It reminded me on the The Law of Sacrafice and how it talks about how Abraham needed to learn something about Abraham. How sacrafice helps us learn things about ourselves and how this principle is stated so often in the scriptures but so often we forget. "^aFor whosoever will save his life shall ^blose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the sameshall save it."

As I have been thinking about where I want my life to go, what is going to happen and how I can best help the people I work with, I realize that I learn something more about these things the more I focus on doing the will of the Lord.

I love you!! Hope you have a wonderful week!

Sister Babbitt

March 2: It's already Monday again...

Alright, so this is going to be scattered, but hopefully you can follow it.

First off. My Companion, Sister Sykes.

She is from Colorado Springs, Colorado and is probably the most real person you know. In the sense that she keeps it real. Always. There are no pretenses with Sister Sykes and she is just a fun loving, flashback to the 80s person!

I have probably dressed more colorfully with her than I have in my entire life.

So that is another thing about her! She belongs in the 80s. She has these awesome wing tipped glasses and is just always keeping it classy.

More on Sister Sykes to come. Meaning we are basically hoping to be serving in Neukölln together till the end.

 

So there is this game that missionaries made up... Or maybe it wasnt missionaries. I don't really know. But the point is, there are stickers all over Berlin. On lightposts, street signs, yada yada, the city is plastered in them.

So the favorite game of missionaries is to use them like trading cards.

And they come in all shapes and sizes.

If things weren't colorful before, they sure will be now.

 

Our zone leaders decided they were going to come up with a competition against the district leaders in the zone to see who could do the most push ups for morning sport. One of our zone leaders is in the air force and he can do anywhere between 500-800 push ups in 30 minutes. So with all the district leaders and their companions combined, aka 6 missionaries in total, it should be easy to beat the zone leaders, right?

Wrong. On Tuesday, they explained to us their competition and invited us to join. So 8 missionaries against 2.

The next morning, we did about 270 push ups together... and found out that the amount of push ups we were doing as a companionship were more than all of the other district leaders and their companions combined.

If that's not embarassing, I don't know what is...

 

Yesterday we took out our trash, and there is this little play place behind our building with sand and a playground and all sorts of fun stuff. Super innocent, right?

Well, we turned the corner and there is this little shrine thing next to the play place. Shrine? Hm..

We take a closer look at it and realize that it is for a dog. Thinking that someone had lost their dog recently, we took a closer look.

This shrine was for a dog that lived over 100 years ago. He lived at the airport and one day a plane misfunctioned and a propeller blew up and he died.

Sad, right?

Best part though. You can visit this dog, or the head of this dog that died over 100 years ago in a restaurant.

....Oh the things you find.

 

We visited a lady this week who is suuuper cool. She is old, but has this fire in her that makes her just go...

Apparantly, when she was little, she was in the church and then the wall went up and they weren't allowed to go anymore. So for years she continued to pray, to read, all that stuff, and one day about 20 years ago, she was talking to a neighbor who was a member of the church and wanted to go with them. She'd ben looking for the church for basically her whole life and had just now found it.

Well, I am not quite sure what happened, but the member wasn't able to take her, and then they lost contact.

This poor woman had been looking for the church her entire life, found it, then lost it again.

Anyway, one day in 2012 she was walking down the street and sees the missionaries.

"It's about time you showed up!!"

And she was baptized later that month.

And this sweet 85ish old lady is now holding a weekly "lesson night" at her house so she can invite people for us to teach.

She is stellar.

 

We also met someone who used to be a drug dealer. He is super cool and we have a lesson with him this upcoming week!

 

It has really been an awesome week with teaching and getting to know the ward. We finally got to meet them yesterday because the week before was conference. I am excited. They seem really excited to work!

 

Also, on Friday, we went as a leadership to the temple!!!

WOW.

That was quite an experience. Especially since President and Sister Kosak were the witness couple. I loved it.

They took us home with them to Berlin that night and we got to have some one on one time with them.

We went to McDonalds. Haha

 

As the temple was on my mind this week, I was reading in Matthew 21 and found this verse:

 14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.

I thought about how often we need this. We need to be healed of all our weaknesses and spiritual blindness. Christ healed them in the temple. No wonder we are asked to go so often to the temple. That is where we are healed. Where we can be in the presence of God.

Love you!!

Sister Babbitt