April 28: The Main Thing.

It's FINALLY spring!!!

The last few weeks have been those in between, awkward temperatures. You go outside and it is almost chilly, but not really chilly enough for a jacket, but as you walk around you realize that it would actually be okay to wear one... Until you walk for more than 20 minutes, then it is hotter than the sahara (maybe that was an overexaggeration...)

The point is, the last few days have been warm enough to only need a jacket in the evenings. Which is heavenly. 

Last week the Elders gave us a contact they had made and we were able to set up an appointment with her. That sentence wasn't an epic lead up to how amazing this woman is, but believe me, she is. 

We got there and the first thing she says to us is, "I have been trying to read this book of Mormon and I feel good, but I don't understand it at all..."

We found out that she had been meeting with the Jehovah's Witnesses for several years, but every time she went to a meeting she felt like all the "good feelings" they had there were pretend. 

This was such a neat experience because as we were in there, we started talking about our relationship to God, and how he is our Heavenly Father - which means that she is a literal daughter of God. I am not sure if she has ever understood that, but you could see the connection click, and her eyes light up. 

And she told us straight up that she is on the search. 

Then she committed herself to come to church next week, and as soon as she gets an answer to be baptized. 

I submit that this is a modern day miracle. Well, maybe it is for me because I don't meet too many sincere, honest, truth seekers. 

THEN. Thursday happened. 

The day literally everything went wrong. 

But you know? It was actually a great reminder that it is okay to laugh at the fact that you are a lowly human who makes extremely stupid mistakes. 

Also, somehow, it all served a purpose.

Let me relay the events of this day. 

As we were about to get on the bus to go to District Meeting, Sister Sykes looks at me and she says, "I don't have my bus pass..."

Not toooooo bad. We will just go back home after our meeting to find it. (This may not be such a big deal anywhere else, but in Berlin, that is our only form of transportation. To get ANYWHERE, you need to buy a ticket for the bus, bahn, train... whatever.)

Well, we couldn't find it. Not in our apartment, not in our cellar, not in our backpacks... Naja. This also wouldn't be a huge deal, but it's getting towards the end of the month. And we have no money. 

We figured things out with the elders that if they bought a week ticket, we would pay them back. 

So we walked out the door to go to an appointment. And you know what we forgot?

The keys. 

We literally locked ourselves out of our apartment. 

YAY... 

So we made a billion phone calls trying to find out where our spare key was... Finally found it with the OTHER elders and planned to pick it up. 

We DID have a lesson with the Herbst family (the family from Serbia) and that was okay. It's always a little hectic with 20 children running around... Any ideas on how we can reign in the chaos?

Then we got BAMBOOZLED by a 14 year old who looked like he was 25 (asked him if he wanted to come to institute... He said he would have to ask his parents... Um.. you have a beard.. This is so odd...)

And FINALLY got our keys once again.

But as we got home, the elders texted us a miracle! As soon as we left, there was a man that came up to them and asked if they were the Mormons and asked if he could learn more from them. 

Everything has a purpose, right?

THEN. Friday happened.

The day everything went right.

I am not so sure what was so amazing about this day. Maybe it was because it was the day following a super stressful day and things were just better. The sun was shining, our appointments did not fall out, we met 2 people from Bethlehem, and we went to an Arabic Wedding.

Wait... what?

Yeah. You read that right. 

One of our investigators from Syria was getting married and invited us to come. So, we showed up at the reception hall at 6... And we were the 3rd and 4th person there. Uhm...

So, I don't know if you know any Arabs. But apparantly in their culture, it is okay to be 2 hours late to a wedding... 

Technically, the wedding started at 6, but didn't get underway until 8. 

It's okay though, because Sister Sykes and I talked with a few girls from Algeria (if you don't know where that is, it is on the top of Africa next to Morocco... I had to ask, too) for those two hours and devoured a bowl of nuts. 

Nadine and her groom finally got there and it was SO CRAZY. We took videos. They had this like... drumline procession and that traditional arabic music playing from a live band... It was awesome. We had to jet early because as missionaries we had to be home at 9:30... But I would have loved to stay until the end. Maybe one day I will get to go to another Arabic wedding... 

We ran home (literally... Like sprinted) in order to get home on time, and the bishop's son had brought us a box of leftover pizza from their house. Hoorah! Love from members!!

We also schooled him on how wearing skinny jeans and crocs are a no-go. He'll thank us later.

We found several new people this week to teach (and some to come to soccer with us on Saturday!)

As Sister Sykes and I were discussing Jesus (again) and how to prioritize our lives, she told me a quote she found and I thought it was fitting.

"The main thing is to KEEP the main thing the main thing"

I think that as normal people, we find things that don't eternally matter seem to creep into our lives and become our center of focus. 

Jobs, relationships, food, careers... And often we forget that focusing on the Savior makes everything else fall into place. But this also makes us realize that keeping the Savior the center of our lives is WORK. HE is THE main thing, but if we don't do our part to keep him the main thing in our lives, our main thing changes. 

That is WHY we have daily personal and family prayer. That is WHY we have daily personal and family scripture study, weekly family home evenings, weekly church attendance, weekly activities, callings, etc... This all serves a role to help us keep our focus on Christ. When we forget why we have these things, they are hard to do. But when we remember that Christ is the only person who can help us return to the father like it says in John 14:6, we realize that he is the ONLY way.

I love you!

Sister Babbitt

April: 22: Easter Monday?

Is Easter Monday a holiday in America?? Who knew 8 whole days without a p day would be stressful??

Ha, it is okay though. We had a good day yesterday working. All the stores were closed and a lot of people were out of town, but we were able to visit a few members. There is this awesome family in our ward named the Fischers, and they have an ongoing invitation for us to come over and eat their leftovers. (This was especially helpful yesterday, as we had NO FOOD in our house) So we went over and ate with Sister Fischer, Sr. while everyone else was getting ready to go to the temple for the week. 

Right afterwards, we went and visited a new convert, Mercy, who is from Ghana.

We walked in and she had prepared lunch for us... Ummm... Whoops. We ate anyway and it was my first experience with REAL African food! (Actually, that is a lie. In Cottbus there was this international party thing that our investigators invited us to come to, and there I had a little smidgon of African food... But this was the real deal. Like. A whole plate of it) We had fried bananas and some bean-fish casserole thing. It was good, but my white girl stomache is not made of steel... So by the time we got home, I was a little queasy. Naja! All in the experience, right??

Today, we went to go to the grocery store when we passed our mailbox... Mail doesn`t come at 8 in the morning, does it? Well, sometime between the hours of 12 and 8 yesterday, the elders snuck in and bombed our mailbox with all of the tree blossoms they could find, wrote a note that said, "Girls like flowers, right?" and left us to clean up the rotten, stinking, ant infested flower pedals. Nice, right? We`re thinking rice or beans for them... Any suggestions?

This week was pretty good, as far as experiences go! 

People keep coming and falling out of our teaching pool, and it`s proving to be quite difficult to find the people who actually want to progress... But our members are helping! At least giving us hope! Haha

Our new ward mission leader and his wife are STELLAR. His wife came up to us at church on Sunday and explained that she had talked to her neighbors about the Proclamation to the Family and asked if they wanted to meet with the missionaries. They said yes, and we will hopefully have an appointment with them later this week!

Our bishop and his wife are also working on their neighbors. 

We told them that all they need to do is get us at a social gathering together and we will ask. If they say no, they`ll hate us and not the members! It`s perfect! Haha

We gave Moses to the Elders because he wants to meet regularly at his home and it is hard for us to get the perfect fellowshipper seeing as we can only bring women on joint teaches...

We did have a really good lesson with Martin this week though! Martin is from Cameroon and he wants a stronger relationship with God and Christ. We talked with him about baptism and set a goal for May! He wants to be baptized then, he just needs to come to church.

We also were able to take Zivo to institute! He is part of the Serbian family we met a few weeks ago and he is 19. This was seriously so perfect because we were worried about his attention span in something that is completely foreign to him (I mean seriously. My attention span is still the same as a 4 year old... And I understand everything! Haha) but we talked about Easter and the reason why we have it. We had little papers to write our thoughts about Jesus Christ and Easter, and Zivo wrote about how he feels good and peaceful when he thinks about Christ. He really loved institute and we will be taking him this week!!

Something I have been thinking about this week is Easter. Obviously. 

Sister Sykes gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting and spoke about how Christ, because he was resurrected, it not only means that we can be resurrected, too, but also that he knows exactly what we are going through. He knows exactly how we feel. And that we don`t need to do this alone. 

What a comforting thought? That because Jesus Christ lived, because he performed the Atonement and because he was resurrected, nothing we do has to be done alone. There is ALWAYS someone beside us. There is always someone there to carry us, calm our fears, rejoice with us! 

I am so thankful for our Savior. I know He lives.

Love you!!!

Sister Babbitt

P.S. Shoutout to Aaron!!!! I am so happy for you, Bud!! You will do great :)

April 14: Why Does it Always Rain on P-Days?

Remember those days where nothing goes according to plan? I mean, sure, here and there things get messes up, people are late, you are late, things fall out, investigators don't show up to church?

Well, imagine those days... Now imagine a week of it. 

I would guess that about 75% of all of our lessons this week fell out. I haven't counted it yet, nor do I really want to, but welcome to missionary life!!!

Haha even though we weren't able to teach a lot this week, we still had some really cool experiences. 

Because one of our appointments fell out (with a joint teach), we were able to teach our Nigerian member how to bear his testimony in German so he could impress the ward on Sunday. He finally caught on, and he DEFINITELY did. It was awesome. We were basically cheering from the back row during fast and testimony meeting. Bishop laughed at us.

Because other appointments fell out, we had a lot of time to go finding and ended up finding some really awesome people. 

The first man we found is from Paris (shoutout to Anna!!) and had met missionaries before, but never really talked with them. We got his number and found out he works at a hipster cafe. Legit. With soy milk and tofu and stuff... Will we be going there? Yes. Will I like the food? Probably not. Antoine, you are so worth it.

About a month ago, we found a boy that was interested in the Book of Mormon but every time we went by his house, he was never home. We finally contacted him this week, and started teaching his entire family!! So that was cool. There are like 6 children and 22 grandchildren that live there (most of them not consistantly, but consistantly enough). So we are excited to see them progress. 

I have never found a family at one time before...

We also got a new ward mission leader this week! 

Sister Sykes and I ate with him and his family yesterday and we talked about his calling for a few hours and how we can help him, what he can do to help us... I think we still need to have a meeting with all the missionaries, but he is excited and we are excited for him :) When someone comes in fresh, they have so many good ideas and excitement, and I think we really need that in this ward.

Something I found in the scriptures this week was super interesting. 

There is that scripture in all of the gospels that says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all needful things shall be added unto you..." (something like that. Probably not verbatum...) But as I was reading in Luke, it talks about how the Lord loves us more than the sparrows, grass, etc... and gives us a bunch of blessings. Then this verse comes:

 31 ¶^aBut rather seek ye the ^bkingdom of God; and ^call these things shall be added unto you.

I looked at the footnote and realized that Joseph Smith had a translation of it, and it gives it a little more clarity about HOW we seek the kingdom of God:

JST Luke 12:34 Therefore seek ye to bring forth the kingdom of God … and all these things shall be added unto you.

I found it interesting that if we want all of these blessings to be added unto us, what we need to do is to seek to build the kingdom of God. AKA MISSIONARY WORK!!! 

I thought that was a nice little gem :)

Anyway, I love you! I hope you have a good week!!!

April 7: God Loves You Infinitely More than a Tree

So last week on Monday we went to the East Side Gallery.

Now if you aren't familiar with Berlin, the East Side Gallery is the longest stretch of the Berlin wall left standing. Probably a mile or so. Anyway, someone (government, some rich guy... I don't really know) hired a bunch of artists to take a section of the wall and paint it. Most of the paintings have to do with Berlin, the DDR, Germany, stuff like that... But some of them are TOTALLY random. Like Easter Island heads? 

Needless to say, it was basically the coolest thing I have seen in Berlin thus far. I mean, ya, cool, all of the cool Berlin landmarks are also really neat, but I felt like a decade of history was packed into a real-life-representation of an aspect of what made Germany Germany.

Google it. You will find some real cool stuff. It's probably my favorite place in Berlin.

People watching moment: As we were coming back from the East Side Gallery, we were in the U Bahn when a man and his dog get in. Normal. 

This man unwraps a werthers original and gives it to his dog. Not normal. He then looked around to see if anyone noticed... Not to be awkward, I avoided eye contact. Which probably made it more awkward.

For a few days this week we had Sister Stuart with us because she was going to go on Thursday and pick up her brand new missionary!!! It was really fun though, because I have served my entire mission so far in East Germany and the west is like some foreign fantasy land that I know nothing about. So here Sister Stuart is from the west and her and Sister Sykes got to chat about west-ness stuff and I was totally clueless. Yeah, we're in the same mission, but it seems like a completely different world. Maybe one day I will make it over there...

We had two AWESOME finding experiences this week. 

There is a street in our area called Karl Marx Straße, which seems to be the best place to OYM. Okay lets get real. It IS the best place to OYM because it's totally GHETTO. And there are lots of people. 

Anyway, we talked with a bunch of people, gave out a bunch of cards and were about ready to leave so we could go to our appointment when Sister Sykes goes out of the way and starts talking with this man from Nigeria. 

Long story short, this man's name is MOSES and he was so excited to hear about a prophet, he came to General Conference yesterday and is stoked to learn more. Can you say baptism? Yeah, he will probably get baptized the end of the month. He loved it. I loved it. 

Next story. There is a family in the ward that we have been trying to visit for the past 3 weeks. Every time we make out an appointment, she has to cancel or we have to cancel (or we get stranded in Königs Wüsterhausen and miss the train which would put us 2 hours late...) stuff like that. 

But this week it ACTUALLY happened. We got there ON TIME and were just about to start our spiritual thought when the doorbell rang. 

Their neighbor came in, and because we were already there, the mother of the family explained to the neighbor who we were and that we were going to teach them a little more about the gospel. He stayed and listened intently to the Plan of Salvation and then started asking a lot of questions. 
Long story short, we have another appointment with him and the family this week.

And I thought HOW COOL. Members have already told their friends about the gospel. Probably. I mean, they live it (hopefully). We know SO MANY people who have asked us questions about why we do what we do... But sometimes we are nervous to invite them to take the discussions.

Well, that's what the missionaries are there for!! 

All that needs to happen is for the members, friends, and missionaries to be in the same room. We do the asking.

This email wouldn't be complete without a little snippit about General Conference.

I could tell you every single talk I liked (which would take all day) but there were two general themes that stuck out to me this time.

I feel like the speakers of this general conference were issuing a call for deep rooted members. There were a lot of speakers who talked about, or mentioned, defending the truth... how the truth doesn't change... God doesn't change and is not a "convenient god"... sometimes we are going to need to stand alone... The consequences of obedience are always good... When our faith is centered on Jesus Christ we won't be shaken and everything will work out.

This was good for me because recently I have been thinking about the things I have learned on my mission so far and how the number one theme I always come back to is that my mission has taught me how to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. WHY it is so important.

But to complement this call to discipleship, another theme that stuck out to me was love. I feel like I have learned a decent amount about what love is, and one aspect is when you truly love someone, you continually give them an opportunity to change for the better. You see their potential and are patient as you do what you can to help them reach it. You love them as they are, but look forward to what they can BECOME.

Now that this turned into a novel... I hope you have a good week!!
Love you!!