June 30: We Lost But We Still Won!

Okay. Cliffhanger. I know I left you guessing with the riddle last week... You have probably figured it out by now, but the answer is double letters. Dumb, huh?

Our situation hasn't really improved in the investigator area, but we did have a few lessons this week!

One of our sweet investigators, Verena, is basically awesome. She comes to church every single week she can and is involved with every sort of activity possible.

Unfortunately, she wasn't able to come this week.

Why?

I have gotten everything as an excuse not to come to church... Diahrrhea, slept in, don't really feel like it, my dog has to be walked, I have a dog and I can't leave him at home for 3 hours alone, (insert other excuses...) but this one I have never heard before. And it's pretty legitimate.

There is this festival thing that goes on on her street, and in order to leave, or be on the street, you have to pay a fee. Even the residents. No busses run, it costs an arm and a leg for cars to drive through and it lasts 3 days. And one of them was over Sunday...

Well, better luck next week!

We also found out that a man we are teaching is a descendant from Martin Luther... He showed us his pedigree chart in a giant book. 

Cool, eh?

I think this will be a hurdle we will have to jump...

Germans are totally into tradition.

ACH. Okay. So on Tuesday the other sisters called and asked if we had any time to help an older lady in our ward with her cherries.

Apparantly her cherry tree had produced so many cherries she could basically fill her bathtub up twice. 

So we went over there and helped her sort the good cherries from the bad cherries...

Well... let me tell you something. If any of you are familiar with cherry trees, you will know that you must spray your tree when it is in blossom or before, or during, or lets just say spray it all the time because these little flies lay eggs in the blossoms, and as the cherry grows, the larvae grows. INSIDE the cherry. 
So as we were sorting, we were looking for holes to see if there were any worms (which look like long grains of white rice) and if there were we would squeeze it and sometimes the worms would pop out. Oh it was so gross. It was like popping giant zits...

Anyway, grossed out from the cherry experience, we learned later that you need to open them before you can them. Because there could still be worms inside... Good thing we didn't take any. 

I learned WAY too much about cherries this week...

This leads into another noteworthy experience. Ha.
Okay so we were joking with the elders all week about them and one morning, one of the elders calls us.

"Hey Sisters, how's it going?"

"Oh, we're fine. How are you?"

"I'm alright. Hey, do you know the number for the doctor in our ward?"

"Um... What's wrong? DO YOU HAVE A WORM??"

".........How did you know??"

He had a tapeworm. Ha so this is in no way related to the cherries, because you get tapeworm from raw meat and or water... but it was funny.

He is doing good though. Practically tapeworm free. No worries.

We got permission to watch the USA versus Deutschland world cup game... Oh that was fun. 

Lots of conversation starters. 

EVERYONE here gets into the world cup. Parties every night.
I am going to blame our investigator-less state to the fact that everyone is focused on the world cup. Haha

Yeah, we lost to Germany... At least they didn't cream us. And I am totally surprised at the USAs abilities in soccer... That's where the subject of this email comes from. We lost the game, but are still moving on! 

I think I am just excited about the world cup because everyone else is excited about the world cup.

We had some fun experiences tracting this week:

- We met a man that looked like he stepped out of a 20s film. Think mustache. He was extremely pleasant and as he rode away on his bike, he blew a kiss and waved. Feel good moment.

- I exchanged salvation for gummy bears... Let me explain. There were these guys handing out gym membership advertisements with gummy bears attached (fatten you up before you lose weight!!) and I asked if I could trade cards with him. He was totally confused, but took my card anyway. You, sir, have salvation in your hads.

- Sister Sanders ran full on into a garbage can... And has the bruises to show for it. Poor girl

- A little boy stole my umbrella - opened and closed it for like 5 minutes... Then gave it back to me. I do not know this little boy. It was cute.

- Some drunk teenagers spit beer on us... Not the first time this has happened.

- I got us on a bus that usually takes 20 minutes to reach it's destination. I fell asleep and an hour later we were still not there. I don't know if I will ever get used to this transportation system. It's like a love hate relationship. SUPER convenient, yet you are at the mercy of other people's bad decisions. Kindof like life.

- We were dooring out this building and there was a lady who comes on the intercom, "I'M CALLING THE POLICE!!!" "Go ahead. We'll still be here..." Empty threats....

- Last but not least, we DID get a number from a really nice guy who said he thinks he would be buddhist if he could pick a religion... But he lives in Hamburg. Hm.

I got a letter from the office this week stating my release date and the things I must accomplish before leaving. President asked me to send some goals and it caused me to think a lot about it... What are my goals? I remember writing something similar to Justin when he returned home and it came back to me at the time I probably need it most.
 here it is:
Philippians 3:13-14.
I don't like them as much in English, so I translated the German into English according to my understanding.
"Bretheren, I don't imagine that I've already understood or caught it all, but one thing I do: I forget what lies behind me and reach for that which is ahead of me - the Goal before my eyes, I chase for the prize of victory: The holy calling that God has given to us in Christ, Jesus."
I have never had a checklist for my goals. Most of my goals are focused on learning, but I think this scripture is the sum of it all. I want to remember, however, that the experiences that I have had have brought me to where I am now and to continue becoming. 
What's been done in the last 1.5 years I can't re-do. I can't turn back time and talk with that one person that I needed to, or avoided a situation I should have... And I don't know if I would want to because those lessons are priceless. But there is one thing I can do. I can continue to become. To keep becoming a more effective missionary - a preach my gospel missionary - a more obedient missionary... If there's one thing I've learned, is that I will never have my ducks in a row 100% of the time. There are always ducks that fall out of place that I have to attend to.. So my goal is this: Continue BECOMING a disciple of Christ.

Alles gute!! 

Love you!