Iranian Food (Week 15)

Flowers from the Qasims

Hallo Familie!
This week was awesome! And Crazy!
We went to visit one of the ward missionaries in the hospital. As soon as we got off the bahn, I realized we weren't in our area anymore. Cue freaking out. I called our DL and ZL and they told us we were fine. Obviously, I'm very new at this (missionary work and training). I felt super guilty and she didn't even end up being there because she has gone home that morning. 😐 Later that day we had an appointment that fell out at the church, so we went by her house and she was there, so
we visited with her. She is so sweet.
We found a guy in our area book from Burkina Faso [I looked this up. It is an African country in western Africa, directly north of Ghana] and he agreed to meet with us. We met with him outside his apartment because we didn't have a joint teach. He had a friend visiting from Burkina Faso who came out and listened to. Let me explain how complicated this whole situation is. Amao, the guy in our area book, has no religion but believes in God, has a BAJILLION questions, speaks German, French, and some African language. Mohammed is muslin and speaks French, the African language, and a tiny bit of English. So teaching both of them at the same time is SUPER difficult. We tried to answer Amao's questions, and sister Fulton shared a scripture and I pulled it up in French on my iPad and Mohammad read it and his face just kind of lit up. It was beautiful. It started raining so we decided to meet again the next day. We brought our JAE friend Steffi with us (I love Steffi!). We attempted to teach the restoration. The thing with Amao is that he has so many questions, so we'll be explaining/bearing testimony of one thing, and then he interrupts and asks a completely unrelated question. He believes in God but no afterlife, and he and Mohammad got into an argument  (Mohammad, in English "That's not logical!"), which eventually morphed into French because Amao doesn't speak English. Haha. It was so funny. It was so clear to me when the spirit was there in that lesson (when we were testifying) and when it wasn't (when they were arguing/convincing each other). If nothing else, I learned to recognize the spirit and what invited/drives away the Holy Ghost. We challenged them to read and promised that they would find answers in the Book of Mormon. Mohammad said he would and challenged us to read the Quran and told us we will never have questions again if we read it. (From what he shared, apparently it is very specific).
We went by on a contact family this week. They are refugees from Iraq. I love the Qasim family! There are 4 kids (2 boys, 2 girls) and the parents. When whatever government thing came in, they decided to leave, and the government blew up their car. They all escaped together (a HUGE miracle). They are qurdish/curdish. (Mom, will you research that religion and send me what they believe?)

A bit of info about the Kurds: This is the region they come from.  

Most of them are Sunni Islams.  They oppose ISIS.

The kids speak pretty good German, and the parents are learning. They asked us to stay for dinner, so we ate Iraqi food. It was delicious. However, the mom is super nice and gave us literally 5 helpings. I was full after the first helping. At one point, I said a prayer because I didn't think I could eat all of that food. It was a different kind of rice, chicken, salad, and nuun bread. I made the mistake of not checking my watch.. It's staying light for a while now and I didn't realize how late it was when we got there until we finished dinner. . We tried our best to hurry home, but we were definitely late and had to call the DL and ZLs again. I was very stressed. I will probably never make that mistake again. We went back the other day to help the mom learn to ride a bike. It was super fun. Also, we gave them an Arabic Book of Mormon (we couldn't find a curdish one). They were super excited. I believe
that they were brought here for a reason. I love this family.
On Saturday, we brought 3 people to soccer at the stake center (Amao, Mohammad and Eva, a girl sister Porter and I met.. She didn't realize that sister Porter isn't here anymore and was a little surprised. When we met her, Sister Porter talked to her for 40 minutes, and I just tried really hard to understand.) Anyway, she has no interest in the church but is interested in doing things for P-day and soccer. Soccer was a blast! And I'm still sore.
We're singing a song for zone conference, and Sister Fulton and I are altos... The only altos. Neither of us are singers, so it should be interesting.
We met with Farshid this week. We were waiting at the church and going over our before mentioned alto part. I thought I heard something so we were about to go downstairs and then Farshid was right there and scared the daylights out of both of us.
I made dinner yesterday. I even cooked chicken. Go me! Sister Porter would be so proud. I just copied what she did. She's a whiz.
We met with Frau Byo this week. She is basically "golden". She believes in God and prays to him. She read the chapter we gave her in the Book of Mormon and prayed about it and believes it! I LOVE her. She's praying about a baptismal date and working on getting work off so she can come to church.
Well, if we didn't get enough goofs for the week, I slipped and fell down a couple stairs at Altona Hauptbahnhof.. Haha :)
You asked about Sister Fulton. I love her! She is a hardworking and super fun. Quite a character. She swam for BYU, she cooks her Mac and cheese with a STICK of butter (Gag). She is sassy, loves geography, spices (and chocolate). Also, she met One Direction. We have a lot of fun, and we're both  new, so we can just take what we learned in the MTC and apply it and learn tons!
I love the gospel. I love missionary work! I get to see people learn about and develop a relationship with Jesus Christ. It changes everything. He is there for us always. I was reading about Abinadi today, and I think we think of "enduring to the end" wrong. It's not "hang in there." It is testifying of Christ through your trials and challenges, doing what you were sent to the Earth to do. I love the Book of Mormon with all of my heart. I KNOW it is the word of God because I have studied it and prayed about it. It feels different than any other book I've ever read. It is how we know that God is there, that Jesus Christ died for us and opened the way to return to our Heavenly Father.
Sorry for the long letter. I love you all! Have a great week.
Sister Simpson