Schon 8 Monate! (8 Months Already!)

Elder and Sister Gill after church yesterday. We love them!

Sister Koch and I

We found a trail while in Hameln

Hello liebe Familie -

Time flies. Tomorrow I will have had this wonderful name tag on for 8 months. I love being a missionary.

On Wednesday evening, we were going to go grocery shopping with Monika for the stop smoking workshop (to buy grapefruit juice and stuff like that) but she didn't show up. And because our eating appointment fell out as well, we had a free evening. So we decided to go by on her, because her phone is broken and we hadn't heard from her all week. As we walked out there, I was praying to be led to where the Lord wants us to go. We got to her street and we saw her get out of the car and go inside. She was with a friend, so we figured we'd go by on a contact who lived nearby and stop by on the way home. When we got to the contact's house (who was a 16 year old girl who had set up an appointment with the elders and then cancelled), there was a lady In the garage. We were able to talk to her and get to know her (She's from Iraq but has lived here for most of her life). She let us sit out back and we taught her about Joseph Smith's first vision. We gave her a Book of Mormon and we read Moroni's promise with her. As soon as Sister Koch finished, she grabbed the book, folded down the corner of the page and said, "I want to read this. My heart did something as you read that." It was amazing. Her interest completely changed as she felt the spirit, and we promised her that as she read The Book of Mormon, that she would feel that again. There is power in the Book of Mormon to bring the spirit of God into our lives. It was very cool to see how everything lined up so we could be where the Lord wanted us to be. This truly is His work.

That was kind of a pattern this week; our appointment would fall out and then we would end up being able to help someone, whether that was a member, less active, or an investigator. It was very humbling to see that as we planned and tried to do what the Lord wanted us to do, we were in the right place at the right time. I am trying to rely more on the spirit as we plan, prepare and teach. We also got to work with members a lot this week because we had a ton of eating appointments. We met with a young couple who have been off their missions for a couple years and we practiced teaching with them and it was so fun. There are so many people here who I love and have learned so much from.

We went out to Hameln, a big souther city (also the origin of the Pied Piper of Hameln, hence the rats everywhere) to go by on some less actives, because there are a lot of them. We walked for forever and no one was interested. We were walking the 45 minute walk back to bahnhof and a member pulled up and invited us to dinner. We accepted, and ate dinner with their family and another man in our ward who was there. It wasn't until we got home that we realized he was also less active. So that was cool.

HERR NICOLA CAME TO CHURCH! Yesterday was literally the best day of my life, because he finally came to church and he brought a friend. Also Schwester Heumann came because she finally had work off, and so did a less active family that we've met with a few times. The Ehepaar Gills (senior missionary couple) spoke in Sacrament meeting, as well as the stake president, who is also part of our ward, so it was a super solid meeting. Sister Gill is Deutsch, so she spoke auf deustch, and Elder Gill gave a very animated talk auf englisch and had a translator. He bore his testimony in German at the end, and even though his German was not very good, you could feel the love that he has for these people and that these people have for them. And that's what is most important about this work and this gospel: love. We are here because God loves us. We can return to live with Him because Jesus Christ loves us, so much so that He carries all of our weight on His shoulders. The two greatest commandments are 1) love the Lord and 2) love thy neighbor. When we do both of those things, there will truly be peace in the world.

Herr Nicola's friend is also Romanian and doesn't speak much German, so I'm not sure how much he got from church. Our Gospel Principles class, which was supposed to be about how God is our Heavenly Father, got a little deep.. C'est la vie. They had a really good experience at church, at least Here Nicola did. In our lesson this week, we talked about how this life is our time to prepare to meet God and taught him about the gospel of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end).   We are working towards baptism: he wants to come to church a few times and also he's going to Romania for a month in Oktober, so we are going to try to work something out with missionaries there. But basically, he is super awesome and we love him.

Life is good. We get transfer calls this weekend, so we'll see what will happen. I've heard that missionaries stay out here for a long time, so probably nothing big. (Sister Wayment has been in Bielefeld since April haha..)

Alles gute! Ich liebe euch!

Sister Simpson

P.s. You asked about my German. I can understand basically everything. My grammar isn't great when I speak, but I can say what I need to.  Having an hour of Sprach and training has definitely been a blessing for my German. Haha I pulled out a französisch BOM the other day to see if I could understand it and I still can!

Elder & Sister Gill are like our grandparents here, and they drive us around Nienburg, feed us, come to lessons with us. We are really going to miss them.

The Gills' suitcase FULL of chocolate

Hmmm... Wedding anyone?

We found a lizard while contacting in Hameln