Hey there, my favorite little sister,
SORRY
it took me so long to respond. Hamburg was a pretty big city, but
Berlin is bigger. The buildings aren't too tall like NYC, But definitely
bigger than anything in Boise. I've seen some apartment buildings over
20 stories tall! You can fit a lot of people in that. Berlin is split
into different wards/areas with different missionaries because it's so
big. So we cover the north/eastern area. There's City parts but also
lots of neighborhoods and if you get really far out, it's basically the
country. It's very pretty, and I'm sure it will look great once the
plants start growing and everything doesn't look so dead. ;) the
"pretty" downtown part of Berlin isn't in our area, but we can go there
on our pday and we've seen some cool stuff. We saw a famous, pretty, old
Lutheran church, the Brandenburger Tor, and also part of the Berlin
Wall. Berlin is growing on me.
We
haven't been very busy. We don't have many (any) investigators right
now, so mostly we try to meet with less-active members and help them
come back to church, because when we stop reading our scriptures and
praying and coming to church, than we forget our testimonies. So these
people who haven't been doing that need help remembering the gospel and
the things they need to do that will help them be happy. We do a lot of
finding, so we talk to people on the street or ring their doorbell and
ask them if they want to learn more about Jesus Christ. We went by on a
cute old lady who we Thought was an old investigator. She let us in and
was really excited to all about Jesus. She still had her Book of Mormon
from the missionaries before. She had the cutest toothless smile. We
went home and looked up her name in our records and turns out, she's
actually a member, but she's so old that she doesn't remember. Haha. She
loves Jesus though.
E's baptism
was special. It was cool to see how Heavenly Father prepared her to find
the church and be baptized. We, the missionaries, didn't actually do
much. We taught her twice and she kept coming to church and then decided
to be baptized. So we finished teaching her. The ward really reached
out and tried to help support her and feel welcome, and that made a big
difference. I was just so excited that she decided to make this decision
to be baptized and follow Jesus Christ. She is planning on moving to
New York and wants to get married and start a family, so she's going to
have a big impact on a lot of people.
You
asked about journal writing: we have time every night to write in our
journals. I've realized that it's a waste of time and energy to write
the dumb things I do every smile day (like eat breakfast, etc) so I try
to just write about the good things that happened, funny things,
basically anything that I might want to remember and also my thoughts
about the things that happen. I write a lot about important things I
learn too. You don't have to write everyday, but when you have big
things happen it's good to write in your journal. I tried to always
record the things that I knew would become memories.
Have a great week Lizzy! I love you! Sorry my response is so late!
Your Sister Simpson
Hey,
I made a time lapse video for you of the bus ride from a train stop to
our stake center via bus. So you can see part of downtown Berlin! I made
it from the top of a double decker bus (like Harry Potter). They use
those buses sometimes in downtown Berlin.
