subject line..bane of my existence...‏

Liebe Familie und Freunde,

Sorry for the lame subject line. The district and I went to the rittersport factory today. For those of you who don't know, Rittersport is a chocolate company that makes ridiculously good chocolate. I may or may not have bought..quite a bit..but! When in Rome?.....

So! This last week! Mensch, I don't even know what happened last week..my days all misch together here..let me grab my planner....

Ok! Well I won't bore you with the whole week...but! Things worthy of note...

We had an AWESOME appointment with one of the less active members we have been trying to meet with since day 1 here. And! She was like "by the way, I have a friend who is interested in the Gospel. I was planning on watching the restoration with him this weekend..." And! We have an appointment with the both of them tomorrow. Yay! She is SO cool. And! She swing dances! Bonus points!! :)

The Stuttgart ward also had ANOTHER baptism this week! That is one a week for the last 3 weeks. The story is actually way crazy. His name is Ralf, and he found the international elders 2 weeks ago. Wellll Ralf has a crazy story. But to make it short, he grew up an orphan, lives on the streets of Stuttgart, and is the most prepared person I have ever met where the gospel is concerned. I will admit, at first I was a little skeptical, but he is just the neatest. He even came out contacting with us last week! He straight up loves the gospel and loves the Lord. Yesterday in Sacrament, he received the Gift of the Holy Ghost and then was sustained and as we all raised our arms, he half whispered "Wow. Big familie." Those 3 words had SO much behind them because..Ralf has never had a familie. But now he does. And yes, it IS big. :)

Friday! Friday we had a...distrikt finding day! Woo! We (the 4 elders and us sisters) went finding for 4 hours. And! We found 10 potentials! Which was SO COOL! We had a goal for 9, and at the beginning, we all called somebody from our ward and asked them to pray for us. Well, when all was said and done..10. It really was a miracle. It was so neat, Elder Bodily and I were contacting this man (who we ended up teaching most of the 2nd lesson) and in the middle a man in his 20's walked by and said "mormons?" We said "We sure are!" He was in a hurry but he said "Ok, I would love to meet with you in the Birkenwaldstraße (the institute center here..)..I will give you my number..could you please call me?" A little off guard we told him we would call and he said "Promise? Don't forget!!" We promised that we wouldn't forget, and then went on teaching the other guy..hah. It was the craziest day. Maybe we'll find some investigators here after all...:) (Not that that was ever a question...ha..)

And Saturday! Was really cool. They had this giant Stake youth missionary weekend thing that they asked all the missionaries in the Zone to be at. So it did eat up most of our day, but it was worth it. It was so fun to help get the youth in the stake excited about missionary work and serving missions themselves. They have really been encouraging us to worth with the youth and the YSA's lately so..it was just lovely:)

Naja! This last week was good. Still no investigators, but we ARE making progress. I am just..so grateful for the gospel. I'm grateful to know who I am, where I came from, why i'm here, and where I am going. Sounds totally cliché but..I can't imagine living without that knowledge. i think perhaps in the Spirit world none of us quite grasped how hard it was actually going to be down here. Didn't quite grasp how many of us would get lost. But we knew that, regardless of the price, it would be worth it. And though sometimes this journey through this "Vale of tears" makes us question the very truths we are built on, if we make certain our foundation is sure, we cannot fall. Helaman 5:12. I am so grateful for the opportunity that I have to be here on a mission, securing my foundation. I don't know what lies ahead of me on this crazy road we cal life, but I know that, in the end, it will all be worth it. Our weaknesses and trials are only there to allow us to become more like our Savior. Christ suffered for our sins and afflictions and..well...all of our mortal experiences, that we may be some day reconciled with our Father in Heaven. I am SO grateful for the power of the Atonement in my mission and my life. I am grateful for my Savior. He knows all too well all of my imperfections and loves me anyway. King Benjamin was right. We will always be in his debt. But! We can certainly give Him all that we have, in giving Him our hearts. I still LOVE the primary song, "I'm trying to be like Jesus..." I have a loooooong ways to go. But I am working on it..one baby step at a time...

Ok! I will stop carrying on and let you all get back to your busy lives. I love you all and thank you for your continuing support and prayers. I wish you all a LOVELY week!
Love,

Sister Bice

Rain, rain, go away..come again...in 6 weeks or so...hah.‏

Liebe Familie und Freunde,

Hallo und liebe Grüße aus Deutschland. :)

Once again, you will have to bear with my scattered brain today..but! Es hätte schlimmer sein können...:)

It's raining. In fact, it has been raining the last several days...and is supposed to rain for the next several...
Rain is great for the flowers.

Bad for the missionaries.
But! We love it anyways. :)

So! Funny little story..we were on the way here to write emails and we were waiting for the bahn when a girl about our ages says.."...aren't you guys Mormons?" We said "You bet!" She said "...I thought Mormons always wore skirts." We explained to her that today was our p-day and and and. She was actually way cool, but unfortunately had to get on the bus right then. Lame. But! I hope we bump into her again sometime..in our skirts next time. :P

So! Highlights of the week? Well I actually had a real rough day on Tuesday. Hit me out of nowhere. I even cried at the bus station. I hate crying. But! Sometimes it's for the best? You gotta have the water to make the rainbow, oder? Naja. But! I got a blessing from the Zone Leaders and it was, again, exactly what I needed. It never ceases to amaze me how well Heavenly Father knows me. I mean, I have been living with me for 22 years now and sometimes I like to THINK that I know what makes me tick..but then I have days like Tuesday and realize that...I have no idea! So yeah. I still have some figuring out to do. But! The gospel gives us direction. oh how I do so very much love the gospel. It's only when I lose sight of the big picture that I have problems. Otherwise, the gospel makes life make sense. Ok lets be honest...most of the time, life makes no sense. But! The gospel always does. :)

On Wednesday, I shook the hand of a 106 year old woman. She was a sweetheart. And did I mention that she was 106? Wow. Hah. We visited a member of ours in the old folks home where she lived. It was good. We brought our member some flowers, and she was so excited to have visitors that she showed us off to all of the other residents.
Thursday. We had two lessons Thursday! With less actives. We still have no investigators. But I have had the feeling that the WARD is the reason they called Sister Jencks and I here. They need some missionary love. And there are some GREAT members here. Active, inactive, less active, they are wonderful.

Friday we had a hilarious eating appointment with the Elders. A cute old lady from the ward. We asked her if she had a favorite song. She said yes and asked to see my book. Then she flipped through every. Page. All 210 of them. Annnd never found it. Hah. Naja.

Saturday we went to a baptism!! Olena Weichelt. She. Is. A gem. She is a single mom with 3 daughters. Her mother joined the church in the Ukraine in 2000, and her daughters are both members, and on Saturday, after many many years, she was baptized. Sister Jencks and I have had the opportunity to teach her a few times with the Elders. She is such a doll. Little Lena. Oh! I almost forgot! I sang at her baptism. Surprise? Yes, it was. the Elders called 2 hours before and said "Sister Bice, our musical number just cancelled on us...could you sing??" So I did. Come thou Font of Every Blessing. It felt good to sing again, even though I was WAY nervous because the Stuttgart ward is chalk full of professional musicians. But! I love music:)

Naja! I still can't believe my last transfer started...today. What? Transfer 12? Already? Meine Güte. But! I am loving Stuttgart. It has been hard, but it is helping me learn and grow. I am a little nervous I won't learn all the things the Lord wants to teach me before I come home but..I am trying.  The Gospel is wonderufl. In a world where perfection is always seemingly just out of reach, the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is perfect. Missionaries aren't perfect. Members aren't perfect. We all know that I am not perfect. But the gospel? Is perfect.

Alright! Time to scamper once more! Sister Jencks and I have quite a bit to get done today. And! There is a carnival in town. Where there are carnivals, there is cotton candy. And where there is cotton candy..well, Sister Bice loves cotton candy. :) So! Ich hab euch alle lieb! Alles Gute gel?

Love,
Sister Bice

April, April, er macht was er will...‏

Liebe Familie UND liebe Freunde,
Meine Güte. Seriously...another week gone...boah.
Hah ok I feel like 17 months of emails is starting to get to me...sometimes I sit down and think.."hmm...what happened last week...?" Hah. My brain is slowing giving up the spoon as the Germans say...naja!
This last week. We had..interviews! Yay! Interviews are always great. Crazy to think that this week we have transfer calls already too. What the what? And THAT means that after next Thursday, I am the OLDEST Sister in the entire mission. I don't know how I feel about that.... but! Mag kommen was will..

Ok! Now I will try to concentrate for reals...

After interviews we had..exchanges! We now have 3 (yes, count them, THREE) Sisters companionships in our zone, so we decided to just to a big giant exchange. I ended up here in Stuttgart with Sister Holman, the Golden working in Pforzheim. Naja. It turned out to be one of the craziest adventures of my mission....We had had an appointment right? Cool. So we were on our way home and I say "now where did I put my key.." All the sudden Sister Holman gets this horrified look on her face and pulls out a set of keys.

Holman: "I have the pforzheim keys.."

Bice: "Yeah..and?"

Holman: "No, I have THE pforzheim keys.."

Bice: "There are no other keys??"

Holman: "*silence...*"

I called the Zone leaders. "Elders, we might have an S.O.S....." I explained the situation. Elder Bodily replies "Oh..that IS an sos...." So. We concluded we needed to out to Pforzheim. Immediately. We caught the 8:59pm train (feel free to keep in mind that missionaries are SUPPOSED to be home at 9pm...) ANYwho. It was a LONG story that involved two sister missionaries RUNNING around the city of pforzheim Germany late at night, frantically searching for 2 other sister missionaries that had a DEAD CELL PHONE and were no where to be found. This whole time Sister bice is on the phone with President Miles and the Elders back in Stuttgart. Naja. President calmly told us to hide their keys outside, and head home. So we did. but of course the last train out was leaving soon. So we ran. And by we I mean she. Haha. Hey, I did pretty good! But between being on the phone, getting harrassed and cat called (which didn't end well...meaning..which ended in Sister Bice standing on a street corner waiting for a light to turn green and screaming "I HATE MEN!!" before she remembered she was supposed to be Christlike...), und was weiß ich, I started to run out of gas. But! Naja. Ok. There is a lot more to the story. But if you really want to hear it all, you will have to come and visit me when I get home. It is all better in person anyway. ANYwho. We ended up laughing the whole hour train ride home away and rolled into Stuttgart at midnight, where the Elders (who looked more like washing machine salesman with their almost-missionary-attire) picked us up and escorted us home. Yeahh....the next day didn't get any less crazy. But again, those stories can be for later. There was a point on Wednesday afternoon where I hopelessly looked at Sister Holman and said, "THIS is why we will never be companions. We reek havoc wherever we go..." but! It was in the end a great exchange, and I learned SO much from Sister Holman. She is 19 and has faith the move mountains. Love it.

As for the rest of the week, we....still haven't been able to find any investigators. Still working on it though! And! We have finally started to get the ball rolling with some of the less actives in the ward, which is awesome!! We also went to a baptism on Friday from an investigators of the Elders. It was so. Beautiful. I love the gospel. And last but not least we went to a..choir concert! Our ward hosted a German church choir called Vocalis and they came and did a concert at the church. It was kind of weird being in the audience and not in the choir, especially because I had sung most of the songs before in choirs. But! It was good. As for this week? Well we are just working hard and enjoying the day to day miracle we like to call missionary work. :)

So! Now that I have managed to write an email completely full of quatsch and lacking in spirituality, i would love to share what I learned in my studies this morning:) This morning I pulled out my MTC notes and a sentence popped out at me as soon as I flipped it open. "When we are truly converted, we never look back." So I did me some thinking. I love the Anti-Nephi Lehis in the book of Mormon. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think they are the only people in the entire book that really do never go back. The bible dictionary tells us that conversion "..will change a natural man into a sanctified born again, purified person-a new creature in Jesus Christ." I guess I have been so in love with the topic of change on my mission, and I guess conversion is really just an advanced form of change. It isn't about making deals with God. It's about giving ourselves up to Him. That doesn't however mean that we all have to turn into a bunch of robots! God knows who we are, and He is the one who made us that way. The trick is finding those things that make us who we are and letting him refine them until we become who HE wants us to be. So! Yeah. I had all these little awesome ah ha moments this morning and then I thought "....oh great. I can't do that!" But! Then! I flipped open my handy dandy True to the Faith, which reminded me that I can! We all can. It lists 4 characteristics of "people who are converted."

1.They desire to do good.

2. They do not rebel against the Lord.

3. They share the gospel.

4. The are filled with love.

....no where in that list do we read "They are perfect." News flash! We aren't! I most certainly am not. But! I am trying to be like Jesus. And when I think of conversion of terms of the 4 things on that list, it doesn't become easy, but it does become possible. And THAT is why I love the gospel. It challenges us enough but not too much. All we gotta have is a little faith, trust, and....a lot of hard work. Until one day we stand before our Savior and hear those blessed of blessed words, "Well done, my good and faithful servant..."

May you all have a lovely week! And enjoy the sunshine! Assuming that you have sunshine...if you don't....make some. :)

Ich hab euch lieb!

Love,

Sister Bice