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