8-8-11

Liebe Familie und Freunde,
It has been another spectacular week here in Bielefeld!  I am finally over that silly cold :) and it is such a relief!  Sister Peltier is healthy as well!  I have a few highlights from this week to tell you about. 
Wednesday:
We had an appointment with one of our "Eternal Investigators" who has been an investigator for almost 4 years now.  He has had a few basptismal dates but he has had troubles quitting smoking.  But this week marked eight weeks of not smoking for him!!! So we made a new baptismal date for September 3rd!  We are really excited and praying really hard that he will stay strong!  He is has been coming to church every week for four years and is a non-baptized member already :).
We also met with our Bishop this week as Elder Caussè said that we should and it was great!!!  Luckily he is from England so we can speak English together and understand each other perfectly (except when he says things like the weather is close....hmmm...that is supposed to mean humid).  But we got his "vision" of the missionary work in the Bielefeld ward and we are excited to work more closely with him and help achieve some of the goals that he has had for a long time!  He also wants to help us out more often as well, so we are really grateful for that! He is so awesome!
Friday:
We were doing some OYMing before an appointment and we were both kind of in another world...we don't like when that happens.  So we had to regroup and we decided that we wanted to have a really good conversation with someone :) be careful what you pray for.  We talk to a really old lady and she stopped for a minute to talk to us.  We told her a little bit about the church and she realized that we were mormons, she asked us if we were from Utah.  We said yes and she pulled out a book about a plant that has been curing all sorts of diseases.  I told her my mom was also really interested in those sorts of things and probably knew about it. (Mom the plant is called Golden Yacca). She offered to give us a book about it but we had to come by her house (that is naturally not a problem for missionaries :)).  We noticed she was also carrying a harmonica and she asked us if she could play us a song :) we agreed of course.  So in the middle of Bielefeld she played us an old German Folk song and then sang the words for us as she danced around a little :) haha oh it was so awesome!  Only on a mission... she is the cutest little old lady! and a fun experience! 
After that we went to our appointment with another eternal investigator but we brought a new member of three years with us.  She is the mother of the little italian girl who was baptized last transfer.  When we got there our investigator had a friend over! (Funny fact, our member was the only German in the room, her friend was Russian, our member was Italian, and we are Americans :) all trying to communicate in German).  The friend was going through some really really challenging times in life and we were able to talk to her about prayer and how much our heavenly father loves her.  It wasn't the lesson we planned but it was definitely what she needed.  And our member was AMAZING!!!  It was her first time teaching with the missionaries and she told some very personal stories and had us all crying :) her testimony is so powerful!  The members are KEY to missionary work.  I really hope both of the women felt of our testimonies and had a witness of the truthfulness of the gospel! 
Saturday:
We met with the Jehova's witnesses that doored into us last week.  We met at there Kings Hall and it was definitely an interesting experience!  They believe that there was an absence of the truth during the dark ages as well.  As we talked about that and shared scriptures about it I could feel the spirit witness of the truth.  And then they started explaining about the many "intelligent" people who had studied the Bible and started their church and it was a sudden change in feeling.  I no longer felt the witness of the Holy Ghost of the truth of the things they were saying.  They explained many things and in many ways they are so close to the truth!  And every time they tried to tell us some way that our church wasn't 100% correct my thoughts were lead to another aspect of the gospel such as the Temple and baptism that made me believe even more that this is the true church of Jesus Christ on the earth today!  They gave us 15 minutes at the end of the lesson and we explained the Book of Mormon briefly and gave simple testimony that we had prayed about it and we know through the power of the Holy Ghost that is is true.  It was SO interesting to see their style of teaching with books and facts in contrast to ours!  The spirit was strong once again at the end as we bore testimony of the Book of Mormon.  They were really friendly men and they wanted to meet with us again in three weeks.  We will try to get a little more in next time :) one of them was really intrigued that we said that we talk to Heavenly Father and recieve answers. 
Sunday:
We had a goal to have 8 investigators at church this week and we prayed really hard for it and believed that it was going to happen.  Unfortunately we only had three investigators at church but I learned a lot!  As we were in church at first I was confused as to why there weren't more people there when we had believed so strongly that they would be there.  Then I was reminded that everyone is given the gift of free agency and we can't take that away, then I was extremely grateful for the investigators that were there!  Then I became really sad that the other people didn't choose to come to church and I wanted to badly to share the joy that I felt with them.  Later in the day we had a lot of appointments right after each other.  We met with four different people/families and all four appointments went through!!! And they all made new appointments out with us! (Which is the definition of a new investigator).  So instead of having 8 people at church we found 8 new investigators this week!  We felt very blessed and Heavenly Father answered our prayers in a way that we weren't expecting!  The church is true! I know it with all my heart!  I have already written a novel this week so I will close quickly by saying that I love being a missionary and I know with all my heart that the Lord is in this work!  It is HIS work!  This is the true church of Jesus Christ and we can return to our Heavenly Father only in and through His gospel!  I love you all and wish you the best in the week to come! Thank you for all of your prayers, love, support, and emails :)
Liebe Grüße,
Sister Smith