Dear Family

This past week was filled with some pretty big milestones in the life of Sister Brooke Terry.

Milestone #1- December 23rd. aka the best day of my mission to date!

    You’ll never believe what happened!!

                The night before, sister Hamner and I decided we'd go to Sonneberg to follow up with the book lady I talked with on the train the other week. I knelt down to say my nightly prayer after planning and said something along the lines of:

“Heavenly Father, this is all on you. We found the address of a Schwimmbad in Sonneberg on the internet, but I have no idea if it’s the one she works at. If it is the one she works at, I have no idea if she'll be working tomorrow...and if she is working tomorrow, I have no idea if we'll be able to find her because I don’t remember her name!!

                Well, the next morning rolled around and I wasn’t feeling too well and we got home later than expected from a member breakfast appointment, so we just decided to bag the Sonneberg plan and stick around the apartment to finish up studies. As soon as we made that decision, I felt incredibly unsettled. 10, 15, 20 minutes passed and the feeling remained, so I looked up at Sister Hamner and said "I think we need to go to Sonneberg"...and as soon as I did so, the unsettled feeling was replaced by complete peace.

                We found the Schwimmbad really easily--it wasn’t too far away from Bahnhoff. As we walked up, the reality of how unlikely it'd be to find her hit me, and I almost wanted to just turn around and go home...but Sister Hamner kept walking, so I did, too. We entered into the front doors, started towards the front desk AND GUESS WHO TURNED THE CORNER AT THAT EXACT MOMENT?!

                I waved and she came over to Sister Hamner and me! We chatted for a couple seconds, but I could see she was busy, so I went in for the kill pretty quickly. I asked if her and her family had time to meet with us and she said "ohhh, I don’t know. My husband really wouldn’t be too interested and my kids are too young to understand anything you’d teach"

I thought, “There is NO WAY everything worked out the way it did today so that she could reject the invitation to meet with us!! So I said "what about you individually? Would YOU be interested to meet with us?"

                AND SHE SAID YES.

                AND SHE GAVE US HER NUMBER

                AND OH MY GOSH I ALMOST PASSED OUT.

                Isn’t the Lord INCREDIBLE?! Look at what He did!!!! The bad feeling I got when we decided not to go & her turning the corner as soon as we got there? NOT COINCIDENCES.

               They were manifestations of the Lords power.

               They were proof of His hand in this marvelous work.

               Get this, though: after she agreed to meet with us, she asked if we wanted to go ice skating...well, neither Sister Hamner or I understood her, so we just smiled and nodded (like missionaries always do when they have no idea what the heck someone is saying to them). She motioned for us to follow her and the next thing we know, we're walking into a rink and the lady is asking us our shoe size so she can grab us skates! I looked over at Sister Hamner and whispered "soooo...we could either admit that we had no idea what she was saying and leave....OR WE COULD GO ICESKATE CONTACTING". We chose the latter (naturally) and gave our He's the Gift cards to the other skaters.

                In summary (I repeat), best day of my mission to date.

Milestone #2- My first German Christmas (:

                We spent Christmas Eve with the Neugebauers...which was SO FUN.

                Tender mercy time: I prayed that morning and asked Heavenly Father to send me a few more angels to help me get through the day (I was having a rough time thinking about family/what fun y’all were having without me)...and He did!! The 3-year-old Neugebauer twins. We were sitting on the floor playing a game, and one of them came up, put his arm around me....then shoved me to the ground and body slammed me! Then the other one jumped on me! And they were messing with my hair and covering my mouth with their hands and probably farting on me too....like Matt, Ben and Seth would have been doing had I been home! It was wonderful!!!

                We spent Christmas day with the Wunderlichs! The Bamburg elders had nowhere to go, so that amazing family took our whole district (8 missionaries) in!! We played games, chatted and had a delicious German goose dinner...and I GOT TO SKYPE WITH YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE. 

 

Oh my gosh.

That healed my heart and broke it at the same time.

I just love y’all so much.

Like, you have no idea.

Milestone #3- I had my first (and hopefully last) disgusting dinner appointment!!!

                It took place the day after Christmas (also a holiday here in Germany).

   The family fed us chicken liver soup.

   Chicken. Liver. Soup.

   And uhhh funny, I didn’t know what it was until AFTER I put a junk load of it in my bowl.

   So congratulations to me, I ate like 7 chicken organs (barf, barf, barf, I WANTED TO BARF).

   Never eating with them again.

Well, that’s all for this week.

I love y’all a lot.

TALK TO YOU IN T-6 DAYS

Love,

Brookieeeeee