FAMILYYYYYYYY

      

              I’m about to tell you a really awesome story. Prepare yourself. Take a seat, if you will.

              Carrie (I sent a pic of the two of us a couple weeks ago) works at a school in our area. At said school there is a speaker/ performer every Wednesday night that the kids are required to go and listen to. She talked to the head master a few months ago and asked if we could come and give a presentation about our church...and the head master agreed! Surprising, right? Anyway, we got there, had dinner...and after we ate, one of the teachers went up to Carrie and told her the head master wanted to see her. When she came back from talking to him, all she said was "guys, be careful“...apparently, Mr. Master Man was nervous our presentation would turn into a preachentation, so we went back to the auditorium, deleted a couple slides from our power point that that could come across as “preachy“ and prayed for the best...and? IT WENT GREAT! Originally, we had a Q and A session planned for afterwards, but decided to dump that idea because we figured no one would care enough to ask anything, but we finished our presentation 15 minutes early, so we had no choice but to have it...and I’m so glad we did!! We were asked some really neat questions, ranging from „why did you decide to serve a mission to “what does your church teach about repentance? “ Even better, Carrie came to church yesterday and said that people have continued to bombard her with questions over the past couple days and one kid even asked her if we could come back!! That one just about killed me. How awesome is that??

                After that, we decided we had to think of some more bomb ideas to get the work moving in this area. We had a correlation and came up with some pretty good ideas!

#1: operation Santa clause

We‘re going put elder Goodrich in a Santa suit, wrap a bunch of Joy to the World DVDs and then hand them out to people around Coburg!

#2: Preach it- Puzzle Style

We purchased a 1000 piece puzzle and wrote down a list of invitations for members to extend to their friends and family. Each invitation is worth a certain amount of puzzle pieces...and the goal is to have the whole thing completed by the 1st of June!

#3: 4 Week Program? Yes Ma‘am.

We‘ll meet with a family once a week for 4 weeks. There’s this really incredible, inspired power point that we’ll use to guide our lessons, which will all be about missionary work. The goal is for the family to have someone for us missionaries to teach by the end of the 4 weeks. Sister Hamner had 5 baptisms in her last area, all of which were direct results of this program.

   Wish us lots of luck!! The work here is incredibly slow...hopefully these ideas are effective!!

                Elder Burger finished his two years of missionary service this past week! It was really hard to say goodbye and picture him at home with his family- especially with Christmas right around the corner. Made for a pretty hard day, for sure. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about Adam and eve, though, and have found comfort and understanding as I have studied their proceedings and related them to my own life.

Home is my Garden of Eden. Just like Adam and ever, however, God needed me to leave.

But why? Why couldn‘t I stay? Why did I have to venture out into this seemingly lone and dreary world?

            For the same reason my first parents couldn’t remain in their beloved garden.

            They needed to progress.

            The needed to grow.

They needed to have certain experiences, develop specific attributes and gain particular understanding, all of which could not/ would not have been obtained had they stayed put in their garden. 

Growth is painful, though.

And progress is hard.

But verses 4 and 5 of How Firm a Foundation have comforted me a lot.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go

The rivers of sorrow shall not thee overflow

For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie

My grace all sufficient shall be thy supple

The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design

Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine

I can’t think of anything more dross consuming and gold refining than a mission. However, I know I won’t be drowned by the deep waters of homesickness and feelings of inferiority.

The lord is with me.

Always and foreverrrrr (napoleon dynamite reference)

I love y’all lots!!!

Talk to you next week!

Don’t forget to pray for meeeeee.

Love, 

Brookie

PS: Nuremburg was a BLAST. Everything was so pretty and sparkly and Christmas-y! The whole time I was thinking “oh my gosh, mom would DIE OF HAPPINESS if she were here right now“. I had my first kinder punch (SO GOOD), my first Nuremburger (I CANT EVEN) and tried marzipan (FINALLY). It’s hard being away from home during Christmas time...but if I can’t be with y’all, I’ve decided that Germany is definitely the 2nd best place to be.

LOVE YOU LOVE YOU LOVE YOU (: