Miracles, miracles, miraclessss!

Dear Family,

Oh my heavens, this has been a week FULL of pre-Christmas miracles. I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s start with my debit card, shall we? I lost it. I searched and searched and searched all around my apartment and couldn’t find it anywhere. After about 20 minutes, I knelt down and said a prayer something along the lines of „Heavenly father, if my debit card is around here, please help me to find it so I can stop wasting time. If it’s not here, however, help me to come to that conclusion quickly so that I can call someone and have them cancel it before someone finds it and spends all my beautiful money.“ AS SOON as I got up off my knees, sister Hamner walked into the bedroom and said „have you checked your skirt pockets? “

Guess where my debit card was?

In a skirt pocket.

No problem is too small for our loving heavenly father! He is willing and ready to help us with anything and everything!!

Next miracle story.

Herr Neugebauer. His wife and kids are members, but he is very much an atheist. Sister Hamner and I ran into him at the bus station last week and had a really great conversation. Our church building housed a blood drive on Friday- and we saw him there, too! We sat together and talked a little bit more. At one point in the conversation, he asked us what our plans were for Christmas. I told him we didn’t have any.

This man has never wanted anything to do with the missionaries before...but he talked with his wife and now we‘re spending heilige abend with him and has family! Pretty awesome, right!?

Miracle story #3.

We were on a train headed to Nuremburg and I sat by this lady who was reading. I sat there for a while, debating whether I should disturb her or not...but she kind of intimidated me a wee bit...so I chose not. I scooted over and started talking to the lady in the seat across the aisle from us. When that lady got off the train, I sat back down next to the reading lady, and as soon as I did, she shut her book, looked up at me and asked „so, where are you from?“ and then we talked. For a really long time. I asked her about her profession (she does a bunch of different things), her family (she loves them so much), and her beliefs (she has none)...and she had lots of questions for me, too!! She wanted to know about the church, about my life as a missionary, about what we teach people. At one point, she asked „so what made you decide to leave your family and serve a mission? “

And I just sat there for a second, not quite knowing what to say...but the spirit whispered „go on, Brooke. Tell her why you’re here“. So I did. I said something like: “In the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, we know that we can live with our families for eternity. This knowledge has brought me so much peace and happiness, and I’m here because I want to share that knowledge with others, so that they can experience the same joy I’ve been blessed with my whole life“

I wish you could have seen this look in her eyes.

This lady isn’t religious.

She doesn’t believe in God.

She doesn’t believe in Christ.

But she believes in family.

She loves her husband and two little boys more than anything in the world...And her eyes lit up at the idea of being with them forever.

She invited me to her office so we could talk some more-Sister Hamner and I are going to stop by tomorrow!! WISH US LUCK (:

Lastly (this one is really, really good. Take a seat)!

Let me tell you a little about the Schlitmeyer family. Sister Schlitmeyer is the relief society president in our branch. She has two super cute teenage daughters and a husband who is not a member. They’ve been married for 20 something years- and he’s come to church with him family every single one of those Sundays! He’s taken the discussions, too, but has never progressed towards baptism.

We had a lesson with him and his family last Sunday. We planned on having this incredible lesson where we’d read the living Christ, bear testimony about the savior and invite him to take the lessons so that he could come closer to Him and he‘d say yes and we‘d all just be so happy and smiley and uhhh yeah no. That’s definitely not what happened.

Dinner took way longer than expected and both sister Hamner and I were mentally preoccupied thinking about when the next train would come and how we‘d get our bikes from the church when we still had 4 hours of studies to do. We read a little from the Living Christ, but Herr Schlitmeyer would go off on tangents and ask us unrelated questions and I was just quiet because nothing was going according to plan and I had no idea what to say.

I was sitting there, praying that Heavenly father would bless me to know what Herr Schlitmeyer needed to hear, when I heard a small voice in my head saying “he needs to hear your testimony, Brooke“.

So I gave it to him.

And guess what happened next?

Nada.

Nothing.

My testimony, our lesson, all of our prayers had no effect on him at all.

Or so I thought.

Before we left that night, we committed the family to read all of 3rd Nephi before the 1st of the New Year. Sister Schlitmeyer agreed, but the rest of her family just kind of half-heartedly nodded. WELLLLLL...they walked into church yesterday and we asked how their reading in 3rd Nephi was going....AND HER SHLITMEYER HAD READ 20 CHAPTERS.

20.

SO YOU UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFACANCE OF THIS!?

HES NEVER READ FROM THE BOOK OF MORMON BY HIMSELF BEFORE...AND HE JUST READ 20 CHAPTERS.

IN ONE WEEK.

I’m not going to lie. I peed myself a little bit when he told us that. Or maybe it was a lot a bit. I don’t know. It was all a blur. A beautiful, wonderful, glorious blur. 

I love y’all so much!!!

Keep the prayers and emails and love coming!!

Love, Sister Terry