We spent Wednesday morning in the hospital...and the rest of the day locked inside our apartment. Sister Hallmann woke up urinating blood, so we took a bus to the krankenhaus and partied there for about 2 hours. She's alright...just had an infection of some sort, so they put her on antibiotics and told her to go home. And stay there. For 3 days.
Luckily, I got permission to go on a split with the American Sisters on Thursday! Sister Brough sat inside with my sickly companion and Sister Williams and I taught Ellenore!! At the end of the lesson, we invited her to pray, which she is always willing to do...but only ever says the Lord’s Prayer. Earlier that week, we taught her that prayer is personal—a communication, not a recitation. She didn’t feel comfortable praying like that on Tuesday, but promised she would after our next lesson...AND SHE DID!
There’s something special about hearing someone pray—REALLY PRAY—for the first time. It’s one of the things that has brought me the most joy as a missionary, for sure.
On Friday, we had a lesson planned with a woman named Oshi. One of our primary kids got baptized the Saturday before last, and a member (Schwester Thompson) invited her to come. After the taufe, Sister Hallmann and I invited her to come to church...and she came to that too!! We got her address and set up an appointment. She lives in a village called Rodalben (a little over an hour away). Neither sister Hallmann nor I heard the name called over the train intercom, and we TOTALLY MISSED OUR STOP. 15-20 minutes had passed before we realized we needed to get off and turn around. The train going back didn’t come for another 30 minutes, so by the time we got into the village, we were already an hour late for the appointment. We logged her address into our navi...and found out that we had a 30 minute walk ahead of us. However, that 30 minutes turned into an hour because OUR NAVI IS INCOMPETANT...or so we thought. We finally made it to her street and realized that the apartment number she'd given us didn’t exist. So we called Sister Thompson, who described the building, and sure enough, there it was at the end of the street. As we approached it, both Sister Hallmann and I felt incredibly uneasy BUT WE HAD A POTNETIAL INVESTIGATOR ON THE LINE (no, obviously I didn’t learn anything from The Sarratov Approach). It’s hard to explain, but there was a very real force pushing me in the other direction...which I chose to ignore. We found her name on the klingle, and reluctantly went up to her room. We were standing at her door...and neither one of us was moving a muscle. After about 10 seconds, we both looked at each other and were like "We gotta get out of here". We bolted down the stairs and out of the building, took a look at a sign on the door outside...and found out that the building we were so obviously prompted to leave...was a mental institution.
A MENTAL INSTITUTION.
LIKE REALLY SISTER THOMPSON?
REALLY!?
WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE A ROOM RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR FRIEND BECAUSE DR. SISTER TERRY THINKS YOU ARE INSANE.
We called Sister Eldridge afterwards and she was like "that explains why Sister Thompson was so adamant about not going when I asked if she'd be joining you two for the lesson!"
The members might not care too much about our well-being...but luckily the spirit has our backs!!
Then Saturday rolled around. Ohhhhh Saturday. The Eldridges called in the morning to inform us that there'd be some big left-wing right-wing political demonstrations...and the protesters would be coming right down out street. We walked outside to contact a potential investigator a little while later and were pretty much surrounded by cops. The Eldridges called us back a little while later and were like "umm yeah, we're picking you up and getting you out of Kaiserslautern today" (THE MEMBERS DO CARE— DONT WORRY MOM). We ended up visiting a couple families in the branch who live way out in no-man’s land and never get visitors. CRAZY STORY: The Kalweits (an elderly couple we stopped by on) have a bunch of pictures in their family room. I was going around looking at them, and Brother Eldridge picked one up and handed it to me.
IT WAS A PICTURE OF THE UCHDORF FAMILY.
IT WAS A PICTURE OF THE UCHDORF FAMILY.
THE KALWEITS ARE FRIENDS WITH THEM.
NOT FAIR.
When we got back to Kaiserslautern, we had a lesson with Edison. At our very first lesson with him, he brought two friends along. One was being super immature and laughing/making jokes the whole time, but the other one was actually listening and participating. Edison brought him to church last week, and brought him to the lesson on Saturday too. As we were walking to classroom in the church building, Edison turned to me and said "Hey, he wants to get baptized." I responded by laughing (my body’s natural reaction to SHOCK), but managed to pull myself together and shout "OKAY!" After our lesson with Edison, we turned to Donaldo and said "hey, we're holding a baptismal service on the 11th of April. Will you meet with us and prepare yourself to be baptized on that day?"
AND HE SAID YES!
NOT FAIR.
When we got back to Kaiserslautern, we had a lesson with Edison. At our very first lesson with him, he brought two friends along. One was being super immature and laughing/making jokes the whole time, but the other one was actually listening and participating. Edison brought him to church last week, and brought him to the lesson on Saturday too. As we were walking to classroom in the church building, Edison turned to me and said "Hey, he wants to get baptized." I responded by laughing (my body’s natural reaction to SHOCK), but managed to pull myself together and shout "OKAY!" After our lesson with Edison, we turned to Donaldo and said "hey, we're holding a baptismal service on the 11th of April. Will you meet with us and prepare yourself to be baptized on that day?"
AND HE SAID YES!
HOW EXCITING IS THAT?!
The lord is blessing us SO MUCH!!!! (:
asdkfj;as fkjasfe I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARYYYYYYYY.
Love y’all, lots!!!
Talk to you next week <3
- Brookie
No comments:
Post a Comment