New Adventures and Life Lessons

Splits with other sisters always makes my mind explode with new adventures and life lessons!!  Funny story, so we know that Sister Stoggard doesn't know her way around Düsseldorf very well because she is about 5 weeks old on the mission and we all know that I don't know my way around either, so every single time we got on a wrong train, Heavenly Father put someone in our path to talk and teach to.  We took an Ubahn the completely opposite direction and we ended up talking to the nicest girl I have met in Germany yet!!  She was so nice and easy going.  She gave us grapes to eat and asked really good questions.  I asked her if she had faith.  And she said not really.  I bore testimony about how I didn't either until I was invited to go to church by my best friend.  I told her that little by little my faith grew and the more I acted upon my faith the stronger it got.  She asked how  she could find her faith and how she could build it.  I told her that through prayer we can honestly know what Heavenly Father wants us to do.  I also told her that through reading scriptures we also see how our faith grows.  We introduced the Book of Mormon and of course she had to leave, but she left with a card in her hand with all the information she needs to change her life :)  I am grateful for little experiences like that.  I also am grateful for being lost, but never really being lost.  Heavenly Father is always always with us and I know that from the bottom of my heart.  That happened to us like 3 more times.  Every time we got lost, we taught someone who needed to hear from Him, and they all have cards and a mindful of precious gems to think about :)  Life lesson learned on the split: Put your wallet where you always put your wallet.  For some reason Sister Tuschling did not do this and now her wallet is somewhere in Germany on a train, or in the hands of a very confused German because it has EVERYTHING in it haha.  Lets just say that many people are praying that someone finds it and takes it to the Düsseldorf lost and found at the train station.  I never had this happen to me before and now I really have to rely on my companion :)  Thanks Sister Sprouse!! Once I got back to Dortmund it felt like home :)  And I love that feeling.  We went right away to work.  We met one of our women that we teach and she always takes us out on an adventure.  She took us to our usual park full of beautiful trees where we meet and right in the middle of the lesson, these people in 14th Century dresses and kilts for the men start setting up a circle of candles on the ground!!  We literally stopped our lesson because all 6 of our eyes were on them.  They brought a boombox and started playing music from the Lord of the Rings and Braveheart music.  We literally had no idea what was happening for the longest time.  Then we saw a man (dressed normal but with a skull pirate shirt one) who was blindfolded walking towards a woman who looked like Marian off of Robin Hood: the King of Theives or if you haven't seen that movie, she looked like Princess Laya from Star Wars.  Then a woman across from them, not in the circle full of candles, started reading from a handmade scroll and started reading from it.  Others came to join them and then we realized it was a wedding.  After about 2 minutes, the woman with the scroll was done reading and the husband kissed his bride and they all celebrated.  It was touching but yet kind of odd to see in the middle of a park haha.  I am grateful to be a witness of it.  The lesson afterwards went very well.  She ended up coming to church the next day with 2 of her friends!!  I love little moments of "Where are we right now" to feeling the spirit so strong that the person we teach is in tears because of the power of the Spirit.  I love my mission!!!!  And also Präsident Schwarz asked us last week to start reading to Book of Mormon in German and have it completed by the end of the year!! It is amazing to me how someone who didn't even know one word in German except for Gesundheit (Bless you when someone sneezes) can read a book and know what it is saying in less than 9 months.  Er ist so liebevoll :) Tschüß!!