Painting in not my profession.

Liebe Mutter und Vater!

Good morning!! :) How are you? Things are going really well here in Germany..... :) I'm just really, really happy. It's wonderful.

My goodness! You had the Gilmours over!!! I love Sister Gilmour so much. We talk about everything. It's so great. I'm SO happy you are friends. I love what being on a mission has done to me (in many different ways, but especially with relationships with people); I love so much what me being on a mission is doing to (for) my family. :)  It's SO fun.

I really need a German keyboard. Again. It's going to be so weird getting used to an American keyboard again. I'm on the German computer today, and it's so good. I can type so much faster....and I know where the keys are. ;)

Oh, and funny thing.....On this day one year ago, 3. März 2013, I submitted my mission papers. Crazy. And now look where I am.

So. The week! This week was so fun. General things first.

1. We are mapping out our ward. The ward list went from seven pages (last year) to twenty pages (this year). I think there are a number of "missing members"---people who are listed to be under our boundaries, but no one's heard of them for so long. Our job is to go out and find them. That's our project! We accomplished a TON on it this week and are now working on listing out which members live at which Haltestelles (stops) on the U-bahn bzw. S-bahn lines. Because then we can go visit them and find the ones that we don't know anything about (if they're active, less active, don't want any contact, or if they just don't live there anymore). It was tedious, and we spent a good chunk of Friday doing it. We were so tired, BUT! I'm actually really enjoying it. (I've discovered on my mission that I LOVE looking at maps!) And it helped me a TON for Sunday, when I met a lot of people for the first time. And it's helping me figure out the city, too.
2. On Tuesdays, we always go to a rest home/care center place---Altepflegeheim---and we go do Basteln with them. (Basteln is basically doing any kind of craft. I LOVE that word. It describes anything with paper, glue, sewing, ANYTHING.) It was so much fun. We made Fasching hats for these sweet old ladies, and it was a blast just talking with them. :) One of our members lives there.
3. We run for the U6 (U-bahn) almost every day. It takes four minutes to walk to the stop from our apartment.
4. We get fresh bread here. I LOVE IT. So much. I'm going to miss that so much when I go home. So glad that I'm here for a while more. But yeah. They sell fresh bread. And we walked through the market (at the U-bahn stop) on Friday and got Kartoffel brot and brie as our planning treat. It was wonderful. We eat really healthy things. :) 
5. I just really love living in Germany. And also having the transportation system. I love Bahn contacting.

Monday, we did something fun that I've wondered if missionaries ever do. I've really just wanted to try sitting down in the U-bahn and just riding and talking with people. So we did! And it was wonderful, because we didn't need to hurry off the Bahn or anything, we just sat and talked. And it was great. We came home and mapped after that.

The second big project of the week was painting the Hs' new apartment.  After being in Zuffenhausen, we went and helped, and got really messy. :) And it was so fun. (The Hamiltons are from America.) We then went to Sport Abend, which is were we do Zumba-like activities for an hour with Schwester H. So hard, but so fun. :) We changed back into missionary clothes and left.....and it was raining. A lot. So we have a picture of us wet sister missionaries, covered in paint. :)

Here was a wonderful thing: We were planning Wednesday night for Thursday, and we had a lot of time. Didn't really know what to do.  Nothing really felt right. Then, all of a sudden, Sister H called and said, "Can we have your help tomorrow?" And of course we said, "Yes!" Because we had a very open day. So on Thursday, we went and helped paint and got all covered in paint again. :) We grabbed some dinner at Bahnhof, then went up to the Zentrum to eat and get ready for English class.....and realized on the bus up the hill that we didn't have the key---the elders did. So we called them, then just sat on the steps for our dinner hour and talked and talked and talked. Then the elders showed up (they're awesome.) and no one ended up coming to English. So we just went home.

Saturday was awesome. We had a lesson (well, really, a discussion) with X. She's our Chinese investigator, and she is so prepared and so wonderful. Oh, my goodness. She's so open to listening and wants to learn and believe and it is so great. Our discussion wound around a lot of different things, but then we ended up talking about baptism. And she wants to get baptized! We haven't set a date yet. But she wants it, and we want her to get baptized. It was incredible.  

We actually had an interesting conversation on the Bahn. We had to run for our Bahn, so we were panting when we came on. We sat down next to this woman and explained that we'd been running. Then she saw our nametags and said, "Oooh, the Mormons. Well, I don't want to have any kind of conversations, so don't try to talk to me about anything!" And so we backed off and said that was fine, then she told us something that she'd learned about the Mormons (polygamy---everyone brings it up here.), and kind of complained about that until we did explain that it's not in place any more, we don't practice that, etc. It was kind of tense until we understood what she was trying to explain, and then things loosened up when we realized what the issue was. And so then she turned and tried to find positive things to say about us. Then she asked us what the difference is between other Christians and us, so we explained about the Book of Mormon, and then she talked about the Bible and some things that she believed, and it was great, because we believe them, too......and then we got off at the same stop. SO FUNNY. She didn't want to have a conversation about the Mormon Church, and she ended up leading the discussion about the Mormon Church. :) But it made me feel good, because I really think she changed her opinion about Mormons because of that conversation. We really are nice people, not weird, good people who don't try to force our religion down their throats. It was good.

Sunday, we went to church. It was really good. I met a lot of people, and we went to the Gs' home for dinner.

Life is really, really good.

Oh. My obsessions.

1. People. People, people, people. I'm hooked onto figuring people out. Sister Gilmour and I have had some pretty great talks the last week about people. People generally, specific people, about ourselves, about how we work, and so many things.

2. Wind and fire. That's Sister Gilmour and me. It's going to take over this area.

I really love life. Being on a mission is WONDERFUL. I love it so much.   And I love YOU so much! You are wonderful. Thank you for everything you do for me.

Love,

Sister Bethieroo Winters