I am not creative at the moment

Meine Familie,

So a big happy birthday goes out to Lindsay and Grandma Matthews!!! Hope it is a great one!!!

This week was a great week... I know I say every week but I will say that some weeks are not as good as others. We did have a great week as far as setting baptism dates up though!! That is always a plus to a week.

We started out the week playing ping pong with the Elders in our district for p-day and it was really fun. That day it also snowed and it was the first snow that I have seen in Cottbus all winter...It only stayed for like half of the day though and so we are back to having no snow, but it still is pretty cold.

On Tuesday we saw Monika. We went over to Schwester Schmidt's home for lunch and Monika came as well. It was a really good appointment. Monika is friends with a couple members in our ward and is just curious about what we believe. We started meeting with her back in November or December and she is athiest, but when we meet we give spiritual thoughts for the members but they are alway focused on things that we want Monika to hear and learn. So we are teaching Monika, without her even really knowing it, but it is really good because it turns into a discussion and the members get really involved in teaching Monika. We are taking it slow, but we have a good relationship with her.

Frau Baruk is kind of getting on my nerves though. She has been investigating this church for 6 years and has a new baptism date every year...this time it is for Easter, but I do not really know how much of a desire she really has. She keeps saying, oh well, I still need to talk to my husband about it. And well, I just keep thinking that pretty soon if she does not talk to him, I will just ask him. So it is just the same old story with her that I believe every set of missionaries for the past 6 years has had with her.

We did go to choir practice that night and I wish I knew her name exactly...but Katrin's mom comes to choir all the time. Katrin is a young mother who is married to a member in our ward and she and her mom are not members. Her mom drove us home after choir practice and just started showing interest in what we do as missionaries. . . we are going to start taking advantage of these weekly rides home from her to get to know her better and take the opportunity to teach her. She is super awesome and comes to Sacrament meeting every week now...she says she loves how the people are so friendly in our church and actually talk to you...whereas in her church you just go and leave and nobody talks to you.

We taught German class this week and AB, DJ, Chrys, and Sean all came. The class went really good and we are going to start doing a weekly German class with them. AB, DJ, and Sean are going to come all the time...although it was kind of funny when I asked what day works best for everyone...we all agreed on Wednesday and when I asked Chrys if that works for him as well, he looked at me and said, "Actually, I decided to take a break from y'all for awhile." So I guess now I really do not have to worry about Chrys because me and Sister Noyes call it the break up...haha... and that he is no longer coming. So right now the class is just AB, DJ, and Sean. It is alot of fun though to teach this German class.

We vistied Anna this week and had a good appointment with her. We taught the third lesson about baptism and so on, but she said that she does not believe there is only one way to return back to God. She does not come to our church because she cannot understand and so really, she wants to come to our church, but is willing to wait until she is back in Hungary to find out. She is really awesome though and wants to learn and find out more.

We met with Soloman this week as well. I have met with him once before, but it was back in the beginning of December. We taught him the third lesson and he says he will think about baptism. We set a time in March and he says he will pray about it. He is so cool and so golden. He has a great testimony on Jesus Christ...he just always says that he does not have faith. But he wants to learn and find out. He is really awesome.

We also met with Chiyu this week of course. He is doing really good and we were so close to getting him to commit to a baptism date. But he says he will talk about it next time with us. We played a game with the baptism interview questions and had him teach us..so we can see where he is at and what to help him with...right now he says he knows there is some kind of greater power and spirit, but he cannot say for sure right now if it is God and he also has a hard time with Joseph Smith. So now we know and we know where to put more of our focus on.

We also had a Relief Society activity and it was white elephant activity. It was a lot of fun and since I do not need anything I gave the gift I ended up with to someone else. It was some kind of book. We went and visited with Bruder Gröschke this week as well. He made us pancakes...but it is really funny because Germans make them really thin and so I told him that Americans make them thicker...he says that next time he is going to make them thicker since I am American. It was actually pretty funny converstaion while we were there.

Now Sunday was an awesome day. . . Every Sunday during Sunday School we go into a different room with the Bishop and teach Katrin (who I mentioned earlier) and her husband (a member). This time we went into the normal class with Jeff (the husband) and Katrin went into the bishops office to talk with him...I knew that the subject would be on baptism because bishop was planning on talking to her about it and sure enough after church, bishop pulled me aside and told me that Katrin has agreed to baptism, but wants to have all the lessons before she makes her final decision and so we are going to start teaching her the lessons...I am so excited!!!

So, I am looking forward to another great week and well we have zone conference on Friday in Dresden and so I can see if I can get a picture by that statue you mentioned Mom. Also I was wondering if it would be possible to mail me one or two more things of deodorant...One should be fine...I have one full one, but maybe one more just in case to last me to the end.

Anyways, I hope everyone has an awesome week and I am just trying to get over a cold right now, but things are going great!

love Sister Britt