Goodbye Rostock

Meine familie,

"But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: For it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye speak, but the spirit of your Father which speaketh in you."  Matthew 10: 19-20

Well my predictions were right... I am being transferred. As much as I love Rostock, it is my time to go, for the Lord needs me elsewhere. I have grown a lot here in Rostock...considering my very first three transfers were here...four months. I am being tranferred to Leipzig...check it out on the map.  I have a long train ride to go.  First time I will be by myself for a long period of time!! Five hours!  My new companion seems super cool, as I have talked to her on the phone...her name is Sister McCall and she is from Seattle Washington...would ya look at that! I am super excited to serve in Leipzig....they have two sets of elders there and also a senior couple.  They also have two wards.  It will for sure be a change from Rostock...I love this tiny little branch over the Netto, but, I will actually be in a regular church building now.

Before I forget...info for Mothers day...I actually will not be calling y'all. In this mission y'all are to call us. So, the time you can call me is at 4:00 p.m (German time).  I think it is around 9:00 y'alls time. The number you are to call is the church buildings phone ... . So I will be very much looking forward to y'alls phone call to me!! lol.

Anyways... back to my week.  We had an interesting week this week, but super fun.  We had a crazy appointment with these two awesome black guys...Marco and Philip. The appointment was going good and then their drunk friends came over and it got interesting.  Then, when we were leaving, this guy saw us walk out of the apartment and gave a little wolf whistle at us and, oh my goodness... then said, "Hey pretty ladies" and gave Marco and Philip a thumbs up.  As soon as we turned the corner we heard Marco and Philip trying to tell the guy that we did not do anything...that those girls are just from the church.  Yeah, it was funny.  Keep Thomas in your prayers.  We have not had contact with him for two weeks.  We are really trying to get hold of him.

So, on Wednesday I went to Greifswald for exchanges.  I was there with Sister Calder.  It was so much fun because I got to ride a bike for the first time on the mission and I absolutely loved it. I love bike contacting down the street...it is so much fun.  Sister Calder and I celebrated my 6 month mark and we raced down the street a couple time on our bikes. It was a blast.  Then before heading back to Rostock, we got together with Elder Thorley and Reisen and did morning sport...we played soccer...lots of fun.

Anyways, yesterday was my last Sunday in Rostock...I will miss it.  I have improved on my German so much, but everyone is telling me that Leipzig is practically another language over there. ... oh good. lol. Well, I am looking forward to it.  I may not speak the language the best (all the ward members tell me I have improved so much and I can actually understand way more) but, the most important thing I learned was listening to the spirit. Without the Holy Ghost I could never be able to say what I want to say to the people in German. Yesterday I was to give my testimony since it was my last sunday, I actually cried a little. But the ward members gave me hugs and I will for sure keep in touch with them!! They are just so precious to me... and I pray that one day Thomas and Noriama both get baptized.  I never got to see my baptism in the Baltic, but one day I will hear of theirs.

Anyways... I cannot wait to talk to y'all on Sunday and just remember you will be calling me about 4:00 p.m. my time. 

I love y'all

Sister Anderson....

Froh Ostern

Date: Monday, April 25, 2011, 3:10 AM

Meine Familie,

This week has been an awesome week!!!!
And a very happy Easter (Froh Ostern) for all of y'all.

This week as been awesome!!! We went to the zoo as a district on Monday and it was so fun... as you can maybe see from the pictures. The zoo here is so cool and big and it really does feel like you are walking through the wild.  I love it.

So, we have gotten contact with Noriama... That is the awesome woman that ran up to us on the street from Cuba. She is so cool.  We met with her this week and she was just full of questions about how we can dress, if we are allowed to date and wear makeup, and everything like that.  It was so cute.  She totally believes this is the church for her, but she cannot come to church for at least a month, so we are just meeting with her.  But, once she is able to come to church, she is totally going to be baptized.  Love it.  And, she was like "give me anything and everything that you have in Spanish...I want to know everything.  She is also really sick and so the elders are going to give her a blessing and she is like...yeah I want one. lol.  Love her.

Anyways...I saw Judith for the last time this week...she has left to Israel for a year...but I will be keeping in contact with her.  She is doing awesome and will for sure stay strong even though she will not really have any contact with the church.  We met with Maria and Schwester Hageman today and they are doing great. One day I am sure Maria will be baptized...but she is just a little 10 year old right now.  Her mother is not active.  Because she went inactive around the time Maria was born and she put Maria in a Catholic school, Maria was baptized as a Catholic.  Now that Schwester Hageman wants to come back into the church, she is having a difficult time getting Maria to come because Maria has grown up Catholic.  We will keep meeting with the Hagemans though and help Maria realize the differece between her baptism and the baptism by the proper authority.

We do not have cars in Rostock for elders or sisters.  It is just all public transportaion and walking.  We have one family in our ward who have always been members, and the others range between 5 months to 15 years or more.  People do talk about life when the DDR was in Germany...that is when the wall was up.  I am in the East side which had never really been exposed to religion until the wall came down.  People seem to make it sound like life was better with the DDR because it was safer, but the members here are so grateful that they are able to now be a part of the amazing church.  It really is cool.

Anyways, Easter was so fun...we spent it with the Elders at the Eckloffs home.  I do have pictures but I will try to get those sent to y'all soon. We went to the bay and walked around and had some yummy food and just visited and enjoyed the beautiful Easter weather in the country. 

Kimberly will be an aweome Relief Society president and I am so excited for her. Wow...we have a bishop and a Relief Society president in the family...what is Eric's calling? 

Yay for Grandma!!!! Cancer free!!!!! Yippie!  And no, I did not know about Shauni's friend...tell me more about that.  I loved the story from Eric about his bapitsm...too bad he is not in the Berlin mission.

Any ways... the work here is amazing and I am falling more and more in love with the work and how our message is so true.  I know this is true and I am grateful that my family is being blessed back home and people here are being blessed too....I love y'all!!!!  Keep on doing missionary work...the members really are the key to a lot of things!!!  I love y'all so much.  I am going to try and write a paper letter this week!!!   By the way, transfer calls are on Saturday.  I may be getting transfered...just be aware of that...so if you mail something this week....I may or may not get it.  By next Monday, I will know for sure and transfer day is next Tuesday!!!  I love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sister Britt Anderson

ps...dad is so funny...his whole email was about food. lol. I miss brisket!!!

Eventful week

Meine Familie, 
 

This week I will say was much better than last. First of all . . . our investigator Thomas is doing so awesome. The last time we met with him he walked in and said "I want to say the prayer this time". We were stunned at this and were so happy to hear him pray at the beginning of our appointment. He is doing awesome and we are really praying to get him on a baptismal date. . no later than this week. I am so excited about this and that through teaching him I can really see how the gospel blesses lives.

 

A member we met with this week was RongLing, she is from China. Awesome girl and she is just really super stressed about school and so we try to stop in every once in a while to see her and give her a little spiritual thought. We also met with Sch. Schreiner and Judith. Judith is back from Scotland, but is leaving this Friday to go to Israel for a year. We are really worried because she has only been a member since December and will not have church all the time in Israel.. . the closest thing to her is the BYU center  and that is 2 and half  hours away. 





On Saturday night we celebrated Sister Jeffery’s 25^th birthday. We went with the Elders to Petri Keller. .. it was the coolest place ever. It is only open on nights and is this old medieval restaurant. We had to go down underground to get to it. . . like a dungeon on a castle.. . and whatever you order you have to use your hands to eat. . .they only give you a bib and a knife and at the end they come and wash your hands by pouring water over them. That is not all. . . I ordered a bread soup bowl. . yes, I had to eat potato soup with my hands. . . it was so bad. Lol. At the end they give you a couple medieval games to do and if you win then you get a surprise. . none of us won, so I do not know what the surprise is. Then, when you are ready to pay they bring you three dices. … each person rolls. If you roll three ones then you get your food for free. If you roll three sixes then you have to get up on the table and dance until you make the waitress or waiter laugh. If you roll a straight you have to take your cups back to the kitchen your self. Well. . . I almost rolled three sixes. That was scary. . I got two sixes and a five. So glad I did not have to dance on the table. Lol. Lots of fun, we then went back to the church and had some cheese cake that I made for her birthday.

 

Sister Jeffrey's 25th birthday

Any ways, We also had district conference (stake conference) on Sunday. Elder Gesseti, ( Q. of the 70) spoke.  He is Italian. And it was way cool. I will have to forward Sister Pimentel's email because she sent me the picture of all the missionaries in my zone with him. Any ways it was way cool Our zone leader. . Elder Papeo. . he is from Italy as well, translated as Elder Gesseti spoke into German from Italian. It was cool.

 

Then Sunday night, back in Rostock, was really interesting. We got invited to go to a Jehovah's Witness Easter Service with the Elders. We went and my goodness, after that I realized there is for sure no doubt that our church is true… every thing we teach is just simple and makes sense. It was for sure an experience. . and here we were sitting in our rivals church. People liked swarmed us too. . . and were extra friendly to us because we were special guests. It was for sure weird sitting in there. We did see an investigator family there, the Zecerovic family. They are the gypsy family. They saw me and asked us to come by again. I was glad I got to see them there. Most likely I will never step foot in one of their churches again. Every thing they taught was just weird and the way they do sacrament is different too.  It was funny though. .. They purposely set us and the elders by some of their strongest members. Lol. And while the preacher was talking, Sister Jeffrey pulled out her Book of Mormon to look something up and the lady sitting next to her scooted away from her because of the book. Lol. It was funny.

 

Any ways… way to go Neil for losing weight. And as far as conference. . . we do not get satellite in Rostock and so we have to go to another city. So yeah. . the members go as well.

 

Easter is coming and I am so excited. Yes, Everyone has Easter trees here and they are decorated with Easter egg ornaments. I bought a little one for each of y’all. … and ornament. They are cool. I will have to take a picture of one of the trees.

 

As far as a package goes. . . no you really can not get graham crackers here in Germany.. but you do not have to send me any… Swedish fish would be awesome though. . . you can not get those here. But when you send me a package.. send it to the mission office… mainly because there is only two more weeks of this transfer and I am most likely getting transferred. I do not know what is going on for Mothers day because we are supposed to make arrangements in the city we are in right now, but if I get transferred I do not know what those arrangements are.

 

Anyways. I love y’all

 

“Let us run with patience the race that is set before us”   Hebrews 12:1

 

Sister Anderson

He never said it would be easy ... Only that it would be worth it.

Meine Familie,

 

So first of all. . I got Bishop Gilmer's letter. I really do not know if I will be able to go to Berlin. If I can I would have to get special permission. I would love to go there, but it is very expensive and a 2 and a half hour train ride. Maybe I will get transferred there. So, I do not know if I will be able to visit those people.

 

This has been a week of struggles and not every thing going according to plans. Our investigator, Thomas, is way cool. We were going to get him on a baptismal date, but we did not feel like we needed to push him during our last appointment. We are still shooting for a baptism for him on the 30th. Pray for us. He is totally ready he just needs to come to church for the next two Sundays and he will be a rocking member. He totally wants to find out if it is true. . we just need to help him with prayer because he feels weird praying by himself. 

 

We also did a blitz of the city Güstrow with the Elders. That is a place where we do not get out to very often so we decided to spend a day of finding there. No success, but we did get to see the awesome castle. I think that was a plus.  

 

We also had a ward game night that the owner and his family of this one game shop in town came and brought alot of their games. . It was so fun and a great opportunity for us missionaries to get to know this family.  Hopefully one day they will decide to meet with us. 

 

We extended a baptismal invitation to Maria Hageman. I made a hopstotch game so we can teach her better. She was so into the game and was getting all the questions right. But she just will not be baptized. The biggest thing is that she goes to a Catholic school and all her friends are Catholic. One day she may decide to come to our church. I really hope so. She is such a cute girl.

 

We also had a Relief Society activity that we made Easter crafts. It was a lot of fun. I made a candle and a little box. . I will have to take pictures of the crafts I did.

 

This week was a really hard week and we barely had any appointments because alot fell out. Bruder Schmidt also broke his toe. This coming week will be so much better. . . We already have some awesome appointments planned.

 

This is such a short letter, but I really do not know what to say. It makes me sad too because I want to be able to tell y'all everything that is going on. But this has been a really slow week for us. For p day today we are going with the elders to the Easter market. . . I am so excited for all the yummy food and for the rides. Most of all the bumper cars. It will be awesome.

 

Anyways   I love y'all

 

Sister Britt Anderson

Baltic Baptism???

Meine Familie,

Sister Jeffrey and me

This has been such an amazing week and it started off on the best note ever. So last Monday after pday was over Sister Jeffrey and I were doing some OYMing (which means open your mouth) so we were just talking to people on the street. Around 8:30 at night we were walking through Innerstadt (which is like the city square) and I was kind of getting a little down because we have not yet made out an appointment. I look over and I see the Elders sitting on a bench in Innerstadt with a guy. They waved to us to come over. . . so we walked over there and we met the guy they were talking to.  His name was Robert. Elder Cox asked us if we had a Polish Book of Mormon.  We replied that we have one in our apartment. The Elders wanted one tonight for the guy because he was only in Rostock for a day. . He and some friends were doing a European Catholic church building tour to see all the cool church buildings. He was from Poland and so we told the Elders to meet us in like an hour or so by our apartment so we could get them the Book of Mormon. Just after 9:30 we were sitting on a bench waiting for the Elders and Robert to walk up. . sure enough they did. Robert's eyes lit up as he took the Book of Mormon in his hands. He was so excited and immediately asked if he could say a prayer like how we pray. We all enthusasticaly said yes. So us four missionaries and Robert sat down on the bench and Robert began to pray. The spirit was so strong and I remember thinking that there really are people out there ready and open to our message. We walked him back to his hotel with the elders and took a picture with him. I need to get that picture from Elder Elmer still. But it was so cool because Robert was holding that Book of Mormon in our picture looking like he just got baptized or something. It is sad that we will not see Robert again, but I know he will find the church in Poland. He was a Monday night miracle for us and the Elders. It was the most amazing thing ever. It made me realize the simplicity of the gospel and how wonderful it really is. When we testify of the truth people will know and the ones ready will come our way.

Statue representing a Greek God

Now as far as Noriema goes. She was that awesome lady that came up to us on the street that I wrote about last week. We were suppose to have an appointment with her on Tuesday, but she was not able to make it so we are setting up an appointment for this week. But Tuesday we had an awesome appointment with this new investigator. I will tell y'all about him. We found him on the street last Saturday or Sunday and it took us forever to make out an appointment with him, but we finally did and set it up to be on Tuesday at 7:00 in Innerstandt by the statues. So Tuesday came and already that morning we had three fallin out appointments and Sister Jeffrey was sick so we went on splits with the senior sisters. Sister Oberg and I showed up at innerstadt to wait to see if Thomas shows up. I was really nervous because Sister Oberg does not know any German and so I would have to try and teach and introduce the Book of Mormon in German all by myself. I had some doubt though that Thomas would show up. That morning we had some pretty promising appointments and they fell out, so i was thinking the same thing would happen with Thomas. A few minutes before 7:00, Thomas rode up on his bike. I was in shock. . he came. So he came and sat next to me on the bench and I began to introduce the Book of Mormon to him. I really saw the gift of tongues come into play as I really tried to understand what Thomas said and as I taught him. He was super eager and excited to start reading in the book. I set up another appointment with him on Thursday at the church. So Thurdsay we went to the church to meet Thomas and sure enough he showed up again. We taught him a whole first and showed the Restoration film. He was so open to everything and we invited him to be baptized. . He said he did not know the answer yet, but he really wants to find out. He prayed at the end of our appointment and he was so nervous because he said he has never prayed before, but he loved the feeling. We then met with him for a third time this week on Saturday. He came to the appointment and told us he has already read 24 pages of the Book of Mormon since our last appointment. We were so impressed. We were so excited as we taught him a third lesson and then talked about the sacrament and showed him the chapel. He then stayed for our ward activity of ping pong and loved the members. We are meeting with him tonight for the fourth time and are teaching him a 2nd lesson and are committed on setting up an baptism date for April 30th with him this week. I am so excited. Here I thought that one lady was totally our golden and then she falls out . . only for me to discover that someone I first doubted is truly the Golden investigatior. I am so excited and I will most likely get to see my baptism in the Baltic!!!!!!!!!!!!

We also had interviews in Neubrandenburg this week and that was fun. President Pimentel and I talked in our interview about wonderful uplifting things. He is an amazing mission president.




Schwerin, Deutschland

 

Castle at Schwerin

As far as general conference goes. . . We were able to watch Saturday morning session in English at our church building on Saturday night at 6:00 and then Sunday we had to go to Schwerin. We got up at 5:00 on Sunday morning to meet up the the elders and senior sisters to go catch our train to Schwerin. We got there at 10:30 and then at 11:00 they were showing the priesthood session Sunday morning. . so I got to watch that. Then at 2:00 they showed the Saturday afternoon session and then at 6:00 we watched half of the Sunday morning session. . which was the only one we got to see live. and then we had to go catch our train back to Rostock. So those are the sessions we were able to see. They were all super amazing.

And I just want to say that I am super excited for Easter. Easter is a big holiday here in Germany. Everone has easter trees. They decorate their trees in their yards or inside with these Easter eggs. and then right now in Innerstadt they are setting up an Easter market and in the stores it is just filled with Easter goodies. I am amazed at all the Easter stuff. It is super cool and I cannot wait until the huge Easter market is open to see what all they have!!!

Anyways. I love y'all!!!

Sister Anderson