Week # 4 Miracles of Spandau!!!

Hallo Leute!!!

So mission time goes by so fast, I can't believe I have already been here for a whole week.  And man alive, what a week!

Visitng the concentration camp last week was incredible, I'll try to send home pictures soon.  Achso, I just love being here in Germany and being around so much culture and history!

Spandau is SO prepared.  This used to be kind of a black zone, or a place where people didn't find much success.  And they would always send the newbies here to be trained.  This area just opened up for sisters, and the work is taking off!  Like out of this world!  Sister jardine and I don't have enough time in the week to meet with everyone who wants to be taught #missionaryproblems  Seriously though, what an amazing problem to have!  Can you imagine?!  The people are just so prepared!!  Ach I love it here!!  There are so many people waiting for the gospel, and all I have to do is find them....which is so fun.  The Lord is with His missionaries.

So the language was pretty discouraging this week.  I don't understand anything.....it's like I'm in a different country or something.....???

It was a little hard, but I learned something really cool on exchanges.  On Tausch, Sister Bohne told me that it is actually a wonderful opportunity that we as new missionaries have at the beginning of our mission.  Because we cannot understand, we are able to learn to listen to the Spirit and follow it blindly because that is the only thing we can do.  I have really watched that this week and I have felt my awareness of spiritual promptings grow.  It has been a really cool experience to rely so fully on the Lord.  And I have complete faith that the language will come :)

Really cool experience this week:

So we are teaching this AMAZING family.  I love them so much.  Like more than anything.  They are from Kazikstan and are here for the summer.  We teach them with another family from our ward who is also from Kazikstan here for the summer.  

Ach tangeant --> this family in our ward is SO cool.  I'm pretty 100% sure that the mother is an angel.  And the kids are so cute.  The little boy wears suspenders everyday and only speaks russian.  I just die.  They are such a good example of how to be Christians and they are so excited about missionary work!  It's the best, they do SO much for us!!  It is really humbling being a missionary and working with such amazing people who pray for you and put so much faith in you.

Anyways, back to my story....

So we teach the lesson and the family translates it into russian for our investigators.  Only time I ever understand German is in these lessons.  I guess the Lord helps me understand when I really need it.  So anyways we are teaching and the dad starts to ask a lot of questions and they just  start answering in russian, so we don't really know whats going on.  So We turn to the little ten year old girl who does speak german, and we teach her.  She lost her mom a few years ago, so as we explain the plan of salvation and that she can see her mother again and live with her forever, she just lights up.  We explained the plan and that, just as she was learning from the missionaries here, her mom was learning from the missionaries in the spirit world.  We explained that the Lord wants families to be together forever.  She drew a big heart  around the Celestial Kingdom and said that thats where she wants to live with her mom and dad.  It was one of the greatest spiritual experiences of my entire life.  Everything I was trying to figure out how to say in German, Sister Jardine would say, and everything I said was what she was going to say.  The Spirit is REAL and it was there with us.  I am so blessed to be a missionary.

We see miracles like this everyday here in Spandau.  We have faith and we pray for miracles and they come.  The Lord really really does answer prayers, you just have to ask. It is an amazing thing to be here and to feel and be led by the Spirit everyday.  The work is really on fire here, the Lord has great things in store for the people of Spandau.  Okay well time is up, but I love you all so much!  Send me letters, keep me updated, and know that I pray for you all everynight!  The church is true, and I know that I am doing the work of the Lord.  Please, if you don't know yet, ask the missionaries, they can help you!  I love being here and helping the people here.  It is such a priveledge to serve a mission!  Okay well, be good, be strong, keep the faith, tchüssy!!

Love, Sister Stringham