Herne

I can't believe November is almost half way over! Sister Williams and I are nearing the end of our first transfer together in Herne! We have had a ton of fun adventures and experiences here together.

I am learning a lot about finding people and talking to people. I think one of my favorite things to do so far, is watch peoples expressions. For example, I'll be sitting on a bus, and a lady will get on and sit right across from me- I'll smile at her, and when she smiles back I usually say hi and ask her how her day is going. It is so funny to see how they react! Because it is always one of two things, they just look annoyed, and I can imagine the conversation in their head goes "why are you talking to me? normal people aren't nice! stop it!" or - and this is more frequent they are surprised and smile really big, and say its great thank you! <--- that right there is a favorite moment of mine. Because then we can actually talk and have a conversation and almost always it leads into missionary work. I have been thinking a lot about the preach my gospel chapter, "teach when you find, find when you teach". And how important it is to share your beliefs where ever you are. We don't need to set apart a specific time to find people if we are finding people all the time. I was thinking about the example of the savior- He took every opportunity to teach, he didn't wait until he had scheduled the time for it. That is one of my goals- to teach the way the savior taught.

We called up a man that we contacted last week on the bus and were able to meet up with him at the bahnhof. He is from Togo Africa and wanted a french book of Mormon. I marked one up and brought it to him, we sat down on a bench for about 20 minutes and explained to him what we as Mormons believe. At one point I felt impressed to ask him, why he even wanted to meet with us. Because at first when we contacted he didn't have any interest- but something changed his mind. He said that when I pulled out the book... he began to think. He said it started to make sense that there was another book that went along with the bible- just like the Koran. And he wanted to know which one was true- the Mormon book or the Koran. And that something inside of him wanted to find out more- just like a spark. We gave him the book and he said he would read for a couple days and then call us back!!! As we walked home from that appointment I was so happy. It was a little bit late, and the stars were shining and I turned to Sister Williams and pointing up said,
 "Sister, sometimes its nice to know that God is in charge of his work- and that we are his instruments"

Sister Shurts

from the scribbled notes of a sister missionary

Lost at the train station

Marking up Books of Mormon to hand out

A very funny German cigarette ad

What happens to missionaries who don't obey the rules!