Mon, Oct 24, 2011

Trisha and her companion

Hello dear family!!!

First of all I want to apologize for causing a scare! That wasn't my intention at all as I'm sure President reassured you. Everything is fine and I thought it was comical. You don´t need to ask for forgiveness, mom! Its really okay :) I wasn´t angry in the slightest, just felt bad that I scared you. But yes, we usually do emails at the church but lately the internet on one has been broken down so we don´t want to spend 4 hours at the church on Pday but I convinced Sis to come to church today because the internet cafe is ridiculously expensive. Like.... a dollar for 11 minutes. so an €uro for 22 minutes. Its kinda crazy. But yes! Everything is wonderful!

Thats super funny that you had your greenie teach the chastity lesson and he was embarrassed. I would´ve spoken, but I think Sister Martinz thought I would´ve been embarrassed too, but its as much part of the gospel as any other topic we teach.

Germany is a melting pot for sure! Seriously, I think people from every country live in little Celle! The people from the Middle east that we teach are Christian, but some don´t have their passports so they have a risk of being sent back to the Middle East so we´re not allowed to baptize them. But some do have passports and so we are strongly encouraged to baptize them.

As for the work on Texas straße, we had a lesson there yesterday and for some bizzare unknown reason Sister Martinz said as we were leaving "When you´re interested, call us and we´ll be glad to talk more about Christ" instead of setting a time we could come again. We never do that, normally we set an appointment, so I don´t know what came over her. Hopefully hopefully hopefully we´ll have a miracle and he´ll call us. Other than that we´re just going to go back in a couple weeks and talk to the other people that had interest so we aren´t too overwhelming. We´ll overwhelm them with the gospel later.

The physical therapy, when I´ve had time to exercise, has been good. This week has been so crazy busy that we haven´t even had time for study. So bad! I got registered as a Celle citizen one day so we didn´t have time to study or exercise, then we went to Hannover one day and then we went to Braunschweig twice. So we haven´t really had time to do anything in the mornings except get ready and leave. But the days we had time, I´m pleased to say that I have done the therapy exercises.

Just curious, who all reads my e-mails (besides the family that you forward it to) Just you and mom or do my dear siblings read them too?

Hallelujah that Rachel wore a different dress to church! Haha, how funny. You should take a picture and send it the next time she wears it, or are you still camera-less? How exactly did it meet its fate? I hope everything goes well with her anxiety. I knew she needed to be treated for it, its really extreme.

Are you called as a Relief Society teacher, mom? The word for Relief Society in German is so evil. It´s "Frauenhilfsvereinigung" meaning "women united to help". Cool huh! Crazy that you talked about the Second Coming. There was a bad earthquake in Turky yesterday, right? We were at an investigator´s house and they were watching the news and it was talking about the earthquake. It really is coming closer and closer to the second coming. I may or may not have slapped my forehead and shook my head when I read about your opera solo in Relief Society. But that´s my mom! I love you for it, even though I may act embarrassed :)

I´ve heard of missionaries being able to Skype, but I haven´t heard if I personally will be able to. We shall see.

Wow, crazy that Steven, Josh, Jeff, and Megan will all be in the MTC at the same time. By the way HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEGAN!

Well, we are really getting taken care of by our members lately. We had 4 eating appointments this week, which is so not normal, and they all sent us home with bags of food. All we need to buy today for groceries is bread and milk. Crazy huh, one lady gave us bags and bags of apples, cuties, tomatoes, etc. And one lady is a missionary mom and you can tell because she gave us warmer gloves, which has been so nice! There´s one member who sends us home with cakes every Sunday. Its so sweet. We´re hoping we don´t plumpen up. We have another couple eating apps this week too. Crazy!

I dunno if you´ve sent the package, but one last request (I think)- hot chocolate bitte? The hot chocolate here is NASTY and its nice after a long cold day to have a cup of hot chocolate. Thank you for always being willing to take requests! :)

Joelle is engaged. What the devil??

Random: we cornered and pet a hedgehog the other day. I have pictures. Its pretty cool :)

We moved Kenneth´s baptismal date to November 5th, but I still think it´ll be later than that. He needs a testimony of Joseph Smith still and needs to stop cancelling our appointments. He cancelled both this week. We stopped by randomly in the week and he didn´t even realize his baptism was scheduled for this week. Oh dear. We´re going to talk to him about it better tomorrow.

So I got a letter from my branch president´s wife at the MTC because Elder Holland came and spoke the DAY after we left the MTC so she sent his talk. And I´m just curious because it says in the talk that we´re not allowed to give up on this because of all the people that have died for the gospel, the most recent being four hours ago.....what does that mean? Did someone die for the gospel on August 29th? Fill me in please!

The intense part of this week was that we had "Golden Tausch", meaning the trainers had training on how to be better trainers so the trainers were companions in Hannover and the newbies were companions. That means Sister Laubaugh and I were companions for a day in Celle. It was super intense, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could actually understand. I think I just became dependent on Sister Martinz speaking and didn´t really listen because I knew that she could speak to them. But I was forced to listen when both Sister Laubaugh and I have little German experience. We even were able to make an appointment! It went a lot better than I was anticipating.

Well everything is going well in Celle! I love the work so much and I´m so glad I can be here!! I can´t get over it. Even if I just make someone happier I feel like I´ve been successful! I know that Christ loves us and wants us to use the Atonement! Use it! I love my Savior and I´m glad I can serve Him.

I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!

Love, Sister Niebergall


P.S. If you haven´t sent those letters yet, you should consider doing that. You have a missionary checking the mailbox every day anxiously waiting. :) Love you!