Deutschland hat mein Herz für immer!

Hello my lovely family.

I will just say right from the beginning that this week we were SICK! AUGHAIHGIAHGIASBFKL! Dang it! That was so hard for me to stay inside when I know how little time I have left. But we still managed to get a lot done, seeing as we were sick.

We had an eating appointment with Schwester Raezke and she made ham, potatoes, brussel sprouts (no rot khol this time), and a dessert, but I can´t remember what it was. Tonight is my last eating appointment with her and I´m thinking she´s going to go all out. We´ll have to see. By the way I have absolutely no idea if this is my last e-mail or not. I would assume this is the last one.

Tuesday we had an eating appointment and we ate chili. That is pretty much something you should NEVER give missionaries. It´s tasty, but it is painful. Then we went to Schwester Bruhn´s house (the one that gave us all the referals that one time). The poor woman. Her teeth had all just barely fallen out a couple days before and it really aged her. It was pretty traumatizing for her because she´s used to being this really young looking older woman (like I would guess she´s 59 years old, but she´s 73), but now she feels so old and it was so traumatizing on her brain that she became forgetful and, yeah. It really aged her. She asked me the same question like 3 times (if I had written in her missionary book). It was really sad to see. I don´t know what to do for her. Then we went to another less active member´s house, who we´ve never met before. She lives pretty much in the boonies and she has really bad cancer and she´s had it for 10 years. She´s only 40. She is so cool though. She is a music teacher and she plays every brass instrument and is teaching herself the piano and she had tons of music and tons of CD´s, so of course, we had to jam. It was a lot of fun. She also told us all her concerns about the church- the very first concern was that she didn´t know if Joseph Smith was a prophet. Then she said she didn´t like that we say we´re all about free agency and making our own decisions, but then we have so many commandments. She vented about that for a long time. I really really wanted to say "If you know Joseph Smith is a prophet, then you´ll know that these commandments aren´t just rules he made up, but they´re from God." But for some reason I was too scared to say it. I was afraid of offending her and her not liking the Sisters. But now that I look at it, I don´t need to worry about offending someone when I feel prompted to say something. The spirit would testify and maybe help her testimony. Bummer. But I´ve learned a lesson from that.

Thursday our members were awesome and brought us the food (A soup with rice and chicken and dumplings) to our house and gave me a priesthood blessing, because I HAVE to get better, I can´t just sit around the apartment on the last weeks of my mission. I didn´t know if I should go to this other appointment with a less active member that we haven´t met yet, but we´ve cancelled on them so much that we decided not to cancel again. We went and found out that they don´t come to church because their son died in an accident and then they stopped believing in God. The spirit led us so much to say exactly what they needed to hear. It was such a neat experience to not have a clue what I was going to say, but opening my mouth and it was filled with words from our Heavenly Father. I don´t even really remember what we said, but I know we invited them with all of our hearts just to pray and ask Heavenly Father is there. I hope they did. It was a neat experience. She was from the Philipines. CooL!

Friday we had another appointment with a less active member, Bruder Brockmann, the man with the daughter (Nadja) with special needs. She was looking forward to us coming so much, so I´m glad that we went. She is so cute. It´s so sad, her mom disowned her because she has special needs and wants nothing to do with her, but Nadja wants so badly to have women around her, so I´m glad we can be there for her. Except she was sad that I´m leaving. That was really hard. She gave me a hug and told me she´d miss me. That was way sad. She´s so sweet. I hope she can get going to church soon. She really wants to go, but her dad won´t go for some reason. Then we had an eating appointment with an awesome family that have 2 girls (ages 17 and 18) that want to serve missions. We´ve set it up that we will go on splits with them this week. They are really excited. They´re also a really musical family and so we sang with her. It was awesome. I love the people here in Elmshorn. Oh they fed us chili too, by the way. 

Saturday we had an eating appointment with our Ward mission leader. They made us meat loaf and potatoes. It was yummy. Then we had an appointment with Tony and Jordan was supposed to come with, but Jordan wrote us and said he couldn´t go. So we started heading towards Tony´s, but we had a feeling that we shouldn´t go. So we didn´t. I don´t know why we had that feeling though. Naja. Then we had a ward Christmas party and it was themed "Christmas around the world" And we have a really diverse ward so people from different countries talked about how Christmas is celebrated in their country. We didn´t talk, but we sang a song. We sang one bright star, a cappella and we were both sick. But everyone was quiet and intent. We even saw people crying and coming up and telling us they felt the spirit so much. That was crazy. We didn´t think it sounded bad, but it definitely wasn´t something to rave about. Also it was awesome, a lot of members brought their friends with to the party and we talked to them and made appointments with them. Unfortunately one appointment is after I´ll be gone, but the other is this Thursday. It´s the same lady that our members invited over to eat cake and kind of overwhelmed her. She asked us if we could come to her house. So we´ll have an appointment with her, and we´re way excited about that. I see huge potential in this lady. Then the other people we made an appointment was a family from Africa. A member works with the dad and invited him to the party and he brought his wife and kids and we klicked with them way fast and that´s so cool! Another family!! Oh, we got the handwarmers too. Thanks so much! I´m sure the member will love them. And thanks for the letters. I look forward to seeing everyone.

Sunday I was feeling good again, but then Sister Odenwalder got sick. She felt so bad, but she had stayed in the house for me for the past 3 days so it was no big deal. That´s just always how it seems to go. One gets sick and when they´re better the other gets sick and it goes back and forth for awhile. So we stayed home the whole day, but the ward is so sweet, people came over and gave a priesthood blessing and called and asked how we´re doing and said they missed us. They are so nice. I really have learned the kind of member I want to be from serving here in Elmshorn. They are so amazing! I can´t say it enough!

Unfortunately, I won´t be able to see the Romanian family before I leave. I´ll just have to stay updated through Sister Odenwalder. Our week this week is totally packed. We´re making Tausch today and I´ll be with Sister Linford until tomorrow morning and then Sister Laubaugh is coming to me. It´ll be fun. Wednesday we have Zone Conference, Thursday we have Frau Stegeberg (member referal who´s daughter was going to get baptized but died), and then Schemus- a new investigator. Friday we will be doing splits with the Siems daughters and then an eating appointment with the Siems family again. Saturday we´ll have 2 eating appointments (one with GML and one with the African lady from our ward where a fish head was present) and then we´ll go by on those referals. And Sunday I´ll sing in church and speak in church. And then my last eating appointment is with Cy and Anja. I´m really excited. I love them, they´re so awesome. And that´s my plan for the week in case I don´t get to write next week. And then I go to Berlin Monday morning. Then we have a testimony meeting and eat dinner. I don´t know what else.

I love you all so much. I know this church really is the true church. It was restored to the earth from our loving Heavenly Father through a prophet Joseph Smith. I know Heavenly Father loves all his children and He has made it possible that we have direct guidance from Him in this day through a prophet. I know that Jesus Christ has really made it possible that we can return to Him and Heavenly Father one day if we take the right steps and follow the commandments. I understand the gospel so much more now, but I understand that it isn´t anything complicated, it´s so simple. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God and we can come so close to Him when we read it. I know only God can create this love that I feel for these people here in Germany. I know this is the work of God. I´m humbled and grateful that I  could be a part of it and hope that I will continue to be a missionary for the rest of my life. I will never stop giving testimony of Him. I love my Savior Jesus Christ. He is always there and He is my best friend. I love telling others about Him. I will do this for the rest of my life. I love you.

Bis Bald. Ganz Liebe Grüße (I looked that up on google translate, and it´s a super bad translation. Whatevs. Love you!!!) Aufwiedersehen!

Love, Sister Niebergall

Moroni 8:3 and 1 Corinthians 16:24

2012, 12-03

Dear family! Hello my loves!! I hope all is well with ya´lls.

This week has been pretty dang good. Monday someone roped us into doing karaoke at the opening day of the Christmas markets saying there wouldn´t be enough people there, but uh........ DOCH! There were tons of people, so we didn´t really need to go there. So we cancelled Schwester Raezke´s eating appointment for no reason. But we went over to her house and played the game that we play with her every week. It was fun. I love Schwester Raezke.

Tuesday we had Zone Conference and it was super good. I was so glad to go. Normally there are only 2 zones but this conference had 4 zones, So I got to see Sister Curtis! She´s serving in Celle now! Crazy huh! And then we had it scheduled to have the Romanian family skype, but I don´t think we planned well enough. We didn´t have anywhere to skype or anyone to drive the family. But we got that all figured out on the way from Hamburg to Elmshorn (I was crying from the pressure, there was literally so much pressure on me that the tears just came out. It was a weird sensation). Anyways, we got that luckily all organized and the person picked us up from bahnhof, the person that would pick up the family. Then she was like "we´re not going to make it in time so you need to call the Romanian missionaries and let them know we´ll be 15 minutes late. So we did and it ended up the Romanian Elders didn´t even know about it. So that was extra stressful. So they called up the Elders and asked if they could cancel their plans and come skype, which they said they could do. So then we went to pick up the family. They weren´t home. OOOOOOOOOOH man. We felt our stomachs drop. Everyone went to all this trouble and then it didn´t work out. We felt so silly. But it´s okay. That happens sometimes. Maybe the Elders needed to be in that area of town to find someone awesome: I just hope that the Elders in Romania trust us. We´ve scheduled and cancelled so many appointments, so I hope they trust to set up another skype. Otherwise we´re just going to have to hope and trust that the Lord will give them another chance to hear the gospel in Romanian sometime.

Wednesday was sitting and studying....and then I went CRAZY!!!!!!!! There was so much crap the Elders have left behind and so much crap that needed to be thrown out and cleaned that I just went crazy....And luckily we didn´t have any fest appointments because we ended up cleaning the whole day. But now our apartment feels like home. Finally.

Then Thursday we went and ate and Schwester Skrotzki´s house. I love that woman so much. She´s one of my best friends from the mission too. She has 4 kids, 19, 17, 14, and 11. And the 2 oldest are inactive, but like I´ve said in e-mails before- I think she realizes that her house needs missionary power. But anyway, the poor lady has been sick with the cold (Grippe in German is the flu. Jeff talked about how gripe in spanish is the cold. That´s kinda crazy!) Anyway. She made fish sticks and mashed potatoes and vegetables, but her 3 sons were pretty hungry and ate it all pretty fast. So we left sill a little bit hungry. Then we went to talk to our Ward mission leader and talk about our investigators. He was a little overwhelming at the class with Tessa last week, so we wanted to teach a lesson of how we can be good teachers. Needless to say it backfired because he would interrupt us and wouldn´t listen and let us talk (which is exactly the point we wanted to emphasize with him. Ironic) But oh well. They gave us caro kaffee (the wheat coffee. Not made with beans, but with wheat. It´s pretty yummy) and cake. Then we picked up an Advent´s calendar that the Seminary students made for us. It´s so cool, but more about that later, when the advent calendar begins.

Friday We had an eating appointment and ate Gyro meat over rice. It was yummy. Then we had a lesson with a less active (the man who´s daughter is special needs) We really clicked with him this time, because we had his daughter act out the story of Nephi with us and I think it touched his heart to see how we interacted with his daughter. Then he invited us to come back again. It´s so great that he likes us and trusts us and wants us to come back, but we´d be even happier if he were in church. We´re still hoping that it´ll work out. Then we had an appointment with Tony from Nigeria. We had an app with him a couple weeks back and he thought we worshiped Mormon. Well, he still has these big concerns about the Book of Mormon. We had the coolest joint teach with us and this member is also from Nigeria (Jordan), and so they immediately clicked. That made us happy. So he kept expressing his concerns about the Book of Mormon and was only talking to us and Tony said "If Christ gives me a witness then I´ll know." (and was expressing these concerns about praying and asking for some reason.) Then Jordan said "How will you know if you don´t ask?" The question stumpped him and then he said "You´re right." Then after a couple minutes Tony said "But something is ringing in my conscience that it is against what I believe" And Jordan said "You can´t just depend on the wisdom of man, bro. Ask God." And stumped him again. It was awesome. I love it when the joint teaches are just right.

Saturday was the first of the month and that means the beginning of advent´s calendars. This calendar that the Seminary made for us was awesome. They put so much effort into it. The theme for the calendar was the seminary scriptures. So they colored pictures describing the scripture mastery scriptures on lunch bag type things and then inside the lunch bag they wrote the scripture and then they wrote an assignment that we have to do during the day that relates with the scripture. So this scripture talked about needing to be strong to fight the adversary. So our assignment for the day was "In order to fight the adversary, you have to be strong! Do 50 pushups throughout the day." So we did. It´s so weird, my abs are sore, not my arms. But I´m okay with that. We also went by on a lot of the referrals and unfortunately, most of them aren´t interested, but one of them said we could try by again. Then we taught the Bornholdts (The ones that believe LA will sink into the ocean) It went really well, we had a good discussion about faith for awhile, but then the conversation just turned over to him and he said it was really pressing on him to tell us what he believes. He thinks that we need to be converted and really believe in Jesus. So then I asked if I could share my conversion story with him. I talked about when mom took me to 7-11 and asked if I even believed in Jesus, and of course I believe in Jesus! He is like the core of my testimony and I decided that I never wanted to act in a way that my mom would question if I believed in Jesus (I know I didn´t do too good of a job at that a lot of the time) but then I bore my testimony to Herr Bornholdt that I know that Jesus Christ is there and He is my best friend. I knew I couldn´t do anything else for this man except let him know that I know Christ is there and that I love Christ with all my heart. I love these people and they´re good friends, but unfortunately they don´t give us a chance to share our important message and I know if they´d listen and hear what we believe, then they could feel the truth. Don´t really know what to do about that. But oh well. Then we had another appointment with a guy that we met on the street a couple weeks ago. It´s crazy because we have had to cancel, or he´s had to cancel for the last little while, but today he called US (We thought he´d cancel again) but he called to remind us about our appointment. Crazy! Then we met him and gave him the Book of Mormon and the appointment went pretty well and we were able to schedule another appointment with him! Yay! But that is in a couple weeks because he will go to Russia. Then we had an eating appointment with Cy and Anja, and I love eating with them. I feel just like I´m at home. They have the cutest 4 year old boy and Cy reminds me of Mark Fellows. And it´s English speaking so we can really show our personalities. It was a nice time and they gave us fried chicken, (KFC style, but home made), kohl slaw, and mashed potatoes. And of course for dessert. ROOTBEER FLOATS!!! AHHHHH We were pretty excited about that. It was super yummy.

Sunday was church and fast Sunday. We were sitting next to this really awesome musical family and then we get a note from the member "I personally expect all those who are set apart from the world, with a special responsibility to bear testimony of Christ, to do so at every opportunity they get including fast Sunday. I´d love to hear from you." (don´t worry, the note wasn´t angry. He´s a super chill guy.) Normally we don´t bear our testimony on fast Sunday because we want to give the chance to members, plus we gave our testimonies last week. But we did anyway. But tons of people came up to us after and thanked us for our testimonies. So maybe we needed to say them. Then we ate at a family´s house (chicken gravy over rice and dessert was cake, then brownies, then bratapfels [cinnamon, almonds, and butter dumped inside an apple that´s core is cut out, and vanille sosse poured on top, baked in an oven. SOOOOOOOO yummy]. Then we called our Branch President and asked if there was anyone we could visit. We went by on the people he told us to (less actives) But none of them wanted to talk to us. Oh the assignment for the Advent´s calendar was to give away a copy of "The Living Christ" And bear our testimony on it. So we did some doors and I was able to hand her the living Christ, and say "I know that Jesus is there" but she didn´t have time so she went back in her house. But maybe she´ll read it and need to read what is written there. So that was a good day.

I did get your package by the way. I was SOOOOOOOOO happy! I cried when I read the letters. I love you all so much and even though you didn´t send letters too often, I think that makes the letters and packages I do get, sweeter. I feel your love so strongly through these things and I will really treasure and cherish them. I did get the Chase card too and I hope you put money on there because I´m going shopping today. I haven´t got the hand warmers package, but how much was it so that I can let Sr. Skrotzki know how much she owes you. I didn´t go to Lion King, and it won´t happen unfortunately because (I hate saying these words) not enough time. It would´ve been in German though. So cool! I´ll just have to watch in on youtube one day. No luck getting ahold of the Felbers. So sad. The money situation is back in order. It´s the beginning of the month so we all have money. I can´t believe Leslie is engaged! I´m so happy for her! Thanks for keeping me up to date. I will speak to her about this later! SO awkward that your principal came in during the switchblade part. But I´m glad she understood.

Today´s assignment is to think about God´s will. I figured that would be a good thing to write about in my e-mail. It is so important to trust completely in the Lord, but one of the hardest things to do. I heard the coolest quote at Zone Conference "Accepting things as God wants them sometimes takes more faith than to change your situation." Or something like that. But that´s so true. Heavenly Father really does see where we´ve been, where we are now, and what direction we´re going, so we really should realize that He knows what is in our path and what is best for us. I have definitely been praying for Schwester Crouch, and I´ll keep praying. But I know the Lord knows better than us. Sometimes the Lord gives us hard times so that we can know how to help others through their hard times. I know that Heavenly Father has everything perfectly organized for our benefit and vorteil. He loves us and everything that happens (even if its hard) is for our eventual happiness. I know this is true! I love you family!

Love, Sister Niebergall

2012, 11-26

Hello me own family!! It was good to read your e-mail! This week was really good. Unfortunately I don´t have too much time so I´ll just write about the highlights.

First of all, I´ll give you our menu:

Monday: Raezke´s. Some kind of yummy beef, broccoli, rot kohl, potatoes, and a HUGE cake with manderin oranges in it. It was delicious. Elder Nathan Elmer served in Elmshorn about a year ago and he was there to visit Schwester Raezke again and she went all out for him. We had so much food. More than normal. So we had a party and it was a lot of fun to talk with everyone together.

Tuesday: Tacos with our Branch President´s family. Also. Super. Delicious. It was fun to talk about missions with him and his wife. She also served a mission.

Wednesday: No eating appointment.

Thursday: Chili con carne with a lady who has cancer. It was so amazing to be with her and hear her faith and her love for Heavenly Father, it was a great way to spend Thanksgiving. We also ate cake and wheat coffee later with our ward mission leader. 

Friday: Lasagna. So yummy! With the same family that fed us yesterday.

Saturday: African food! Aka Rice with meat in it, tortilla type things, bean sauce, and don´t worry. Fried fish heads. I was feeling sick that day and somehow Heavenly Father blessed us and we somehow didn´t have to eat it. I wanted to eat it though to say I have, but I really wasn´t feeling well and didn´t want to puke in front of our sweet member Marcia.

Sunday: WE CELEBRATED THANKSGIVING. It was so amazing and delicious. This family has a tradition of doing Thanksgiving for the missionaries. It was really nice. We had the BIGGEST turkey I´ve ever seen, stuffing, stuffed mushrooms (oh my gosh, I have to get the recipe. They were so amazing), corn, beans, peas, cauliflower, broccoli, cranberry sauce, rolls, mashed regular potatoes, and mashed sweet potatoes. Then for dessert, an amazing chocolate mousse cake pie thing, apple crisp, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and of course...jello salad (not the pink jello stuff though. Bummer!) The only thing that was missing was mom´s cheesecake. It was so amazing and I´m so grateful to have such nice considerate members. I hope that I can be that kind of member one day.

One day we were riding our bikes and we saw this guy crossing the road and for some reason he turned around in the middle of the road, cussed (in english), and ran back the direction he just came. We rode past him and I said "That was English! We´re from America!" and then got of our bikes and chatted with him for awhile. He mentioned before we even said anything about the Book of Mormon that he loves to read and then when we brought up the Book of Mormon, he got all philosophical and tried explaining faith with philosophy and it made no sense. But basically he wanted to tell us that we can´t ever know if our church is true. And to that I say DOCH! (pretty much the most common German comeback. The most direct translation I can think of for it is "Yeah-huh!") But its too bad that he didn´t have more interest. That would´ve been a great conversion story.

 

This week was pretty wet, not because it was rainy, but because it was foggy and misty. It was pretty interesting to ride bikes in.

This week we were looking through our area book and I found this paper with referals on it from a member who had moved. He had sent out a letter to his friends to say goodbye and in this letter he said "I know you all know we´re mormon and our religion means so much to us. We´re going to send the missionaries by your house." They moved about a year ago, but I decided to call this member and ask him about this list. I said "I´m sure the Elders went by on all these people already" And he said "I wouldn´t be so sure. I didn´t ever hear back from them and I´m really disappointed. Thank you for following up on that. Please go by on them. So we got 20 referals all in one sitting. That was awesome. We went by on one of them and she said we can come back. I have a feeling we will have a lot of success with that.

Yesterday we had church and it was crazy. We had met with a member this week who just barely moved into Elmshorn from Hamburg and let him know we are back in Elmshorn (it was too hard for him to get to church in Pinneberg) and he brought a friend with. A 15 year old girl. Everyone was SO nice to her. But I feel bad cuz I think it was overwhelming for her. And somehow a rumor got out that she was going to get baptized so there were several people going up to her and saying "OH! You´re going to get baptized!! That´s great!!" And she was freaked out saying "No! I haven´t heard anything about the church at all! I just wanted to check it out!" Oh man. It was too crazy. But we were glad to meet her. I don´t know how she would´ve been if Elders were there and not Sisters to be on a girl level with her. Yeah. That was fun.

Those are pretty much the main stories of the week. It was a good week and I´m looking for a good week this week too.

The tomato soup didn´t taste bad at all! It was just so yummy that we ate so much and we ate too much. We weren´t sick from food poisoning, just overeating. You wouldn´t understand until you´ve tried this soup. Oh my gosh. It´s so good. The Russian sweets are okay. They´re a little bland. Pretty much PURE sugar. We did find these cakes though that are like strawberry shortcakes. They´re yummy.

I don´t really understand what happened with the Romanian family. I guess they still live there. We were able to find a member in Hamburg that speaks Romanian and he came this week with us. He said they don´t live there but they do live there. I said "What??" And he said "It makes sense in Romanian." HUH? It doesn´t make sense in English. So I guess they live there. They love the Book of Mormon still and are reading in it and Gheorghe was even talking to people on mormon.org. That´s so cool! He´s researching it as best as he can and he still really believes that God sent us there. So we´ll see where it goes this week.

Bubble tea is something that I LOVE! It´s like a thin milkshake with little pearl/ball like things with fruit juice in the middle and they pop in your mouth. They´re amazing. I love them. Sister Odenwalder ate the pancake at home. The lady sent them home with us, it was crazy, they were moldy the day after we got them. Naja.

The people that have fears to leave their houses don´t live that far away from the church. They even are scared to grocery shopping. It´s just a fear of being away from home. I´m not sure if she got a blessing yet. I forgot to ask.

Thank you for following the spirit and telling me what it told you to say. We will do that when we meet with her. You´re awesome mom.

I want to find out what happened with the Felber´s too. I´ve called them every day this week. Sometimes it picks up and immediately hangs up or sometimes no one answers at all. I hope to get ahold of them soon. I cant imagine not staying in touch with the people that I´ve met here on my mission. I love them way too much. I bet that breaks dad´s heart. I hope he finds them again some day.

Tell Shayna congrats!!! That´s so exciting for her! Tell her she is going to be a great missionary. I wish I could go as a joint teach with her. She´s going to come back a cow-woman. 

I hope the card gets to me soon. We´ve used up all of Sister O´s money and we are living off bread milk and cereal that was paid by her personal money. But it´ll work out. I just hate bumming off of her personal money.

 

I´m glad things are working out for school. That´s hilarious about Sarah´s NAL. Pleasse........listen.

I love you my family! I am so glad you raised me in this gospel and that I can share it with the people here in Elmshorn. I love it and I know it´s true! I may not e-mail next Monday. It might be Tuesday. We might go see Lion King in Hamburg. We´ll see. We might do that the week after. Woot! Kay. Love you!

Love, Sister Niebergall

I know where I shall stay until I die.

Hello family!

Thanks for your e-mail! It´s crazy how little time is left, but I love ever second of it and I will work until the bitter end. Or in Germany Berlin mission terms "Til I die". I´m sure you´re wondering if I got transferred and I´ll have you know I did not get transferred. I will die in Elmshorn and Sister Odenwalder will kill me and I´m sooooooo glad about that. I´ve moved around so much during my mission, I was just ready to stay and influence the people here. I don´t feel like I could have been much of an influence on someone in a new city for 4 weeks. So I´m so incredibly happy. I know there is still much to be done here before I go. Anyway, so feel free to send my card to me and also any deathbed repentance letters/ packages that you want. You know the joy of getting packages. Now multiply that by 1000 and that´s how much joy I will have to get a single letter and multiply that by a thousand billion and that´s how happy I´d be to get one. last. package. hint. hint. hint. HINT!!!!!!!!! Please?

This week went well. Monday we ate at Schwester Raezke´s and she gave us this AMAZING tomato soup that is a secret recipe, so I can never make it. DANG IT! The only problem is we feel horrible after we eat it. The Elders from our district that came with us to eat also got sick after. But it tastes so good while you´re eating it, but you hate life after.

Dienstag we went to a member to eat and they are from Sachsen and if you know anything about German dialects, Sächsisch is one of the hardest dialects to understand (Meißen and Dresden are in Sachsen, too). Anyway, they fed us cabbage and potatoes mashed up and it was pretty rank. We were still trying to recover from Raezke´s, and we both almost threw up AT the eating appointment. Luckily Heavenly Father blesses us. So after we went home and recuperated. We didn´t end up throwing up though. Luckily. Then we went and helped Timon Skrotzki with Englisch.

Wednesday was good. We had district meeting and it was a really good district meeting, it was awesome to see everyone´s motivation and desire to serve the people in their cities. Then we went to get a Bubble Tea after and on the way we saw this guy playing a guitar and someone put money in the cup and he said "Senorita" and I was like "AHH! That dude is not German or Turkish. We need to talk to him!" So after we got our bubble tea we went up to him (he was singing Billionare by Bruno Mars-english) and so while he was playing I went up and stood there watching him and asked in English "where are you from?" He was from Portugal. It was a good conversation starter. We talked about music for awhile and then he asked why we´re in Germany and then we started talking about the gospel and were able to make an appointment with him. Unfortunately he wasn´t at the appointment, but maybe we´ll see him on the streets again some day. Then we went with Schwester Bruhn and Bruder Basnak to the Russian store and he bought us a billion Russian sweets. Then we were going to have an appointment with him after, but unfortunately he was so tired from work he couldn´t anymore. But we still talked to Schwester Bruhn for awhile and she has the fear of being too far away from home, so I recommended that she get a priesthood blessing for that. And she said that was a really good idea. Then we taught an ex J-Dub named Steffie. She is 26 and really sweet. It is just hard because she isn´t really looking for truth, she just finds religion interesting and wants to talk about it with someone. It´s hard cuz we ask what she believes and (for example "Do you believe there is just one truth?") And she says no. And then we don´t know what to do after that because we don´t want to tell her she´s wrong, there is one truth. So we aren´t sure how to help her now.

Thursday we got a notification that someone found my wallet! Yay!! So we went to pick it up and EVERYTHING was still there- including the cash. We were so shocked, but so grateful. Then we had to go fix our heating in our apartment. Oh man. The life of a missionary. Then we went to a member´s house and ate tons of pancakes, but we didn´t eat a number big enough to please her. We ate about 3 pancakes (The ones she makes are super thick and sit like stones in your stomach) and she was disappointed, but we´ve given up caring, we don´t want to be so sick we can´t work. Then we went to another less active member´s house named Schwester Feudel and it was the first time we´d met her. She was really nice, but she also has a fear to go too far from home. I don´t know if that´s a real fear or an excuse. Keine Ahnung. Then we went to Gemeinde Rat (sorry, not sure what it´s called in English) and got re-reminded that there is so much to do as a missionary. So many people to care for and to please. We hope that we keep doing an okay job here in Elmshorn.

Friday we went to an eating appointment and we ate spaghetti carbonara and she asked us to teach a lesson in young women´s. Then we went to the Romanian family. We found out that Carmen and Gheorghe (the mom and dad that went to Romania) were able to find a bigger apartment, so we don´t know where they live now, but luckily we found someone that speaks Romanian that lives in Hamburg and he is coming to help us translate on Wednesday. We hope to Skype Saturday. It´s so rough not to be able to communicate with them.

Saturday. I feel so bad, I forgot my planner and I can´t remember at all what we did this week. I can´t remember what went down Saturday. OH! We had transfer calls and then we were supposed to have the appointment with this guy from Portugal, but he wasn´t there. Then we were supposed to have an eating appointment with this 92 year old member, but she had forgotten, but it was no big deal. Then we went home and prepared for our lesson for young women´s and then we went and talked to Cy and Anja about the priesthood and answer questions they may have because Cy was going to get the Melchizedek Priesthood on Sunday. It went really well. I love them so much, I just want to be best friends with them. I can´t remember if I´ve said this already, but Cy reminds me so much of Mark Fellows. Every time I´m with them I just laugh my head off. And then it makes sense to me why Mark went to Taiwan on his mission. If all Asian people are like Cy, then I bet Mark just clicked with all of them. Anyway. That was that day.

Sunday we had church. Unfortunately the less actives haven´t come back to church yet. Still are working on that. We taught our lesson in Young Women and it went really well. They asked us to talk about the process of going on a mission, so that was fun to do. I think we got a couple girls pumped up about going on a mission, so that makes us happy. It was funny, for part of our lessons we told the girls our first names, and I almost said "my name is Sister Niebergall" I´m pretty sure I said "my name is ssssstrisha Niebergall" That might be a challenge when I get home. Mal sehen. Then we had an eating appointment and we ate pork, mushrooms (I´ve grown to love mushrooms), and noodles. It was so yummy! Then we did weekly planning and then we went to a concert that our ward and the Pinneberg ward had. It was really awesome, it made me miss singing a lot.

And that was my week.

I don´t know if I´ve seen any of these wood picture box type thing. I´ll print out the picture and ask members where I could find one. The meeting with the ward mission leader´s friend is this week. We´ll see how that goes. The school schedule looks good. Can you get me the institute schedule maybe? So I can know what institute classes I can take? I bet you´re an Access Banner pro, dad. I can hardly maneuver around that website. 

  

I´m glad you liked that I made sure there was the perfect amount of colors and numbers of candy for you mom. Did the cd work? I hope it did. And I also hope you liked the cd. I don´t think you need to worry about talking to your principal about your schedule. That isn´t normal to have no break. Every other teacher gets a break. It´s hard to go without a break, and isn´t healthy. I´m pretty sure she won´t judge you for that. No worries.

I can´t believe you are getting iPADs and also that all of Jodi´s kids have iPADs. That´s crazy. Everyone has them here too and they seem to come in handy. I´m glad you´ll be able to use them for your kids learning. That sounds like it´ll be a good tool. I´m sorry you ran into that girl´s car. That sucks. Bummer. I´m glad you didn´t get arrested for your ditziness. :)

That´s funny that DJ was going to go be all high school actor on that junior high schooler´s hiney. I´m glad Sarah did a good job. I´m excited to hear this carol of the bells. 

 

Thanks so much for your support. I love the gospel. I know it´s true with all my heart. I know the Lord hears our prayers and He knows when we are crying. He loves us and He is there for us. He answers our prayers if we just come to Him. I love Him and I love the gospel. And I love you!

Love, SIster Niebergall

2012, 11-12

Hey the best family in the world!

Thanks for your e-mail. I love hearing from you so much- I look forward to it every Monday! Today we´re going to a carnival here in Hamburg and it should be pretty exciting. I´m going to just write about the week and come back after the fair and e-mail you about the answer to your questions.

Monday we pretty much stayed at one store all day. The stores here in Germany are HUGE and like a mall, but it´s just one store. It´s so fun. PS I lost my wallet this week. Yeah. That stinks. So I´ve already called and cancelled my card, but I don´t know what to do, if I should wait for a new one til I come home or if I should get a new one now. I can´t buy any souvenirs or anything without it, but I don´t really need souvenirs. I don´t know I don´t want to do anything complicated. Anyways, Monday evening we ate with Schwester Raezke and she gave us ham, rot kohl, broccoli, potatoes, fruit salad, berliners, and chocolates. Luckily- Sister O and I didn´t try to eat ourselves to death this time. We decided it´s not worth it to try to please Sr. Raezke and know she still will love us even if we only eat one plate. Phew. That´s a relief to not try and eat a billion pounds of food and I felt so much better the next day.

Tuesday we ate with a member and she gave us fish with this vegetable gravy over it. It was good, but she forced us to eat more than we wanted to. Then we also had cake and cheese cake left over from her birthday the day before. She made us eat 3 slices. It was mean. Oh well. Then we went by and contacted some of the referrals (or tried to). We made an appointment with one of them (I´ll tell you how it went later in the Thursday synopsis). Then we went to the Romanian family and found out they were going to Romania for a couple days to pick up their kids. They´re pretty stressed because they don´t have much money and they don´t have a very big room and there will be 8 people living in a room smaller than our living room at home. Maybe as big as mom and dad´s room. So we weren´t able to skype this last week and we won´t be able to this week, but we will try to next week. They are awesome like always, I´m just always uplifted when we are with them and they always tell us God sent us there. Well, hopefully they´ll accept our message then.

Wednesday we had Zone Training Meeting. We were able to do interviews with president too and that was nice. We just talked about how to be better missionaries and I love leaving those meetings and feeling motivated. Then after that we went to a member´s house and helped the son with his English homework. They have a less active son and I think that he just needs to be around people his age and feel the spirit. Their family needs missionary power, they´re a great family, but their kids are inactive. It´s sad to see. But I´m sure we can help out there.

Thursday we went by on a lot of less active members. We met with a 21 year old girl and we´re not sure why she doesn´t come, but we just got to know her a little bit and hopefully we can be ones to help her regain her testimony. Then we went by a 19 year old girl that is less active and just got to know her too. We hope to get gospel related next time. I think it´s important with the less active members to have a friendship foundation before you chew them out about not coming to church. Then we went to an appointment with the contacted referral. We brought a member with and it was a really weird lesson. The member bore great testimony, but this man seemed like he felt guilty for doing something and that he wasn´t in good standing before God and didn´t even want to touch the Book of Mormon. It was kind of sad, but he said he´ll call if he ever feels ready to take the book from us. We will send missionaries by in a couple months though. Then we had an eating appointment with the family that was with us for the appointment. We went to the store and I´m pretty sure that´s where I lost my wallet. We searched everywhere and can´t find it. Bummer. So I need a new drivers license too and everything. Oh well. We ate lasagna with them. I love this family (Cy and Anja) He is from the Philippines and she is half Filipino. They have a cute little kid and they are new converts. I just want to be best friends with them, they really are so cool.

Friday we went to a less active member´s house and I think the reason he doesn´t come (or the reason he says he doesn´t come) is because of work. He also has a 12 year old daughter- she is so cute and she has special needs. So of course I just loved her. That was fun. We´ll try to work a little more with them too. Then we ate pizza with a member. We had an appointment with an open Muslim and she had read in the Book of Mormon, but she´s getting married so she´ll be back in December.

Saturday we called and cancelled my card at Cy and Anja´s house. They invited us over to breakfast (breakfast for them, lunch for us) and we ate bread with butter and meat on it. We also had this liver spread for the bread and it was stinking YUCKY. At least the smell was yucky and it made it unappetizing to eat it because of the smell. Naja. Then we tried to contact the rest of the referrals from the lady, but couldn´t get ahold of any of them. Then we had an appointment with this lady (Her name is Schwester Bruhn). It´s kind of a weird situation, but she has a boyfriend (she´s 73 and he´s 57) and he is also inactive. She really wishes she could come to church, but I think she doesn´t come cuz he doesn´t come. He hasn´t had interest to meet with the Elders, but when he heard there were sister missionaries he was curious to meet us. So we met with both Schwester Bruhn and Bruder Basnak and at first he was kind of closed off to us, but luckily the man had a BEAUTIFUL blue (in my favorite shade) guitar (double wammy. No guitar pun intended). And so I asked him about his guitar and he played it for us and sang and that really broke the ice. I love music. It´s so awesome and ice breaky. This man is from Russia and so he had tons of Russian treats for us and he was so excited to share them with us and for us to try everything. After our appointment he was so excited to invite us over again and told us he would take us to the Russian shop so he could show us what the best stuff is and he said "we have to make an appointment right now to make sure we actually do that". After we talked to Schwester Bruhn and she said "He has never been so excited to talk about the gospel and I´ve always asked if we can pray or read the scriptures and he always said no, but when he heard about you he was curious to hear what you have to say. I think this is going to the be the start of him coming back to church" and she started crying. I really feel like this could be the start for him too. When we were in the appointment with him I had the thought "If I´m only here in Elmshorn to reactivate this man and woman, I would be totally okay with that." It was a really nice appointment. We´ll meet with them again on Wednesday.

Sunday we had stake conference so our ward mission leader picked us up and we drove with him and his wife. It was a good meeting- we were in Neumünster for Stake conference. It´s about an hour away. President Kosak and Sister Kosak were there and they spoke very well. Then we went back to our ward mission leaders house and ate some kind of pig meat and potatoes and carrots and peas. It was really yummy. Then they explained to us they had planned to bring a non member friend over for dessert. Apparently this lady´s daughter almost got baptized, but then she died really suddenly (she was 38 years old) and so the Müllers wanted to ask her if they could do her temple work for her. She said yes. Then they asked her if we could meet with her and tell her what her daughter was so interested in so that she knows why it meant so much to her. And she said yes! I LOVE MEMBER MISSIONARY WORK! So we´ll see how our lessons go with her. We don´t have our lesson this week, but next week. That was super cool. I know this gospel is so true and so important to share it with others. I love sharing it with people every day. We are so blessed to have this knowledge and to have grown up with it. I love the Book of Mormon. Every single word in that book is true, and I know it with all of my heart. I thank my Heavenly Father every day for the chance to serve the people here in Germany. I love this time of 18 months of thinking about nothing but serving and helping others come to Christ. I´m so glad I chose to go on a mission. I hope it´s changed my life forever. I love it. I love my Heavenly Father. Thank you for your support. I can´t imagine what it would be like without you! You´re amazing. Have an awesome day.

Love, Sister Niebergall

2012, 11-05

Family!!

This week was AWESOME!!!! I am so happy to report. I can´t remember it being too terribly cold, only when I was in Rostock.

Monday we ate at Sr. Raezke´s house and I ate SOO much. It wascrazy. I ate two huge platefuls of turkey, potatoes, rot kohl, peas, beans, broccoli, and then after I ate fruit salad, mini berliners, and cookies. We wanted to puke, I don´t think I´ve ever eaten so much in my life. But it tasted yummy.

Tuesday we ate with our ward mission leader and they fed us a lot too. I still wasn´t recovered from the night before. We ate Roladen (meat wrapped in cabbage) and potatoes. It was really yummy. I really do have to pray to be hungry sometimes though. Then we went and had a lesson with the Romanian family (more like asked them if they could do Skype on Saturday and read a couple scriptures) and they said yes! We were so excited. Then we taught this couple (the Bornholdts) They have super crazy beliefs and the man is going to California to preach that they need to repent because Hollywood is Babylon and Babylon will sink into the ocean December 21 and they believe really complicated things. We wanted to teach them the gospel of Jesus Christ is simple, but they kind of had control of the conversation. We plan to bring someone with next time. But they love us and love when we come over. They´d love us even more if they knew what we were saying were true. We´re working on it.

Wednesday we had this awesome appointment with a less active member. She asked us if we just felt like we should come over or if someone told us to come over. I told her the truth which was that we were looking at our Gemeindelist and felt like we should visit her. She told us that she really needed it and that that feeling was definitely a prompting. We had a great time with her, she is musical and had lots of instruments so we related very quickly (I got to play her accordian) and she gave us 9 people that we should visit- so that was really cool! She was really awesome- she wanted to give us more people to visit, but she said she´d wait til next time so that we aren´t overloaded. We are glad that she immediately trusted us and now we can contact these people that may have interest in the gospel. That was really cool.

Thursday I went to Rostock. It felt SOOOOO weird to be back, but so good. Apparently Svetlana has been struggling and meeting with the J- Dubs (Jehovah´s Witnesses) and she is really struggling with her testimony and won´t let the missionaries in anymore. I knew I could fix that problem. We went by on her and rang the doorbell a couple times (that´s a cue in Germany that it´s your friend at the door) so then she opened the door for us and then we had to climb the stairs to find her actual apartment door and we stood in front of it and she would´nt answer. So I called her on the cell phone and she answered. I said "Svetlana! It´s Sister Niebergall! I´m in front of your door!" And she said "I don´t feel well. I can´t let you in" And so I said "Can you just come out so I can see you?" So she did. She looked horrible, she doesn´t have a light in her eyes anymore. That was hard to see. She was really cold at first but eventually warmed up to us and let us in. We testified to her of the truth and she said "Jehovah is God" And we said "No... Jehovah is Jesus Christ" She said "Oh......what´s right? Nobody knows" And we said "God knows" She said "Oh yeah.......! I need to pray like you always told me" And I said "Yes you do!" That was really good to remind her of what she needs to do to find out for herself.

We had another appointment Thursday night with a boy (Hugo) that came to institute and his friend (Jason) tagged along. He was interested in learning about how to stop smoking so we taught him the word of wisdom for the first lesson and a member was there too. I felt that was kind of weird, but I didn´t know him so I just went with it. They showed up and Hugo was really interested, but his friend seemed to have misunderstood what we were doing. It was a completely awkward lesson and I felt like we were just bashing them for smoking and drinking and they were fighting back. I was like "why are we doing this for a first lesson?" So I asked about their belief in God and Jason was totally a jerk and against God and Hugo was totally cool and had a lot of potential. They only had like 15 minutes to meet though and then they left. So then we left and I was raging about how much of a jerk Jason was. Then we got a phone call from the member that Sister Moon left her umbrella at the church so we went back. We walked into the institute and there sat Jason and Hugo with nametags on. On the train ride here Sis. Moon explained that there were people dressed up like zombies in Innenstadt and these zombies stole an Elder´s name tag. So when I saw them with the name tags on my first thoughts were "It´s the ZOMBIES!!!" But of course....... it was just the elders and I was totally punk´d. I had no idea that they were pranking me, but it was funny because I was so clueless. 

Friday we had an appointment with Bruder Schmidt and he fed us of course. He was so excited to see me, which was so nice. Even Moppel, his dog remembered me and jumped up on me and licked my face. I loved being there, but it felt so weird to be back again. I felt like I´d never left, but then I felt like it had been forever. It was so weird. But it was a nice day. That´s all we did because then we had to take a train back to Hamburg to tausch back.

Saturday was awesome! We were able to do the Skype!! It was amazing, I could tell the Elders teaching were good missionaries and the family felt the spirit so strongly. Whenever we went over to this family, they didn´t realize we were trying to invite them to pray and ask if what we are saying is true, but the Elders explained that and they were so touched and said they would definitely study and search and pray. They also asked if they found out it was true if they´d get baptized and they said yes they would. We are so exciting. The spirit was soooooo strong in that room and I just am so happy and humbled to have been trusted to be a part of their conversion experience. I love being a missionary! I know what we are doing is true and that this gospel is for every person on this earth, if they just open their hearts to the truth, they´ll experience joy more than they could ever imagine. I love the gospel and know it´s true. I´m grateful for Heavenly Father´s mercy and patience for when I do something wrong that He has sent Christ to pay for that, so that I can live with Them again some day. I look forward to that so much! I love you so much too!

Love, Sister Niebergall

2012, 10-29

Meine wunderbare Familie!

Ich habe euch Lieb!

Thanks for your e-mail. I love hearing about what´s happening at home. I loved reading your e-mail and I wish I could print all my e-mails because I would just love to read them over and over again. Thanks for your words of encouragement and love. You´re the best! I´m so blessed to have such an awesome family!

This week has been good. But it has been FREEZING cold I´ve been feeling better the past couple days. I had to buy cough syrup (yuck yuck), so my cough has been getting better. We had a scare for a minute that I had pneumonia, because the kid that coughed on me ended up having pneumonia. But I´ve gotten better- luckily not all forms of pneumonia are contagious. I had to relax, but I didn´t want to so I didn´t really. I´m still coughing, but my lungs don´t hurt anymore and I don´t cough as frequently. Yay for medicine!

I think the only thing that would keep Scwester Raezke from feeding us is if she were in the hospital. She is so awesome. She fed us again last week and she fed us chicken (a very uncommon meat to eat in Germany), broccoli, rot kohl, potatoes and gravy, with a fruit salad for dessert. It doesn´t sound too hard to eat, but she has A LOT of food. And it tastes so so yummy that you want to eat it, but there´s just so much food! We will be eating with her again tonight. She always loves it when we can eat all of the food. Thank goodness the Elders from our district always come with- otherwise we wouldn´t be able to schaff it. We haven´t had any pumpkin soup yet! And it surprises me because we eat with the members every day. When I was in Celle, we had one eating appointment a week and we ate pumpkin soup at every appointment. Speaking of pumpkins and Halloween, what are you doing for Halloween? or as the Germans say "hallo wien" (Wien is Vienna in German). They don´t really celebrate Halloween here, but apparently it´s getting bigger than it used to be. We met someone that said he was Satan on the street- maybe he just meant for Halloween. Hmmmm.... He wasn´t that scary though.

We´ve had a hard time finding new people this week, but we´ve been working really hard. Our bikes are serving us super well and it makes it easier to get more done faster. We´ve gone by on a lot of people that have contact with the missionaries only once and we´ve been able to contact a lot of people and find out that they don´t have interest or we have been able to make appointments and teach people. The problem is a good majority of the people that are open enough to listen to us are Muslim, so they´re not really interested in changing. But we´re still looking. There´s gotta be people out there. 

We also have like.. A BILLION less active members here in this ward. My goal is to try to contact all of them before I go home and reactivate at LEAST one. We only have a branch right now, but if everyone were active we would have a huge ward. We had an eating appointment with a member yesterday (we ate this Thai chicken with a peanut butter sauce. I got the recipe for Heather SOOOOO yummy!) Their son is 17 years old and is in a phase of "I want to be cool and fit in so in order to do that I need to smoke and drink A TON!" it made me sad to see him because he´s so little and has so much life ahead of him. But I couldn´t help but feel like that was just a silly phase he was going through and he would snap out of it quite quickly. It makes me so sad to see people that don´t live their covenants and don´t use their priesthood. That is such a HUGE blessing from our Heavenly Father and they could be blessing so many people´s lives. I hope we can help the members here realize that.

We only had one appointment with the Romanian family this week. We have been trying to get it organized that they can speak witht he Romanian missionaries and we almost have it totally finalized. We might be able to do a Skpe with the Romainian AP´s on Saturday. We are so excited and are hoping that this is what needs to happen to get them to progress more in the gospel. They love the Book of Mormon, but they´ll be able to understand the importance of it. And our ward is so awesome, they are going to be totally involved in this- one family will pick them up, another family will let us skype at their house- and hopefully we can get it figured out that we can get them to church. We still haven´t had anyone at church yet, but hopefully this will eventually change. The construction on the church is to make it bigger because there were more and more members, but right when they started the construction, 2 big families moved away and people have gone inactive so now they don´t really need it bigger- but once we´re done here they will! I´m excited to be in the Elmshorn church house- I´m still not sure which members are ours and which belong to Pinneberg. We should be starting church there this week. Oh, and it´s a regular church building.

I´m glad you like "no regrets!" It hasn´t gotten old to us either. I laugh every time. We don´t lift our legs though, I feel like that would make it ten times as dangerous, plus maybe scandelous seeing as we´re in skirts. But maybe I´ll try it. :) That´s nice that Sister O´s mom speaks highly of me... I definitely am not the best trainer and wish I could be doing better, but I´m glad that she approves. Are you and Sister O´s mom super tight? Do you go out to lunch together? That´s funny that grandma thought the picture of you was me. I want to see a picture please!

I am so glad you were able to give a talk and that the spirit was with you.  I can´t believe Rachel was willing to so spontaniously with you sing. I love speaking about the power of music. I think the foundation of my testimony came from primary songs. I love music and I love the gospel! I´m grateful every day that I get to speak to people about the plan that Heavnly Father has for them. This life isn´t coincidence. We are so blessed to know this and I hope we willingly share this with those around you (nail lady). Hope all is well with you! I know the church is true!

Love, Sister Niebergall

Yodelayheehoo!

Guten Tag euch!!

This week was good slash not good due to gesundheit problems, lets just say
last week a little 4 year old coughed into my face and I´m still suffering
and tryng to recover from that. So I was out for 2 days. That was a bummer.
But, somehow we managed to have a super awesome week anyway.

I can´t believe Alex is home. That is totally crazy. But it feels like
he´s been gone a super super long time. I swear the last time I saw
him was at a Niebergall camp out, but maybe I´m wrong. I can´t
remember. Tell him hi for me! That´s so good that they all get to be
together again.

That´s sad to hear that Pepper was put to sleep, but I´m glad to hear
he´s not in pain anymore. I´ve actually been meaning to ask about him
the last 4 weeks, but every time I get to e-mails I forget to ask. I´m
glad Rachel wasn´t there. I can´t believe they brought him out in a
towel. That last picture of Pepper was so pepper-ific, but so sad. He
looked horrible. Sad to hear how Hallie reacted. I hope she doesn´t
die of loneliness. I bet Freckles is lonely too, not having anyone to
chase.

We didn´t have bikes until Wednesday this week, but couldn´t ride them
until Friday because we didn´t have helmets. But now we have helmets
and we can ride as fast as we can. Whenever we do something risky,
like ride our bike off a curb, we yell "No regrets!" in a high squeaky
voice. It´s fun. We eat so much food at Schwester Raezke´s (our
regular Monday evening eating appointment). She is always so
disappointed with how much we eat though. She wants us to eat more.
When she asked us if we got our bikes she said "Good. Now you can eat
more". Oh man. I hope she doesn´t make a lot of food expecting us to
be able to eat more. We haven´t had anything gross, so that´s good.
Just large quantities of food. Usually we eat potatoes and a meat of
some sort, but we´ve also had tomato soup with meatballs in it (super
yummy), and we have eaten a lot of soupy stuff over rice lately. One
thing that we haven´t had that we had last year is pumpkin soup.
That´s way yummy. We´ll see what we eat today with Raezke.

I would be more than happy to come visit Linda with you when I get
back. I am really so proud of you for being such a great visiting
teacher, mom. That is something I really want to improve in, we really
need to take visiting teaching more seriously, and the sisters just
need to feel like they are loved and wanted sometimes. I´m so glad
that you have this opportunity to do member missionary work. I´m sure
because of your influence, she´ll return to the gospel someday. Way to be
awesome!

We were able to teach the Romanian family, but it is really hard to
communicate- but for some reason we were talking to each other in our
own native tongues and we were able to understand what we were trying
to say to each other, even though we didn´t understand the words. We
were able to tell them our purpose for coming by showing them
scriptures and they asked for scriptures for each of them again. I had
a feeling to give them 2 Nephi 4 (Verses 17-the end) and Carmen (the
wife of the man we spoke to on the street) started reading it out loud
and she started reading it with more and more conviction and there was
one point where all 3 of the women all started SOBBING at the same
time. And it was hard for them to read, because they were crying so
hard, but it was so amazing. The spirit poured into that room and
everyone recognized it and no one could deny it. They were saying
"amen! amen!" After they read it. It´s so sad that we can´t discuss it
with them after, but we are hoping that we can get in touch with
missionaries in Romania. We read them a scripture in Mosiah 18 "what
have you against getting baptized" but they all said "Yeah! I´ve been
baptized!" So now we need to explain authority with them, but it´s so
hard. We did find out that one of them hasn´t been baptized yet
though, she´s the one that can speak the most German, too. So we can
focus on her and then the others can hopefully follow. We want to
baptize them all at the same time. Then they introduced us to 2 more
of their family members so we will bring them a Book of Mormon
tomorrow. So we´re teaching 6 Romanians now! It´s so awesome. We love
them so much. They always tell us God sent us to them. I want to tell
them "God has sent us here to tell you to get baptized" But it´s too
bad we can´t understand each other. Pray that we can get the Romanian
missionaries involved in this. These people are ready for the gospel,
and I love them!

Unfortunately I wasn´t able to shake President Monson´s hand. But I
had a dream he came to surprise our district by coming to district
meeting and everyone was freaking out and kneeled on the ground when
he came in and he was like "what are you doing? I`m not Jesus!" and so
we stood up and an elder hugged a sister and he was like "elder, what
are you doing?" But in his patient Presiden Monson tone. Then everyone
randomly disappeared and it was just me and him and we sat in a big
lazy boy arm chair and chatted about Germany. It was a good dream. I
wish it was real.

I do want to sing an arrangement of "Stille Nacht". It´s the sally
deford arrangement and it´s kind of tricky. No one will be able to
just sight read it unless Mr. Wood happens to be there. So, if you
could can you find someone to start practicing it? It´s on
defordmusic.com under solos, and I think it´s the low voice solo.
Thank you- you´re welcome. Will you allow me to be in the choir even
though I haven´t practiced with you? I would love some of my chambies
to sing at my homecoming, but I don´t even know what song. I might
have to get back to you on that, but can you remind me next week?


The weather has actually been really good this week! I was able to go
one day without any coat or jacket, it was really nice weather. And
everyone was so much happier too. We were able to make 3 appointments
in one hour, which is like.... unheard of. I will be so happy if it
doesn´t rain- it was so nice this week.

We are having like...an impossible time getting investigators to
church. That is our bigger focus this week. Also, we just don´t have
many investigators to get to church, but we hope we can change that
soon. Plus it´s really complicated that now we meet in Pinneberg
because our church is under construction and won´t in November and
it's confusing for the investigators. I can´t wait to get into our own
church so then we don´t have to explain "We´ll be in Pinneberg for 2
weeks and then after we´ll be in Elmshorn" and I hope people will be
more willing to come when it´s in our city. It´s tricky tricky.

That´s super exciting that the Hoggans are coming over tonight! I hope
you have a great time with them. Are you going to have German dessert?
So cool that they´re in our ward!

I love my mission so so much. This week was really good, just because
we were able to work really hard and we were able to cover a lot of ground
and really able to feel the love
Heavenly Father has for His children. I have felt such an increase of
love for the people that I work with in the last little while and I
hope that it keeps growing. It´s an amazing feeling to love someone
and see them the way Heavenly Father does. I love it! I love my life!
The gospel is true, and what else could matter? It´s intersting that
you said Find, Teach, and Convert- dad. Because our motto in our
mission is Find, Teach, Baptize, and Keep. Love it. We don´t just
baptize them to get rid of them. That would be totally useless and
also heartbreaking!

I love you all so much!

Love, Sister Niebergall

I love President Monson!

Hello Family!

This week was great! I guess I´ll just start from the very beginning, because that´s a very good place to start. After I e-mailed last week we went to an eating appointment. Every Monday we eat with the same member and she STUFFS us to death. We honestly feel sick after Schwester Raezke´s. And the problem is every Tuesday afternoon we have an eating appointment too- and we´re still full from Monday evening. The 2 times we´ve been we´ve had Elders with us, but I don´t think Elders are coming this time. I hope she doesn´t make as much- I´m scared! Everything she makes is SOOO delicious and you want to eat more, but oh mensch- it just hurts. I hope we don´t get too sick from eating so much. Interesting how every day when I lived at home we had a home cooked dinner but now my body is not used to it. Too crazy. And then after we eat with this lady, we play a game that lasts about an hour or more (depending on if the missionaries work together to help one person win or not- otherwise there have been missionaries that have left her house at 11:30. This game is very similar to the game 'Sorry'). Apparently this has been the tradition with missionaries ever since this lady got baptized and I don´t think it will ever break. Just pray I don´t die of being overfed. We have an eating appointment every day but Wednesday because of district meeting.

Tuesday we had an eating appointment with our ward mission leader and his wife. The wife is so so sweet. She told this story in her testimony. She has to get some massages for some sort of therapy and as she was getting her massages, the massage therapist and she got into a conversation about the gospel. She had the feeling she needed to give her a Book of Mormon. She had a series of 6 massages and it was after the 2nd massage she decided she wanted to give her a Book of Mormon. She brought a book to the 3rd massage, but she had a different therapist. Same with the 4th and the 5th massages. She was so sad and she thought "Well, I might as well not bring the book because she probably won´t be there." But she had the feeling "Always be prepared". The cool thing is, she always had these massages right after our eating appointments with her, so we were able to encourage her and pray for her and follow up with how things went. We were so happy to finally hear in her testimony that she was able to give away a Book of Mormon and they had a conversation about the gospel the whole time she was getting a massage. Her series of 6 massages are over, but the therapist said that she probably needed a series of 6 more and requested that she be her therapist. She is so excited that she gets to continue to talk about the gospel with this lady. I went up to her after sacrament and told her good job. She is so sweet and said "I never knew how much joy it could bring to share the gospel with others. I always read my grandkid´s mission e-mails about how much joy they have, but now I know for myself how much joy it brings." I was so glad to be able to take a part in helping this dear sweet member share the gospel. It really does bring more joy than you could know until you feel it yourself!

Wednesday we ordered bikes. Hallelujah. We will probably get them tomorrow- Elmshorn is too spread out just to be on foot all the time. We´ll be able to get a lot more done now that we have bikes. We had an interesting appointment Wednesday evening. It was a man who is really fest in his faith and he was trying to convince us about his beliefs. The problem was that what he said made NO sense. I left that appointment so grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is so simple even a child can understand it. There is a sentance in Preach My Gospel that I really like and it´s something like this "Our message is that God called a prophet to the earth to reveal the Plan of Salvation, and the principles of the gospel are what we need to do to return to God again one day." Our gospel is that simple. There are things in the scriptures and things that make the gospel interesting- but the core of the gospel is that we need to have faith, repent, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end and when we do that we can return to Heavenly Father. I love the gospel. It just makes sense.

 

Thursday we had an appointment with the Romanian family. It went really really well. We read the Restoration pamphlet with them and they were always giving us thumbs up and saying "gut!" The hardest thing is we can´t answer questions that they have. We´re trying to find someone that speaks Romanian, but we´re not having much luck. But they really like the Book of Mormon. They´re so funny- they always say Hallelujah and Amen when they like something. So we know when they agree with what they read. We also saw them on Friday and gave the rest of them a Book of Mormon and each of them wanted us to find them a scripture in their book for them personally. That was cool to be directed by the spirit and give them scriptures to them that the Lord put into our minds. We really are blessed that the spirit is the same in every language. We are thinking about inviting them to be baptized at our next appointment so please pray that they can understand the importance of why they need to baptized with the right authority.

 

Saturday was President Monson!! (no, Sabine, Sabine, and Anna weren´t there as far as I know). But what an amazing experience to see the prophet of the Lord speak to the people that I love. It was so fun to see so many members from my previous wards in which I served and so many missionaries in one place, including missionaries from the Frankfurt mission that I haven´t seen since the MTC. That was a big surprise, but my heart was so full to be in a place full of so many people I love. I felt my heart so full of love while I was there and I can´t even begin to describe it. Anyway, we thought President Monson was coming to say something big because they only had it planned for a month that he´d come. But he just spoke words of encouragement and love. Not one person in that room that day can deny that President Monson loves the people of Germany. It was so sweet and tender to see him counsel them. His main topic was that Decisions Determine our Destiny and gave 4 points that will help our destiny.

 

1. Listen- Listen to parents- they are on their knees every day pleading for your benefit. Listen to them! Also listen to the spirit. When you have righteous desires, the Lord will grant you with the spirit. And one thing he said that really struck me is "Promise Heavenly Father that you´ll listen to the promptings He gives you." I hope that when I make that promise, that I´ll be able to follow through on it.

 

2. Learn- Learn by reading in the scriptures. Learn patience by reading about the Savior´s life in the New Testament. Learn what Heavenly Father wants you to learn from the people around you and your situations.

 

3. Labor- Once you listen and learn from these promptings of the spirit, you need to do something. You can´t hear these things and learn that you need to change, you need to have the courage to change it.

 

4. Love- Learn to love others around you. Try to see people as He sees them.

 

It was so amazing to listen to him speak about Jesus Christ and feel his love for the Savior. The last words he spoke to them were "Ich liebe dich". Ahhh. I wish you could have heard those words come out of his mouth. You could feel his love and the Lord´s love so strongly. The closing song was "God Be With You Til We Meet Again" And in German it´s "Aufwiedersehen." It was so sad to see all the German members sobbing as they knew they might not see him again in their homeland. But it was so amazing to hear the member´s testimonies yesterday. They spoke with all of their souls as they testified that they knew President Monson was a prophet of God. There was also a moment for me that was super short, but undenyable that I felt without a doubt that President Monson is the one that has all the keys to the priesthood and that He is the Lord´s messenger to speak words of peace and to testify of Christ. I know that he is a prophet, and I´m grateful to have the priviledge to see him live as a missionary. That isn´t too common that a missionary gets to hear the prophet speak to the people in their mission specifically. I love him and I love my Heavenly Father for blessing me with that sacred experience. I love the gospel. I love sharing it with others. And I love you!!

 

Love, Sister Niebergall

Imagine GENERAL CONFERENCE!

Hello Family!!!

Conference.
Was.
Amazing!!!!!!!

I´M SO STOKED THAT SISTERS CAN SERVE MISSIONS AT 19!!!! WOOOOO!!!!!!!! I´m sure so many more young women will be considering a mission now, and if you are DO IT!! You will never ever regret it. It´s the best thing you could do for you and your future family. You learn to communicate and most of all you learn to love! No more girls waiting around for boys while they´re on their missions- you go serve one too! Just do it. People need you. I´ve seen it, and I know it.

Okay, that´s my spiel.

Every single talk had so much I could learn from and I am so excited to work on improving myself. I will talk A LOT about conference later. I was so uplifted and inspired. We haven´t watched the Sunday afternoon session. We´ll watch that not this week, but next week. This week will be fast Sunday and I´m sure it will be an amazing fast and testimony meeting because it´s right after Conference and after seeing President Monson. I am so excited and hope to be spiritually prepared to hear what he has to say. I love the gospel! My heart is so full!

That is the correct address, dad (And you did spell Schwester right too. Gut gemacht!). You may send packages, mail, love letters, postcards, anything you want for the next 2 months there. Okay? I would be very pleased to get a few or several more letters in the little time I have. Thank you you´re welcome. Also, speaking of postcards, I just realized I sent a postcard, but I wrote it as the Gingerbread man.... Do I need to write it as myself that I saw him or what do I need to do? I just realized I might have done that wrong... Naja.

We did get our music and make up and journals and things of importance this week. Things have picked up a little more this week. We organized our contact sheets so we can find people that live in the area easier if an appointment falls out. We went to a little city called Uetersen and we had an appointment with a sweet sweet funny old lady. She didn´t have much time but really wanted us to come back. As we left she was waving, crying, and saying "Aufwiedersehen" She was someone the Elders were teaching a few months back. We´ll see if anything comes of that.

As we were waiting for the bus back to Elmshorn from Uetersen, I decided to talk to a man that passed by us. He said he didn´t speak much German and he was from Romania. I said "Jesus Christus" ,which he understood, and his eyes lit up. He said "Just a minute. I´m going to find someone that speaks better German" And literally RAN away. He came running back a couple minutes later with 2 other women. We started explaining the Book of Mormon and they were really excited about it and asked us to come over to their house. We were crammed in a little tiny room where this family lived. They were so so excited to hear us telling people about Jesus Christ. There were 4 adults and at least 3 kids that lived there. It was kind of hard to explain because of the language barrier, but they started reading their favorite bible scriptures to us. Luckily I had my German bible on me so we could communicate through the scriptures. I´m sure thats how we´re going to have to continute teaching them. They were really excited about a modern day prophet, and said they´d come to conference. Unfortunately they didn´t, but we have a new appointment for Thursday. They were all crying when we were leaving and telling us they knew we were sent from God. That was really cool. I´m excited to give them a Book of Mormon and share the message of the Restored Gospel with them. We will definitely find more families to teach and baptize. I´m so ready for it.

You asked if most people we find are from other countries or Germans. We´ve had 3 lessons with Germans and 2 with out of the countries. Finding is going kind of slow here, but it´s pretty even (german to außländer ratio) I´d have to say. We haven´t gotten bikes yet. We have to go buy some this week because they can´t get our Meißen bikes to us. You are right, the river in Hamburg is the same river that flows through Meißen. It makes me feel closer to home. In Hamburg we went window shopping, looked at old cool buildings, and walked in a tunnel under the Elbe River and heard someone yodeling! Not many people can say that! That was pretty awesome. And we rode a Ferry that was Lion King themed because the theater for Hamburg´s Broadway Lion King is right on the Elbe. You have to ride a boat to get to theater, it´s pretty cool.

You said it was supposed to rain on us this week and I just need to let you know, it very much did. We were soaking wet most of the time. It even hailed extremely hard and we didn´t have umbrellas and my coat doesn´t have a hood so we were just walking down the street and laughing at our situation. There were other people huddling for warmth in random places and were super shocked at how we just owned the runway of mud from Bahnhof to our house. It was a good time. Glad to hear it´ll be a little more dry though. One day this week our heater was broken so we were FREEZING. Luckily we have tea that keeps us warm.

Sounds like you are about ready to be in MOTAB, dad. I hear they need more 2nd tenors. Falsetto is a good thing. I look forward to hearing you singing falsetto.

We did just switch cities with the Elders. That´s fun that Sister O´s mom put pictures on facebook. The weird thing about German grocery carts is that you have to pay to use them. Then when you put them back you get your money back. We didn´t live that far away from the grocery store and had a lot of groceries to carry so we decided we´d just wheel the cart home instead of trying to carry everything and risking dropping everything.

I have also been praying fervently for the Felbers. I was able to talk with them for the first time yesterday on the phone. I talked to each of them and it was so sad to hear each one of them crying. They are enduring and doing their best, but they can´t wait for the court case on the 22nd of November so they can finally have peace. It was so sad. Sweet little Anna asked "Are we ever going to see you again?" Ahh I almost started crying when she asked that. I hope and pray that they have the courage to leave their house to see the prophet. They need that boost from the spirit. Please pray for them to be able to do that too.

There isn´t much to say about Elmshorn. It´s really rainy and the members feed you A LOT, and sometimes it smells like cookies because there is a cereal factory. There aren´t really any landmarks that you´d take pictures by or anything. No castles or Germany things. It feels pretty normal. I don´t know if it feels German normal or American normal. I can´t remember what America is like... Its weird. I would say that most German towns are totally different. They each have their own personality and Celle, Halberstadt, Rostock, Meißen, Dresden, and Elmshorn are all totally totally different. There are hardly any similarities except that Germans live there and speak German. Some speak different dialects of German, but it´s all pretty much German. :)

I´m so glad you have a fun girl´s night. Those pictures were hilarious, especially of Rachel. I could tell she was kinda freaked out. It made me smile so much. Wasn´t that such a realaxing sticky feeling?

Other than that this week, the main highlight was of course, CONFERENCE!!! I learned so much and I just ate it up. I´m so spiritually exhausted from it, but it is such a good feeling. To answer your question, mom- someone speaks in German over the speakers. I wonder how it will work at the conference this weekend- If someone will stand next to him and translate or what´ll happen there. I loved the talks from the Relief Society meeting, especially the one from Schw. Reeves. I loved the video they showed of Jesus comforting Mary and Martha and I just started crying. Usually these movies about Jesus make Him seem untouchable and so powerful that no one can really develop a relationship with Him. But this video of Mary and Martha and Christ holding them just made me realize that´s exactly how it is when we are in sorrow. He wants to hold us and comfort us and He will if we let Him. I loved that video clip, it really invited the spirit for the rest of the talks.

One thing that really hit home to me this conference was I need to learn to follow the promptings of the spirit more. I want to be someone that Heavenly Father knows He can give promptings to. I don´t want to question these promptings as my own thoughts. I want to not hesitate or postpone a prompting. I want to change my to-do list if I have to so I can help someone. I know this will take A LOT of work. It will take a lot of studying, messing up, and trying again. But I want to be Heavenly Father´s helper and I know that I need to concentrate on this. This gift might not come by the end of my mission, but I look forward to developing into someone that the Lord can hopefully trust with everything. So I have been studying in Preach My Gospel "How to Recognize and Understand the Spirit" and know that I will learn a lot from studying that and applying what I learn from there. I just pray that I don´t give up when I mess up. That is my biggest desire right now. I also learned that if someone asks us a question about our doctrine, I don´t want to dance around the answer (for example- baby baptism) I want to say exactly what we believe and be proud of what we believe. It may be an answer to their prayers and I shouldn´t be ashamed of what we believe.

I really think that there is going to be a huge explosion in the missionary work. I agree mom. The Sisters serving missions will make a really big difference and I don´t know what will happen to Snow if girls and boys can both leave pretty early. I wonder if it won´t be such a young school. Crazy! And with all the talks about missionary work and living in the world but not of it(I still haven´t even heard the Sunday afternoon session. maybe there is more) I´m sure many people have gotten a confirmation/ started seriously considering a mission, and that makes me sooooo happy!!! Nothing will bless their lives more than going. I´m sure some places that aren´t open to missionary work will be able to be opened because of this increase in missionaries. I know this revelation comes from Heavenly Father and He knows how to best help His children. So excited!

I loved President Uchtdorf´s talk about having no regrets. I want to write a sign next to my bed and on my desk that says "Today did I: a) spend meaningful time with those that matter? b) Become more of the person Heavenly Father wants me to be? c) Was I happy regardless of the circumstances?" I feel like these things are a recipe for a happy life.

I LOVED the talk from Elder Nelson "ask the missionaries". It made me ask myself if I know all the things he just told everyone to ask us about. I will study up on these things.

I loved the quote from Robert C. Gay "With justification of petty sins, Satan triumphs" Ouch. But it´s so true! We need to not give in to those silly little sins that "don´t hurt anyone" or "aren´t that bad". That means Satan is winning if you say those things, and I personally don´t want him to win.

But one of the things that hit me so hard (even though I´m not a returned missionary yet) was Elder Holland talking about how we watched our investigators get in the baptismal font and raised our arm to the square, hoping the gospel would change our life and it was most certainly meant to change our lives. Wow. Those were some strong words and I hope that when I am one day a returned missionary, that I will be converted enough to stay true to everything I´ve taught these people in Germany. That is my biggest desire. I know this gospel can change lives. It´s changed mine, and I know if you let it, it can change yours too.

I love you SOOOOO much!!

Love, Sister Niebergall

Week one in Elmshorn

Grüße aus Elmshorn!

Life in Elmshorn is good. It is a lot different than Meißen, but it´s exciting to be somewhere new and in unknown land and relying fully on the Lord. I think this is the time that Heavenly Father is trying my patience. When we first got to Meißen, we made so many new appointments and got so many new investigators off the bat. So from my "whitewashing" experience (both missionaries totally new in a totally new city), I think that the miracles will automatically come and we´ll get lots of new investigators, but that hasn´t been the case. We have been doing almost all finding- and in Meißen we didn´t even have time to find our schedule was so packed. But we are doing our best to use time wisely and effectively so that we can find the prepared here in Elmshorn. It will take patience and work, but we´ll do it. We have an amazing ward that feeds the missionaries every day (pray I don´t come home 20 pounds heavier, please) and I´ve heard they are the key to the missionary work here. We are hoping to get lots of referrals/ ask them to pray where we should do finding. It´s really crazy, in our rush to leave, we left Sister Odenwalder´s ipod behind and the CD player doesn´t work here in the apartment and we can see such a big difference in our work without music. Music, when used right, is such a wonderful tool to invite the spirit and it´s so interesting that our work has been greatly effected by the lack of music in our lives. Music is a big part both of our lives and we´re looking forward to getting music this week sometime. I´m listening to music on LDS.org right now and I can already see a huge difference in my enthusiasm and happiness. Yay music!

We only had one appointment with an investigator this week and it went really well. He is a member referral and he is really cool. His name is Herr Oldenburg. He asks great questions and really is interested. The problem is that he is so busy, so we don´t get to meet him again until November. Schade.

We are in a Branch, but it´s almost a Ward, it just needs 4 more priesthood holders. I hope we can help with that. The area is really green and really wet. It rains about every day here. The people are super nice and talk to you on the street, we teach lots of lessons on the streets, which is crazy because we taught hardly any in East Germany. The hard part is, normally when we would get to a certain point in a conversation (in East Germany) you could almost guarantee that they would make an appointment with you. With the West Germans you get to that point and think they´ll make an appointment, but then they don´t and that is rough. But we´re not giving up. We are on bikes, but right now we have Elder´s bikes, which are impossible with skirts, so we are walking.... a LOT!!! We walked about 6 miles the other day. It was crazy.

We are hoping that the Elders will be good in getting Robert to straighten up. If Robert wants to be a missionary, I think it´ll be good for him to be around Elders and see what they do. So it´ll be good for him. We only got to call Sabine and say goodbye. That was such a hard phone call. They were sobbing, but the Elders are taking care of them and they need the priesthood more accessable to them, so I´m glad they have the Elders there. The Sisters are still in Dresden, but they´re totally fine. Dresden is huge and the Sister´s apartment is very hidden. Sabine, Sabine, and Anna- I´m not sure about their safety, but they are looking into moving (of course) so it will get better for them. Just keep praying very hard for them.

Dad, you are amazingly humble. "Mom made me sound better than I was." It´s super good of you to not raise your voice at her or show your irritation. And you give her the benefit of the doubt. I don´t think she really was a ref... Naja. And too hilarious about you embarrassing Sarah at the soccer game. I´m just glad it was her and not me. I love it. I wish I could´ve witnessed it.

That´s cool that Shae and Deej are going to the dance. Too fun. Tell him he has a letter in the mail heading his direction right this second. Also, speaking of letters, I wrote Brittany about 2 weeks ago a big FAT letter... I will be so sad if it got lost. So I have not forgotten her. We haven´t watched the Relief Society broadcast yet, we´ll see it Saturday evening before the first session of conference (because of the time difference). President Monson will have 2 conferences in our mission- Hamburg and Berlin. So we won´t even have to travel that far. That makes us happy. He also will be speaking in the other missions in Germany, so no one is left out. We´re so blessed to hear him 2 weeks in a row!

Tell Mindy and Ty congrats and also tell Rob and Michelle congrats! If any of my siblings are pregnant, they are not allowed to hide that information from me like Mindy did to Michelle. Okay? okay.

We´re going to Hamburg for Pday today. I´m excited.. I don´t know what we´re doing, but we´re going there so that´s sweet.

Yesterday I was reading in a Liahona and it talked about how to make the scriptures come alive, which is something really important when you read with investigators and for the rest of my life. It talked about how you bridge the gap between them, there, and then and I, here, and today. In pretty much every scripture story you can see parallels from back then to today and then when you apply it to yourself, you can learn so much and have a wonderful spiritual experience that should come every time you read the scriptures.

I love sharing the gospel. I really am so glad I decided to do this with my life and I know if I use this time well, I can become closer to what Heavenly Father wants me to become. I know that I still have a lot of work to go though for the rest of my life, but I look forward to improving every day. I love you so much!!!

Love Sister Niebergall

Welp, there are ALWAYS surprises on the mission

Hello Family!

Well, like my e-mail title says, there are ALWAYS surprises in the mission. Sister Odenwalder and I just got the phone call that we´re being moved to a little place called Elmshorn. Surprise! It´s in northern Germany by Hamburg and in the Neumünster Zone. We have to get packed and be ready to move by tomorrow. It´s crazy! This week has been really really not very good. Every single investigator has tschüssed us (said goodbye). We´re not moving because the work went downhill- I´m sure the work went downhill because we are needed in Elmshorn. There will be Elders that come to Meißen. It´s pretty sad, but if we are needed in Elmshorn, we will go gladly!

Like I said, this week was totally crazy and the work just totally died out. When I said last week that everything has fallen out, that means the people didn´t show up to the appointments. Robert has been really struggling. There was one day this week where he said to all his friends "I have to drink right now and starting Saturday I can´t drink ever again!" He didn´t realize that his baptism wasn´t going to happen. We kept trying to have lessons with him, but every time he kept saying "No desire" Then he asked us "what time is the baptism on Sunday?" Then I had to break it to him, "Sorry dude. There is no baptism on Sunday." He was shocked and looked pretty disappointed. Then we asked him when he actually wants to get baptized so he can start working on it. He said he would let us know when he wants to meet again. That was heartbreaking. He is really one of my best friends and I care so much about him.

Then there is Stanley. We went to Sabine´s house to have an appointment, and she wasn´t there. That was disappointing, and as we were leaving we saw Stanley! He said "It´s been good having you come over, but I know what I need to do, and you don´t need to come over anymore"....okay.... So he doesn´t want to meet with us anymore either. And our Frau Helaili expressed concern that she will never be able to quit smoking and she really isn´t all the way there, so we aren´t going to teach her anymore. We sent a text message to the 15 year old girl to see if she could meet with us and she said that she was sick and that she is going to France for a year. So that was also a bummer. Herr Becker didn´t come either (the one from Weinböla that we were talking about then we talked to him.) It was really kind of a disappointing week. We went to Cottbus to do a Straßen Ausstellung (No, it´s not really a market mom... I don´t know what to call it. A street display or something) and when we got there it POURED rain on us and no one talked to us or even was outside, so that was also pretty disappointing. We had about 6 Sister Missionaries there this time. Last time we had four. The picture on the blog wasn´t from our Ausstellung, so that´s why you didn´t see a picture there.

BUT I´m not saying all of that to complain. I´m saying that to testify that in the middle of really hard times, there are miracles when we work through the hard times. We went to an appointment and we rang the doorbell, but it ends up that we rang the wrong door bell, but they invited us in. It was a family from Macedonia with a 12 and 1 year old daughter. They said they just barely started reading the Bible two years ago (and in his exact words) "they are looking for the right path." We even had a Book of Mormon with us in Serbian, which is one of the languages they speak there. We also found out that their doorbell had been broken for awhile and they just barely fixed it that morning. They were so interested in the Book of Mormon and it was cool to see that Heavenly Father obviously lead us to them. We made a return appointment and hope the next missionaries can teach them more.

Health-wise, I´ve been feeling pretty well this week. I just had some stomach pain. It doesn´t happen too often that I get sick, but it happens more often than I like. Anna didn´t get to participate in the Primary program. There have been too many things going on this week and they weren´t able to come to church. The family that reminded me of home is so great. The parents were a little embarrassed, but I loved it because, like I said, it was exactly like home.

I am sad Sabine isn´t coming too. She is working in an old folk´s home for her internship and she loves it, so that makes me happy. We don´t see them as much anymore, like I said, we had an appointment, but they weren´t home. I don´t even know if we´ll be able to say goodbye to them.

What I´ve done about my missing glasses is I´ve been wearing my companion´s glasses. Luckily we have a similar perscription. So it´s no big deal, you don´t need to get me any, I can just borrow hers if I need them.

The man calling in the middle of the night isn´t creepy. He hasn´t called at all since I wrote you about that, so no worries. We haven´t sicked the Elders on him, but if he calls again, he´ll have to deal with the Elders. We told you about the Swiss CD´s we found, we have a Swiss Elder in our District, so we´ll give it to him as a going away present or something.

Thanks so much for getting school things taken care of. Looks like you won´t have anyone to be the middle man anymore so we´ll just have to e-mail Mondays. That´s okay, we don´t need to communicate more than that. But I am totally okay with living in Continental. Can you ask Alyssa to write me and tell me about it a little. I don´t have time to write her a separate e-mail.

I´ll have to think about what you should say to your nail lady. That´s too bad that people were awkward. It´s good that people were meaning the best, but we really need to be careful about how we approach them. I don´t know what you should say, but maybe explain why they say we´re the only true church, and that we believe we´re the only church with authority and that we can pray and ask if it´s true.... I know that sounds really bold... I don´t know what else to say though and now i´m under time pressure. We have an appointment at 6:30 and have to catch the train in about 15 minutes, but I´ll still think on it. So glad your foot is healing! You should stop breaking it so I don´t have to laugh every time I picture you walking like the Scooby Doo Zombie.

How many kids do Mindy and Ty have now? Crazy.

SOOOO cool about dad and the soccer game. Way to be such a good example, dad. You are really one of the most Christ like people I know. I love you!

Hey, I was thinking about Andi and Paige this week. Crazy! I can´t believe Andi´s son is 4. Nuts! Say hi back, if you see them!!

I will try my best to send a postcard from the Gingerbread man. It´s been a little crazy around here. If I don´t get it out this week, will I still be able to send one next week? Let me know, but I´ll do my best to send one this week.

I know this gospel is true! I know that God has a plan for all of us and that we will be safe when we are obedient and keep the commandments! I love you! I love Heavenly Father and my Brother Jesus Christus.

I love YOUUUUUUUUU!!!! Bis nächste woche aus Elmshorn! Can´t wait to tell you about our new adventures!

Love, Sister Niebergall