The one with all the missionaries 10/27/2017

Hey hi hello it's me again, 

This week went by waaaaaay too fast! But it was fantastic! So many things happened this week that I can't even think about what to say! But here's a [quick] rundown:

Wednesday we went to the Häners house for lunch and service. Sister Häner is probably the sweetest woman I have ever met and she grew up in what is now my homes backyard, we connected really fast my first Sunday here! She knows a lot of people from my homeward since it was her childhood ward! I love her lots, she's amazing! 

We made about 200 more cat friends, but only took pictures with one of them so enjoy the pictures of our Sunday night pal. 

On Friday all of the missionaries went to Munich for a conference with Elder Ballard and the area authorities, it was incredible! Words cannot even explain. The spirit was so strong and it was so powerful. I'm so grateful for that opportunity. Also Elder Ballard probably has the softest hands on this planet. And he's incredibly nice and funny. 

It was so cool to have all of the missionaries from our mission in one place, and it was so fun to see so many old friends and mission buddies! (I got to ride on the bus from Zurich to Munich and back again Sister Hill and Sister Hunter and it was the absolute best, they are some of my bestfriends and I've missed them so much!)

Thursday night and Friday night we slept over in the Sisters apartment in Bern with 6 other sisters so that we wouldn't have to get up quite so early to go to Munich or get home quite so late.. We still had to get up at 2:30 Friday morning, so even though we were exhausted it was fun to spend time with the Sisters! 

Yesterday we went finding in Basel (the elders area) just so we could finally do some street contacting and we met so many cool people! We also went dooring in our area and when we were headed to another area I felt like we needed to do one more house. The woman answered the door, we started our spiel, and she stopped us and said "where have you been? Why did you stop coming to me? We've been waiting." Confused, we were like "wie bitta?" She took that as us not understanding her German so she switched to English and repeated adding that she hasn't seen missionaries in years and that they had just stopped coming without saying anything. They met with missionaries for 50 years.. ahahaha. We told her we had absolutely no idea about that but that we are here now. She had just gotten out of the hospital so she wasn't ready for us to come in right then but we'll be hopefully seeing them again before they move in a few weeks. We went to another apartment in another area and the second door we knocked was this cute mom who let us right in, she had met with missionaries before as well! We talked with her for quite a while and she talked about her conversion to Christ and her life back in the dominican republic before she came to live in switzerland.. She was super cool! 

Elder Ballard gave a challenge to the youth in Europe this week and I would like to extend it to all of you, because missionary work can be done all over the world! The challenge is for every person to find ONE person for the missionaries to teach before Christmas. Got it? Every one of you has until Christmas to find one person for the missionaries to teach! As we all do this we will see miracles and the church will grow, the knowledge of Christ and the restored gospel will be spread, and you will have a missionary experience in your pocket. The greatest miracle and the best gift you can give someone is knowledge of their Savior Jesus Christ, and the knowledge of the restored gospel that can do greatly bless and change their lives! Ready..set... GO!

Have a fantastic week everyone! I love you all ♡ 

Sister Carley Lundskog
Kirche Jesu Christi HLT
Lommelstraße 7
81479 München
Deutschland

The one where this is the plaaaaaaceeee 10/17/2017

Hey y'all, 

Some quick thing from the last week or so...

-we've been working a lot in this cute dorf called Gempen. In order to get there we get to ride a bus through the mountains and forest and its just the most beautiful journey. And we've met some really incredible people. One of the first houses we doored was this man who received a book of Mormon from one of his friends a few years ago, and then was stopped by some elders in Basel just a few weeks ago. He invited us in and asked us to teach him more, but because of the rule we couldn't. But we'll hopefully get in contact with him again soon.

-we had an awesome lesson with Mihretab, our new friend, and he was so open! He had a lot of questions and we had a lot of language barriers (the lesson was taught in both English and German and neither are his native language) but he said he would study what we had taught him until he understood it. We taught in a restaurant and he had ordered a beer but then stopped, looked at us, and asked "am I allowed to drink beer?" We told him that he was allowed to make decisions for himself, but that we didn't drink, and so he ordered a hit chocolate instead saying he would start trying to live like we do.

-Sister Gach studied the map and thought she had found an "Innenstadt" in our area and she was excited to be able to actually do some street contacting... so we went...and there were about 2 people there. I couldn't stop laughing.

-while we were dooring we looked at the map and saw that we were near a part-member home, so we decided to go by on them and get to know them. And for the first time on my mission someone actually yelled at us and was angry at us for doing what we were doing! Hahahaha the husband is a member and the wife despises missionaries, so it was kind of exciting. Anyway turns out this member man is the same man that had given the man in gempen a book of Mormon! And the man who we found had talked to the member man about meeting us! Basically, it was just a cool experience talking to this member and realizing that he was the friend we had heard about. 

-we worked in a dorf called Seewen on Saturday. We saw a woman struggling with her groceries so I asked her if she needed help, she explained that she couldn't speak German but that she was fine. We started speaking English to her and she started to cry she was so happy to finally hear American English again. She's from California and has been living in Germany and Switzerland for a really long time. She opened up to us and just told us that she needs help and that she's been really stressed. She really wants us to come again and teach her and her daughter. We also met a man who was outside working in his yard, he asked if someone had sent us to him and was very suspicious about our timing. We gave him a book of Mormon and he couldn't stop looking at it and flipping through pages as we talked to him. He was way cool. :)

-Sunday we had a Europe-wide broadcast with Elder Ballard. It was such an incredible meeting and the spirit was so strong. He spoke a lot about how we need to believe in miracles. We also need to take some time to ponder, and pray, and just have some quiet time. 

-yesterday we had a quick zone training to prepare us for getting Facebook today.. yep. Our mission is getting Facebook for online proselyting. It's going to be interesting to see how it works but we are all excited to see the difference in our work.

-Oh and we have seen about 2,000 cats and counting. I've never seen so many cats in my life and I truly feel that God has been blessing us with cats. ♡

[As far as pictures go, just enjoy them, we didn't take any this week so it's just all from the glorious day today:)]

Something that Elder Ballard had said is that the greatest miracle we can bring to people is the miracle of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you love the Lord? How much? The best way to show our love and commitment to the Lord is to share the gospel, and bring others to the truth.  

 

Sister Carley Lundskog 

Kirche Jesu Christi HLT 
Lommelstraße 7
81479 München 
Deutschland

The one with all the views 10/10/17

Hellllllooo from Switzerland!

This week has been the best week! I love Switzerland. It's absolutely beautiful, and the ward members here are fantastic and so welcoming! The German here is wack but it's so funny. It kind of sounds like Irish people speaking German while making up some words. It's awesome. 

So Reinach is super small, nothing compared to the big cities I've served in and I love it. There's never anyone out so our method of finding is always dooring...which is fun we actually had some [slightly terrifying] experiences getting let in. I've learned on my mission that 9 out of 10 times you get let in the person is actually crazy. One of the ladies who let us in is a practicing witch...it was all normal conversation about what we are doing and why until she asked us if we believed in demons... then she started pointing to different places in the room calling out words in a different language and then told us all sorts of different offensive and crazy things. Then she cast a spell on us. And then when we defended our beliefs she started talking to "someone" else in the room and told them to leave us alone as it was her battle. And then she told us we were damned and then we left. It was probably the craziest thing that's ever happened. It was a nice warm welcome to Switzerland. 

Another day we doored Pfeffingen and when we were almost done with the day we saw we were like a 5 minute walk away from the Pfeffingen ruin, so we walked to that for a little break before we went home for dinner. It was so cool and it had a beautiful view of our area. 

Every time we have gone dooring all of the neighborhood cats have followed us, every time by the end we have at least 3 cats following us, its the greatest. It's just a cute little blessing to have so many cat friends. :)

The ward here is incredible. We have a wonderful bishop, on my second day we had been dooring near his house so we went by for a minute so I could meet him and his wife made us some huge sundaes and we ended up having a really nice time. We went to our GMLs (ward mission leader) and had GMK (missionary correlation meeting) and then we had an investigator (well he wasn't an investigator yet but he is now) come for a lesson. We had an incredible lesson, I love when we have members in the lessons because they always have such a wonderful spirit and it brings a different feeling when they bare testimony compared to when it's just us. Sunday there was a baptism for a little boy in the ward so I was able to get to know the ward a little more. 

Yesterday we had a lesson with Oliver (this was the second meeting making him an official friend of the church). It was awesome. He had so many good questions that were able to just be answered as we taught the restoration. All the pieces fell together so easily for him. We challenged him to read and pray about it, and although it's something new for him he said he would. We see a lot of potential in him. :)

Today we went to the Bern Temple. It was absolutely beautiful and I feel completely recharged. There were the cutest members from Austria there and this cute little old lady just kept trying to kiss me and hug me and show me love. She told me she wanted to take my eyes with her so she could remember me. She was so cute I just died. The session we attended was French, and it was amazing. ♡

In general conference a quote from President Russell M. Nelson was shared, and I really love it.  “The Lord has more in mind for you than you have in mind for yourself! You have been reserved and preserved for this time and place.…The Lord needs you to change the world. As you accept and follow His will for you, you will find yourself accomplishing the impossible!” We are needed, every single one of us has a job to do and we prepared for the work long before we can remember. God knows who we are, and He will help us come to realize and know what work He has for us if we just ask. 

Have a fantastic week my dears!

Adieu

Sister Carley Lundskog
Kirche Jesu Christi HLT
Lommelstraße 7
81479 München 
Deutschland

The one with the best week ever 10/5/2017

HEY HEY HEY,

This week has been crazy weird but I am filled with so much gratitude for all of the tender mercies! On Monday we randomly got a call from Mero (a former investigator, in August all of our investigators went MIA and we haven't heard from them). We also finally got contact with Sylvia. Anyway, Mero called and he wanted to meet again. Wednesday, Ihsan texted us. Thursday, Christian called about meeting with Manuela again. !!! What !¡!¡

On Thursday we had an incredible appointment with Anastasia. She's read so much in the Book of Mormon! We taught her the plan of salvation and even though so much of it was completely different from what she was taught her whole life she soaked it in. She wanted to study it out and pray about it by herself. She agreed to come to conference! She came to the sisters session and LOVED IT. When we told her there would be another session starting in 30 minutes she was so happy, and stayed for the Saturday morning session. She LOVED IT. She had to leave a little early since she had brought Justus with her and it was getting kind of late, but she said she was going to go home and watch the other sessions online. WHAT? AHH! She is just so incredibly humble and willing to learn, and this gospel is what she has been searching for, and she can see that. I love seeing people find what they didn't know (or did) that they've been missing. I love progress! I'm so sad that I have to be leaving and pass her along to another sister, but the gospel is true regardless of which missionary is teaching it.

Friday we met with Mero for the first time since July. He expresses how he's seen a difference since he's stopped seeing missionaries, and even though he's not fully convinced, he feels strongly that he needs to keep learning and meeting with missionaries until he is. 

We went to the Arnold's for dinner and it's always such a treat to be in their home, they are such an incredible family. I love them, and I'm going to miss them.

Saturday we got transfer calls.... once again, I'll be leaving. I'm not going to lie, I am suuuuuper sad about transfers, I love Munich. I love the people, the ward, and I love our investigators. I don't want to leave. But hey, I'M GOING TO SWITZERLAND! Which means, I get to go to THE TEMPLE! The Bern temple will be the 9th temple I will have gone to this year, which makes me so happy, especially since I haven't been to the temple in 6 months, and also I just love temples! I will be in Reinach, so basically the border of France so maybe I should have taken understanding French at the soup kitchen more seriously. Lol. I'm really hoping the only new language I will have to learn in the next 10 weeks will just be Schweizerdeutsch ...which hopefully won't be as bad as I imagine. 

Sunday we watched the Saturday afternoon broadcast and then between sessions we all went to President and Sister Brown's home for dinner and games, and then ended up staying and watching the Sunday morning session in their home. I cannot express how much I loved that whole experience. After the session we went around and talked about what we got out of conference and it was such a building and uplifting experience. I LOVE THE BROWNS. I LOVE CONFERENCE. I LOVE THE GOSPEL.

Monday we met with Mero again. We also spent about 4 hours trying to Abmeld me from Germany. Suuuuper exciting stuff, so we took some selfies in the corner on the floor, (I just really love how positive and happy my comp is lol). We had a dinner appointment with a member and had raclette! (Suuuuuper good stuff, look it up in your spare time or something). 

Today we finished the raclette leftovers with the Munich 2 sisters. (See the picture, please note the delicious looking mushrooms and meats, ahh sooo gooooooooood). Yummmmmmm. 

So something that really stood out to me from conference was how individual the gospel is. Everything needs to be done through and with God, but we are the ones who allow that to happen, we are the ones who need to invite the spirit, or give our wills to God. We are the ones who need to center our lives on Christ. We are the ones who choose how we will respond to circumstances, whether they are good or bad. We are the ones who have to choose if we are going to read in the Book of Mormon and therefore have our testimonies strengthened, we choose to follow the commandments. We choose, we do, but we are promised so many blessings if we make those decisions or how we choose to live. If we read the book of Mormon we will have a testimony, we will be able to withstand temptations and make better decisions; if we choose to see the positive in things, we will see the Lord's hands in our lives; if we turn to the Lord and place our trust in Him, we can do all things. I am so so grateful for this gospel, and the gift that we have to choose for ourselves, I'm grateful to always be able to learn, and to be given opportunities and tools to do so. I know the church is true, and I know if we incorporate what was spoken about in conference, we will be happier, we will make better decisions, and we will come to know our Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ, personally. 

I love you all! Have a fantastic weeeeeeek! 

(Pictures: raclette party, last GMK, games & conference at the Browns x2, us with one of the members we visit- Clara, waiting for the bus x2, trying to abmeld..)

Sister Carley Lundskog
Kirche Jesu Christi HLT
Lommelstraße 7
81479 München 
Deutschland