Week 32: um.... You're not wearing a shirt, but would you like to know about the plan God has for you?

Dear All,

...Like 5 more days till missionary Christmas starts.... that would be General Conference. We are just so excited you can't even understand. uhhhh ya eight hours of spirtual food. I'm hungry for it and seriously cant wait....and it will be in english. YYYESSSSS

So this week has been all over the place. To be honest, lots of the time I just want to go home, but then we have an awesome experience with the spirit and I never want to leave... its so weird. I don't think I ever told you, but hurt my foot a few weeks ago sprinting for a train and I've just ignored it. But Sister Denning said I needed to call the doctor. So I did and he said that I just need to stay off of it... which makes missionary life extremely difficult. Rather than contacting on the streets and porting we've been trying to do a lot of bus contacting so getting on and off the bus talking to people. It hasn't been working super well in this ville and so one night we just gave up and decided to do some porting anyways and we met Sammy! Ha, he is tall dark and handsome and definitely wasn't wearing a shirt... we were both very glad that it was dark and he was dark so we couldn't see very much. But we felt prompted to talk about the plan of salvation for his door approach. He was really interested. He was like "ya... in church they tell us lots about life here... but never the before and afters. I'd love to learn more." Unfortunately he was home alone so we couldn't teach him right there so we set up another appointment and of course.... when we went back his girlfriend answered and told us he wasn't really interested. We also went back to that Italian family we found and they made up some lame excuse about why they couldn't see us.... and i just wish people would be honest. If they don't want us to come back, just tell us nicely :) ha then we won't come back and bug you!

So I was fairly happy with the progress of some of our investigators/non actives. Ceu, the lady that randomly showed up at the American Cemetery and drove us home, made a big step this week. A few weeks ago she was just complaining and telling me how she wasn't going to pay her tithing because she isn't active and she is not going to pay her tithing if she doesn't get the benefits of it since she doesn't go. Yet she expects God to just give her a new job... so I don't remember if I told you about this yet or not but I was pretty darn bold with her and just told her that I love her and that she knows that she needs to pay her tithing because everything that she has is a blessing and god just asks us to give a little bit in return. So this week we visited her and she said... I have to tell you something... I'm going to pay my tithing. HA, I wish you could have seen my face! Actually I wish I could have seen my face! I'm sure it was just priceless. I prayed so hard when I got home that God would keep His end of His promise and that he would bless her.

We set a baptismal date with our investigator named Nicole. She is a little interesting and her son has autism and won't stop pinching my nose. We were having a hard time getting her to church, but we had a lesson with a member and I felt like we were on "The District". Ha, she kept on bringing up one concern after the next and we ended up getting her to come!! She only stayed for half of sacrament, but its better than nothing. I hope she feels something and keeps coming so she can get baptized. 

We dyed my comps hair this week. Its way cute and i just love it... It makes me want to play with mine... ha so who knows, maybe one week you'll get a picture of someone you don't even recognize!

So sister Turner feeds us like every week and she is so sweet. from England. She's the lady that shared the prayer and the lemonade story. But she told me her conversion story this week and it was so cool. Long story short, when she was 16 her teacher of "people who moved west" and another teacher of the same subject had a bet to see who could get through the curriculum the fastest.... and to slow the other teacher down, the other teacher sent the missionaries to her classroom so that he would lose a day and therefore lose the bet. ha well the missionaries of course came and with the ward mission leader. And their message touched sister turners heart. She went home and bugged her mom for weeks and weeks about the missionaries and to get sister
Turner to shut up the mom finally called the church and had them over. When the missionaries opened the door sister Turner's mom said "ok come in quick so we can get this over with". Since sister Turner's dad had recently passed away the moment the missionaries said that families are forever they had her mom hooked. They were baptized six weeks later....

Well, I tell you this because we got a call from a member this week. Her daughter goes to a catholic school and her teacher of religions asked if anyone wasn't a catholic; Of course her daughter raised her hand and the professor wanted to meet with her mom. The daughter gave her a Book of Mormon and the mom met with us and we prepared her for her meeting with this teacher. The teacher had started reading the Book of Mormon with her husband and said that if she gets permission from the headquarters that she'd love for us and Sister Marishall to come give a presentation... maybe well plant a good seed somewhere... I hope so.

Ok, last story. sorry real quick. I was having a rough time and i have a cold, and it kills and I just want to be in bed all the time. But we went out anyways and had a lesson with Miriam to teach her more about the confirmation that she was going to have the next day.... and the spirit was just so strong. I felt it seriously edifying me. And then Miriam just told me how much of a blessing the gospel has been for her and then she gave me the best compliment a missionary could ever wish for... she told me that when I speak, I speak with power. She said that she just loves to hear me speak and would have me over everyday if she could. I was happy missionary.

Well this week should be cool. We started teaching a 89 year old lady.... so I hope she doesn't die in between now and our next rendez vous!!

LOVE YOU ALL

Soeur K

Week 31: A Wonderful Baptism to Start off the Transfer

Dear Family and Friends,

So we had a BEAUtiful baptism yesterday. Miriam was just beaming. But Satan worked hard on her before... so the night before her son got really sick and he had to go to the hospital. Apparently he has had this sickness before and was there for over three days. But after a few days at the hospital he got feeling better and the doctor said that they could go home and she was then able to go to her baptism!! Wonderful! She shared her testimony and it was so strong. Almost the whole room was in tears. She is just simply amazing and the trials she went through up and to this point were just insane. She said she is ready and willing to take the new steps to go to the temple. I am excited to work with her.

Miriam's Baptism

On the other hand the baptism was craziness. It was so stressful trying to find everyone rides to drive the 20 minutes to get to the pool in Schifflange since we don't have a font here. We need a new building. The chapel is way too full and its only going to grow.

Saying Goodbye to Souer Smith

So my new companion is Sister Denning. She just turned 20 but speaks pretty well! Its such a different experience doing missionary work with two semi-experienced missionaries. Its so much easier. I love it. We're having fun. Its supposed to warm up this week so I think i can hold off for a couple more weeks till I have to buy a huge coat thing. Sister Denning is from Centerville, Utah and did a year of nursing at USU before she went to cosmetology school. Shes going to fix my hair that I let Sister Hilton cut. I really like her though, and were having fun. We're not working as much as we used to, but I think once we get more comfortable well find a balance that works for us.

We went down to Paris to swap companions and President wouldn't let us go to the church there so we had to all find ourselves and switch at all the major train stations in Paris. It was ridiculous and so hard cause our phone doesn't work in France. I ended up sitting at the train station for over four hours and was almost left all alone....but it worked out.

Other than that we're just doing missionary work. My favorite non active made us so much food. We've been eating coconut chicken all week and we have maybe only eaten half of it... great ha.

So I've been really wanting to find a family... and we ported into an Italian one the other night so I hope this week that all works out... Well see.

General conference is too soon and i cant wait!

Thanks again for all the emails i just love them and you so much!

LOVE S KOHLERT

Week 30: Anyone wanna body surf down the stairs?

Well well well GUESS WHAT?

Sœur Kohlert has officially started her sixth transfer! Shes getting old! So Wednesday is transfer day and lucky me I get to stay here in beautiful Luxembourg! Soeur Smith is headed way south into my old zone. My new companion will be Sister Denning. I believe she will be in her 4th transfer. Shes gotta be sweet I just know. I talked to her once at some sort of mission gathering some time.  Im kinda nervous. This transfer was so relaxing.. I feel like a big trial is headed my way ha. We'll see what happens.

God's Canvas....Beautiful

Well this week was pretty fun! We ran into a bishop from Chicago and its really cold here now. I don't like it. I want it to warm up ASAP.

So unfortunately the baptism didn't happen:( But no worries! It will happen this Sunday. So we have to do our baptisms in a public pool.. and we couldnt get it scheduled in time. It ended up being okay because it gave the ward more time to be more organized and i think way more people will come. 

Our investigator from France came to church on Sunday! A member had to pick her up but we were so happy to see her there! It was cool how well she participated in sunday school and after church she asked us to teach her more about baptism! Of course we said of course ha! She prays to angels so we have a lot of work to do.. but her angels told her that the BOM is true and to keep meeting with us... so... thats good I guess right? ha

We have an investigator from Lithuania who is awesome. She is golden and comes to church every week and has been taking the lessons for like a year now. She got stuck in traffic with her husband in Paris and asked us to pick up her daughter from the day care (which everyone uses here by the way.. even if they don't work or not they just drop their kids off and pay a ton for it. It's so sad.they are on every corner). Of course we couldn't pick up her daughter so we had a member do it......and on her drive home se read 100 pages of the BOM. We had a lesson with her a couple days later and we prayed about what to teach her and we invited the member that picked up her daughter. Nothing too exciting happened during the lesson, but afterwards she said "so I've been thinking about setting a date for baptism... Can we do that? I'm still hesitant but I want to set a date with that cool calender thing you have"! Awesome right? were so excited. She said that it had lots to do with how willing the members are to help one another.. personally I think its because she read the BOM.

So today we went to the American cemetery and there were no buses that got us very close... so we had to walk way far. Once we got there it started to pour of course, and I didn't have an umbrella... but we were walking back and our nonactive friend walks up and said that she saw us walking on the side of the road about an hour ago and figured that we were going to see the cemetery and she thought that she should just stop and give us a ride home.. I was so grateful because it was a long long walk and we would have been soaked and wasted half of our day. Its cool how God takes care of us.

American Cemetery

A couple of days ago we were running for a train as usual and s smith decided to skip stairs... bad idea. she completely ate it.....like hard core. Head first she dove down the stairs. Her skirt flew up and she literally skidded head first down this huge flight of marble staircases at the most popular staircase at the gare. I thought she broke something for sure......She ended up being okay, and once I realized she was fine, I laughed for about an hour afterwards. It was hilarious. and she is way tall so it was just not graceful at all and throughout the week when I'm down or somehting, I just think about it and laugh myself to tears...ha...so funny.

Soeur Smith After Her Fall

Well I love you all

Keep the commandments ya ;)

LOVE YOU

Week 29: So I do believe that Soeur Smith will get to see a baptism in Luxembourg!

Naomi--- GOOD LUCK on this amazing adventure that you're about to embark on! I wish you the best and know that God is with you!

I was so happily overwhelmed when I opened my email today. Thank you friends and familiy for all of the time you spend showing me your love. You really cant understand how much it means to me. Thank you thank you thank you!

Our mission is up to 110 baptisms since June and a total of 224 for the year. The work is hastening. 

So i just read that we have 270 missionaries in our mission right now and 60 more that are coming in between now and December... Ridonk right? Not too many are going home either. Can you imagine that our mission is going to have like 320 missionaries????? I'm so impressed by our president. I can't imagine taking care of all of us.

Our District...we are holding up the number of transfers we have had

So nothing more has come of Immogen yet.. but don't give up hope cause we haven't :)

We had a somewhat cool yet depressing experience Monday night. It was way late, like 8:55 p.m. and we were walking home and we stopped this Luxembourgish family (Luxembourgish people don't really listen normally.. I don't blame them, it's not like I would have listened to missionaries either if I were them, I'm definitely grateful I was taught by awesome parents the gospel). The dad said that they needed to go home and put their little child to bed who was with them. The mom agreed but after a moment she told the dad to go on ahead and start putting the little girl to bed and that shed be there soon. We approached her of course with internal families and she had more insights than I have ever heard. We asked her why her family is important to her and she took like five minutes to answer the question when people normally take like one sentence when they say "uh, I don't know. Because they are my family and they love me." It ends up that this lady was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago and really it changed her life. Luxembourg is very money focused and she simply said that she decided not to be and that she in turn was going to help the foreigners who are flooding into Luxembourg from all over the world because they have so little. We talked with her for like another ten minutes, and we then asked her (her name is Stefanie), if she would be interested in learning more about the Plan that God has for her and her life. I was so shocked to hear the word yes come out of my mouth and that she wanted to meet with us the next day. I was shocked. We were so happy. So we spent extra time the next morning preparing and practicing her lesson and then the phone rang.. it was her. She said that she looked us up online and she decided that she was going to do some more research on her own before meeting with us. She said that it was not by happenstance that she ran into us and that she really does think that she needs to focus more on her spiritual side because there needs to be a balance in life but as for now she needs to take care of herself physically. She said that shell keep our number and call us if she feels the need to meet with us. As you can imagine we were pretty disappointed. But I think we planted a really good seed if you ask me.

Miriam Cloque. Amazing. From Bolivia. She took all the lessons like ten years ago. She knows the church is true. Her knowledge and testimony of the gospel is just so amazing to me. She unfortunately was living with her boyfriend for quite a while and he was really prohibitive when it comes to letting her go to church and what not .. and the law of chastity. She is the lady that we helped move my first week here. She moved into a home for women and guess what.. shes ready to be baptized. We met with her last Wednesday and this Sunday is her baptismal date. it will probably also be Soeur Smith's last Sunday here because transfers are next week. We are so excited and so blessed. Yay for baptisms!

Speaking of the law of chastity; we taught it to our 25 year old investigator who is dating this RM back in Utah. She was so worried that he hadn't made out with her yet and when we taught the law of chastity and explained his thought process.. she was really impressed. she had never thought about things in the way we were describing them. It made me really grateful to be so young and have such great knowledge in regards to those types of things. Gods commandments truely are a blessing and keep us safe from so many heartaches.

Well I seriously can't wait till next week!!

LOVE ME

Week 28: "Mummy, those girls told me I was adorable..."

Well long time no talk, I feel like its been a whole like 7 days since I've gotten to email you.

So I just have to tell you that I live in BelAir. Ya, like Fresh Princ status. And I'm already in like the richest country in the world and I live in the BelAir section of it. Ha... ya I'm living with the cream of the crop over here... TOO BAD OUR APARTMENT HASN'T CHANGED SINCE LIKE THE 60's and it smells like 19 year old elder ha. So the sisters moved into the old elder apartment 6 weeks before I got here and boy oh boy do i wish their mothers taught them how to clean. I was getting some food out of our cupboard that I just thought smelt bad because the apartment just smells bad in general... but no. There was like garlic rotting into the wood with like all these bugs living in it... I can't believe that I have been living with that in there. Ha, its because I'm so short that I couldn't see into the back corner... So ya.. i used like a half bottle of bleach to sanitize our kitchen this morning.  My next project is the bathroom....there is mold growing every where and we literally live in a house FULL of flies. I can't figure out how to get rid of them. I feel like were living in Africa with flies, silver fish, those bugs in the wood, and our ant problem... you would never guess we're living in BelAir in the richest city in the world ha. Hope that entertains mom a bit.

Beautiful Area...We ride the buses behind me.

So this week was slow again... we like tried our best and our numbers look good, but man, it was a rough week. We got a phone plan so we don't have to pay by the minute and they changed our number and that was a fiasco. we also had to go to the doctor cause my companion can't hear. turns out there is a build up of ear wax. Its been like this since i got here and she can't improve her french cause she can't hear.

We had a good turn out to church this week. We had one investigator that I had never invited to church; I decided to just call her up and ask her if she wanted to go to church, even though she'd have to travel for an hour. She ended up coming with her two kids and was crying during fast and testimony meeting. Then she asked me to bare her testimony for her, so I did! Her name is Hayate.

I can't believe Nicole peed her pants.... oh my.

Oh, so something else that made this week more difficult was that we got the news that elder Oaks can't come see us next week.. It like crushed everyone's dreams. We were so excited to hear from an apostle and all get together. BUT guess what? This week we reached our goal of 100 baptisms!! So our goal was to have 100 baptisms starting like the first of June to the 18th of September.. and we already hit 100! We could beat it! So I think we are at a total of 190 for the year. We baptize.... Yo.

So we were porting and we found this really sweet lady named Lucinda. I tell you more if something actually comes from it.

Last night, last door of the week, we found this cute cute English family which was so refreshing after knocking into loads and loads of scientific atheist men who were all surprised when I told them I was an engineer. We talked with the mom and her 5 year old daughter. At first the mom was nice, but not interested, and we ended up praying with her. Before we prayed I asked for their names and the little girl's name is Immogen. cute right? They both had these super cute English accents. I then asked if there is anything that they would like me to pray for. They told me a couple things and then she asked me something that I had never heard... She said "Do YOU have anything that we need to pray for?" Of course we said our families, you guys.  We then prayed and afterwards the 5 year old said that she wanted to try. Then we asked if we could come back and have an FHE... she said probably but shed need to ask her husband. We exchanged numbers and while the mom was getting a pen, I told Immogen that she was adorable. Immogen ran away and came back and gave us each a little gift, a drawing for me and a bracelet for Soeur Smith. About 5 minutes later we got a text from the mom. It simply said:  "Mummy, those girls told me that I was adorable..."  How cute right? We kept our gifts and hung them up to remind us that there are beautiful families out there. I hope we get to have an FHE with them.

Well I hope to hear from you all soon!!  I LOVE YOU! I cant believe its September!

Love,

Soeur Kohlert