Week 41: A Thankful Heart for Another Beautiful Baptism... and Thanksgiving of Course

Hey Fam Wam Bam Thankyou Mam,

So Monday was a good relaxing p-day. Loved it. At night we went to go visit an old investigator. It was hard to be there at her place. She works nights on the streets and lives with a bunch of other African woman who do the same thing. It's so sad that their lives have lead to that and that men do that. I just felt so blessed for my family and the knowledge I have as well as for all of the material things God has given me. I'm not sure why I'm so lucky.

Tuesday we had a wonderful lesson with Adelia and Fatima. They were in the picture that I sent to you guys: Fatima still hasn't decided to be baptized... but she is getting there, I just know it, After we went to see a less active who actually ended up needing help moving so we waited there forever for the elders to get there so they could help us. Then we ate RACLETTE, that potato and meat stuff that we ate at that lady's house in France where you melt the cheese on the table. Anyway, it was sooo good and Seour Denning's first time eating it. The family that gave it to us has such a strong testimony and the converts that I meet purely amaze me.

On Wednesday we got to see Jennifer and she's progressing well. Shes loving the Book of Mormon and the brochures that we give her, and she says that she is starting to understand what we meant when we said that she will find answers to her questions if she would read them. Then we went to the Turner's house....we eat with them just about every week and they showed us their fancy train set that is sooo cool. iIt works with like micro chips, so no batteries and its remote control and goes SO FAST ha i was soooo fascinated. Yes, I was once an engineering student. We stayed up way late that night looking for Sister Denning's ID that we needed to travel to Paris, we never found it.

Thursday was turkey day and we woke up at 430 to go down to Nancy for interviews. Ha, the zone leaders were supposed to organize the food and it was just bad....Ha, they assigned food tasks out and we had way tooo much dessert. I made a pumpkin pie from real pumpkin because they don't have canned pumpkin here, It was way good, just saying. Ha, and then they bought like a ton of rotisserie chickens and two little salads, a little bit of carrots, and 66 pounds of potatoes that they had boiled before hand and put in garbage cans. We had this baby kitchen where we had to figure out how to mash them with soup spoons and heat up all of the chickens in one little oven. Mind you, we only had like 40 people there, so it took us forever to heat everything up and mash the potatoes which we did pretty much by hand and then try to warm all those up in the microwave and everything was cold by the time it was time to eat. We had no time to make the gravy so we just stirred the gravy packets in water and called it good. It was sad, but instead of the normal 1 hour rule of eating, we got 3 hours which most of it was spent preparing the food ha but at the end we were able to play a little bit of speed basketball and that was fun. Then we had a long train ride home that we had to stand on cause there was so many people... I was exhausted.

Friday we thought we were going to go do some service for a less active, but when we got there all she wanted us to do was make ornaments with her... aaha ok. It was pretty fun service if you ask me. Her nonmember husband was there and we shared a message, and he agreed to let us have a Family Home Evening with them next week, so that's good. Then we were running around trying to get stuff ready for Saturday and a dmp meeting that we had that night. We also got to see Miriam and we gave her the scriptures that mom and dad brought from the US for her. She just loved them and was so grateful. So thank you very much for bringing them. We then took her son, who is less active, to a youth activity where we ate some Thanksgiving food with them, then set up the church for the visiting teaching conference on Saturday morning. I was still so tired from Thursday

Then on Saturday we had the visiting teaching conference and Seour Denning and I played a musical number. The conference went well. The sisters really were unified. Then we had to run to 2 appointments, one with Jennifer and her mom in an old folks home. I lugged my violin with us all day and I played for her. She liked it. We didn't have lunch so we spent our lunch time going to this "bizzaro" where there were a bunch of stands from each country. Some members were working at the american stand and bought us a brownie... so good. It had been so long, then we ran to the Stake President's house for a Family Home Evening with my favorite family. We had fasted for Adelia's husband and he accepted to come. I was so scared cause we had no time to prepare and her husband was so cold and scary. I used one the Family Home Evening packets mom sent me, so thank you mom. I couldn't tell if the dad liked it or not, but everyone else did. I also played the violin for them....that case is heavy!

Adele's Baptism

Then on Sunday was Adele's baptism and it was just wonderful. Adele cried during my musical number and there were lots of people there because the bishops son was baptized too. She is so happy and I was as well.

That night we had a real Thanksgiving meal with all the american families in the ward. I almost cried cause I missed you guys so much, but I just had to remember how thankful I was to have all of those friends there to be my family. That was a legit Thanksgiving dinner with an imported turkey and everything, We were so happy!

Well, I'm going to Germany today for p-day!  I'll send you pictures!

I LOVE YOU ALL

Seour Kohlert