Who knew Steinbach was so gorgeous!

Can't resist a field of flowers!

City view of Steinbach -- and the wild flowers of course!

Sister Williams is being transferred to Bonn to be with Sister Deim (she was in my MTC district) and I will be joined by Sister Harris here in Kaiserslautern! All I know is she's nice and has been serving in Essen for a long time. We make the switch tomorrow so I haven't met her yet. In other news I'm no longer a trainee! Look Mom no hands!

This week was truly the week of miracles. I can't even describe how amazing they were so I'll just get to telling you what happened.

DIENSTAG: We had Nakita -- who recently returned from the CA Oakland mission Spanish speaking-- with us all day. We went to go contact a referral in Matzenbach with a woman from our branch. We got there and the referral wasn't home so we decided to go on a split and go dooring. So Nakita and I went together and Sister Gardner (with her 4 month old baby Caleb) and Sister Williams went together. The first door we knocked a woman answered the door. I started speaking German to her and she says "I don't speak German. I only speak English and Spanish." So Nakita says, "Great! Me too!", and starts speaking to her in Spanish. Unfortunately, my Spanish skills are sub-par and they switched back into English. She invited us in and we quickly learned both her brothers are converts and have served missions. She had read some of the Book of Mormon before, but no one had explained to her what it was. We taught her about the restoration and explained what the Book of Mormon was and how to find out if it's true or not. When we read the promise in Moroni 10:3-5 she stopped us and said she'd never read a more powerful scripture and had never felt the spirit that strongly before. She even said she wanted to join the church except she looooooooves coffee. So we explained why we don't drink coffee and the Word of Wisdom and she said "ohhhhhhhh! That makes so much more sense!" We were speechless when we left. She's having surgery this week so she told us to come back next week when she's out of the hospital. Pray everything goes well!

Still on Tuesday, we met with Toni at a cafe. Our waiter was someone we had just met last week and had impromptu taught on the street and we'd forgotten to get contact info so we were able to get that and set up another appointment. Then in the middle of our lesson with Toni (about God's plan of happiness) another waiter who was on break over heard us and sat down and started asking Sister Williams questions. So Nakita kept teaching Toni the plan of salvation (in English) and sister Williams jumped into restoration (in German) and I was jumping back in forth in both languages. It was the most spiritually and mentally intense lesson we've ever had! Then at the end the two lessons merged and the three of us all got to bear our testimonies. SO AWESOME!

MITTWOCH: we ran into someone we had doored earlier this week and we had a lesson. To make it short he said he had been searching for some kind of Gemeinde to join and had felt like he really needed to meet with us when we had seen him earlier, but was too nervous. So when we ran into him AGAIN he said he knew God wouldn't give him another chance so he basically asked for us to start teaching him on the spot. He had some great questions and had already read the Book of Mormon about 10 years ago. We gave him one in Polish (his mother sprache) and he's reading already!

FREITAG: We had an appointment aaaaaaaall the way in Steinbach (45 min train ride + 35 min bike ride NOT FUN!), but we got a ride! We knew there was a high likelihood of our appointment falling out, but we both felt prompted to go there still. So as soon as we got dropped off our appointment fell out. Instead of calling our ride back we decided to door for an hour. I USED to hate Steinbach, but turns out I just needed to walk down the street a block and we ended up in the most gorgeous field. See the pictures. We knocked on a random door and a woman   answered. After talking a little bit we asked her if she had interest in learning more. She said that she was VERY interested, but never had time because of her 2 year old. So we asked if she had 10 minutes right then. She said yeah and sat down on the stairs to her doorway. We taught her a 10 min restoration. When we got to explaining Joseph Smith I happened to have the Joseph Smith History in Romanian (her mother sprache) on my iPad (we almost never use straight from JSH especially in omanian, but again we felt prompted). She read some of it and looked up and said "I read this 2 weeks ago on the Internet. And now you two are on my doorstep. God did this. When can we meet again? And what time is church?" We had to keep ourselves from looking too excited. Again we were speechless afterwards.

SONNTAG: YES there's more! We were walking to pick something up from the other sister's apartment and a woman stopped us. She had heard us speaking English and saw us just walking out of the church. She said she'd been given a card with the address to church 10 months ago. She could never shake the feeling that she needed to go to it. So today on a whim she rode her bike and happened to run into us right outside the church. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she said she'd wanted one for so long and was SO EXCITED to finally have one. She invited us to come teach her this week and promised she'd make it to church next Sunday. When we said goodbye she told us she knew God had put us in her way and that she felt this was the right thing for her to do.

Anyway, so that was the type of week I had! I cannot stress how important it is to RECOGNIZE and ACT on the promptings God gives us. He works in mysterious ways, and sometimes he'll even include you in on it. Ether 12:12 "For if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith." If we don't have faith miracles won't happen. And trust me you want miracles to happen! So have faith my friends and I know Heavenly Father will bless you because of it.

Love you all and have a good week!
- Sister Luymes

Dan - our recent convert (he just went to Argentina for a wedding)
Nakita on the right (just returned from the Oakland mission - Spanish)

Brother Jeremiah -- he's a character!

Dan (on my right) got baptized.  He was the Elder's investigator.

Visiting with Edith - a member.

Dan and Nakita.