Fun with sidewalk chalk and street contacting!

Oh man it was another good one! To explain my subject line we had SO. MUCH. RAIN this week. I realize this is a normal occurrence in other parts of the world, but I was thoroughly impressed that it actually rained consistently for 2 1/2 days in a row. The first night of this there was the biggest thunder and lightning storm of my life. At a lovely 2 o'clock in the morning we heard a ginormous BOOOOOM! Which of course woke us up. I stood up immediately and in my bleary half-sleep I ran to our window and yelled "GUYS SOMETHING'S GOING ON OUTSIDE! I THINK A BOMB WENT OFF!" My Utah companions were thoroughly unimpressed. Sister Edelmayer was the one to point out the obvious "It's only thunder and lightning." To which I replied "thunder and lightning are not like that where I come from!" I wasn't completely put at rest (probably because I was not fully awake still) so I spent the next 30-45 min rummaging around our apartment making sure everything was in order and all the windows were closed. Alas my mind was put at ease and I was able to fall back asleep. My companions haven't let me forget my behavior since then, but hey what's a California girl to do? Hahaha

We have somehow managed to find and teach even more people this week! Seriously Golden power is real. Since Sister Peck has been here we've had more work than I've ever had. Some of our old people are doing well. Elizabeth and Salman were both on vacation this week so we did not get to see them sadly. However, Lorena is doing super well. We finally got her connected with the Spanish Elders aus Heidelberg to do Skype lessons and it went even better than we could imagine. She's making huge progress and it's just been an answer to so many prayers.

Ramesh is also doing really well. He believes in so much of what we believe, but he's just taken the Jesus out of it. We taught him for the 3rd time last Saturday and I was having a feeling that we really needed to teach him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He ate it up. He loved what we said about repentance and he said he really wanted to repent and become clean. At the end of the lesson the Spirit prompted me to ask: Ramesh do you want to find out if Jesus Christ is your Savior? He took a second to think and he answered: yes I really do. So we re-committed him to read the Book of Mormon and praying about what we teach. He's really excited to learn more about Christ and to find out for himself.

Some new faces are Richmond and Camille. Camille was just a straight up miracle. We were at Sister Lourido's home and she invited Liliana (a new convert who has been in Spain for the last 3 weeks) to have lunch all together. We were cooking and Liliana asked if she could bring a friend a long. Long story short, they got lost and we didn't end up eating until 3pm. However, Camille was the friend and she said hi and asked if she could come to the single adult activities and if she could have a Book of Mormon in Spanish. We were a little shocked, but said yes of course! We also got to teach her a little bit and she said she felt so good being with us and just started crying. We will meet with her again on Saturday.

Richmond is also cool. Sister Kryzanski found him at a street display awhile back and we finally got to meet with him. His brother converted to the church in Ghana and is now currently a bishop in Utah. He already knew a little about the church, but was super open. We taught him in a park over looking the Rhein (it was beautiful). He still has some reserves, but agreed to read and pray.

I've been reading in Jesus the Christ a lot lately. One part talked about when Christ was talking to his Apostles and asking them who they think he is. Peter responds in all conviction "You are the Christ." However, later after Christ tells them that he will die Peter rejects this notion. Christ then rebukes him because Peter was seeing God's Plan through men's eyes. I wonder just how many things have I experienced and have looked at these experiences only through worldy-natural man eyes. God's plan sometimes doesn't make sense to us because we are being closed minded and are unwilling to trust Him. However, if we let Him, if we trust Him, little by little our perspective widens and we are able to have just more understanding.

Liebe Grüße,
Sister Luymes

Gotta get in touch with my inner Katniss.