Mannheim Wasserturn (water tower)

Well it was a week. We had three investigators Tschüß (drop/ say goodbye) us this week. We also had an interesting text conversation where a weird dude tried asking my old companion to marry him. Yeah..... it was an interesting week. However, Gülserin is still our shining star! ⭐️ We've begun to plan her baptism with her already. She's super excited about the 28th and asks us if we think she's still on track.

Basically Diminitrova and Frau Neydenov (they both happen to be Bulgarian) just said they didn't have interest in meeting us again. Frau Neydenov even gave us back her Book of Mormon. And then the real heart breaker happened when Manuelle texted us out of the blue and said she had too many "persönlich Schwierigkeiten" (personal problems) and wasn't going to have time to meet with us again. SAD!

It's was definitely rough the first couple days afterwards. However, I've been able to have peace. I've been feeling like we've been needing to use the members a lot more to help with our finding efforts. We've set up a lot more member appointments than usual so that we can start working with them. I know God has a plan for this area and it's worth it for us to go through a couple of frustrating days or even weeks so that His plan is able to be revealed to us.

I would say the biggest thing I've learned this week is that trials are what God uses to perfect us.
Hebrews 11:40 "God having provided some better things for them through their sufferings, for without sufferings they could not be made perfect."  

It's ok though! I've counted my blessings and there are still more of them than trials.

A small miracle was that right after Manuelle's text Sister Tarbot (they were my senior missionary couple in Kaiserslautern they're basically my grandparents) called us and I was able to talk to her. Even though it was for a cleaning check, she was able to help us feel a lot better after we told what had just happened. We also got to see them on Saturday when they came to check our apartment. I'd never been so grateful for a cleaning check!

Love you all!
- Sister Luymes

Sis Lopez -- my flawless and most excellent companion