Tender Mercies in the Germany Frankfurt Mission

Thursday, January 7, 2021

I know it has been awhile since I sent an update.  It has been a crazy time filled with everything missions are made of including interviews, transfers, Mission Leadership Council, Zone Conferences, missionaries who are struggling, etc.  One week we drove 1,000 km in 5 days to interview all the missionaries and the following week we also drove another 1,000 km (621 miles).  We have put over 10,000 miles on our car in 4 months.  And that is miles and not kilometers.  One week we had 6 Zone Conferences in 6 days.  At these zone conferences, we had a portion of them in the evening and invited the youth in the stakes to attend.  That was a special time.  I have received numerous messages from youth who were touched by the missionary spirit at these meetings.  Two of the younger brothers of missionaries serving in our mission who are from Germany or Switzerland also participated.  One of the youth invited a friend and she has asked to meet with the missionaries.

 We were scheduled to receive 91 new missionaries in 5 weeks.  Unfortunately, the last 24 are stuck in England right now.  I will explain more below.  The missionaries normally come and go at transfer time, but these missionaries were coming at all different times.  Normally, you will do a transfer every 6 weeks, but I am currently working on my 7^th or 8^th transfer in the past 6 weeks.  We have so many new missionaries and so few experienced missionaries that many are training more than one new missionary.  We have 51 sister missionaries but only 17 have more than 5 weeks experience in Germany.  You can do the math and see the problem.  Some of these missionaries served in the US in other missions and know how to be missionaries there, but not in Germany. They don’t speak or understand German very well.  I was working with some new missionaries and said something very slowly using very simple words in German.  You could instantly tell that they didn’t understand what I had just said.  They have such a strong desire to learn German however, and that is inspiring.  We have one sister who arrived in Germany after having served 10 months on her mission.  She only had 8 months left.  She trained 2 new missionaries in her US mission and served as a sister training leader.  She had a powerful spirit when you talked with her but her German was very weak.  I just talked to her today and her German is amazing.  It is truly miraculous how quickly she has learned German.  That is just one of many miracles I wanted to share with you.

 We have 24 missionaries who flew to England on Dec 17^th with plans to fly to Germany on 28^th Dec after quarantining.  Eight have served in other missions in the US and 16 are brand new from the home MTC.  For each of them, it was their first Christmas away from home.  Due to the more infectious strain of COVID that was found in England, Germany shut its borders and they were not allowed to come here on the 28^th. Germany was scheduled to make a new decision on travel on 5^th Jan.  Based on what was said, 6 missionaries were scheduled to fly to Germany today.  Two who will serve in the Alpine mission, flew into Frankfurt today at noon and then 4 of our missionaries were scheduled to fly into Frankfurt at 6 pm.  The writen regulations were published today and they were different than what was said, so it looks like the missionaries cannot get into Germany.  In what was a miracle, the first 2 arrived right at shift change and they were let in. Our 4 missionaries were scheduled to arrive at 6 pm but their flights were canceled.  Our missionaries fasted and prayed on Tuesday to be able to get into Germany and it seemed like a miracle would happen, but it didn’t.  We scheduled a Zoom meeting with our 24 missionaries in England and were amazed at how well they are doing.  They are disappointed but they trust in the Lord.

 We had them share some of the spiritual experiences they have had over Christmas.  They were allowed come out of quarantine on Christmas day.  Some of the sisters went for an early run to the temple and watched the sunrise at the temple.  They said it was one of the most spiritual experiences of their life as they celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ watching the sunrise at the temple.  They said it was their best Christmas ever.  Imagine a group of 19-year-old women telling others that the best Christmas gift was watching a sunrise.  Most would not understand.

 Today, I just wanted to share some Tender Mercies that my missionaries have shared with me.

 We were teaching a person for the first time and she was really struggling with trials in her life. Briefly, I saw her as Our Father in Heaven does and words came into my mind that I knew he wanted me to tell her.

-       Our other miracle was on the street.  I remember being told one time that specific prayers get specific answers, so I took a lesson 2 pamphlet and said I'd give it away and my companion wanted to meet someone from Turkey. Before leaving we prayed to meet someone ready to make a Termin [appointment] with us. The 2nd person we met was the kindest mom who took our number, my pamphlet, and wanted to meet with us later to talk about it! The 3rd person was from Turkey which was so cool. Then someone actually stopped us to tell us how thankful he is for people who just shine positivity and confidence, he could tell while we were walking up. We also got his number to call him after the holiday!

-       One year ago, I was in Jerusalem, sitting in the shepherd’s field in Bethlehem and we sang silent night. I knew I would be serving my mission in Germany and as I sat in the field, I had a vision of sitting in a chapel in Germany listening to silent night in German. One year later I am now in Germany and I attended a Christmas devotional.  This devotional was in the exact chapel I saw that night in Bethlehem and we did, in fact, get to listen to silent night in German. This will be my only Christmas in Germany.

-       A tender mercy from this week happened when we were dropping off groceries at an apartment in Langen. We found a really great winter coat there that they said I could take. I had been planning on buying a winter coat this week but with the new restrictions, all the stores are closed, and it is not possible to buy a coat.  I am do grateful to have a coat.

-       Well Frankfurt was a great place to serve, and to be honest I'm completely surprised about you transferring me to Heidelberg. This actually has been my dream area in which to serve.  I haven’t told you this, but Heidelberg is where my mom’s side of the family started. My grandparents met each other here, she was going to school and he was here for the army. Then they met each other in Heidelberg and got married and my aunt was actually also born here!! So crazy, and I feel very blessed to be here!

-       A tender mercy we had yesterday was getting a number on that street! We had gone past this guy on the street and we felt like we should go back so we did and we ended up getting his number! That was pretty neat.

-       I just wanted to start off by saying that I know that God is a God of miracles and that He does everything in His time. The last few weeks, we've received 5 referrals. We had 2 appointments with one of them this last week and we both had the strongest impression to invite him to be baptized. He said YES! Then we invited him to pray about a date, and last night he had the feeling of December 19. The Saturday before Christmas. But what the crazy thing is, is that I've been praying for a "white Christmas" or a baptism before Christmas. It was also something my companion and I started praying for together. Faith is everything.

-       My companion and I had the impression to leave our phone number on the church door just in case somebody visited the church building and finds it closed because they can call our number. Well, it just happened this Sunday someone did call us! And we were able to give him a tour of the church building. He's from Romania, and I ran downstairs to the basement to see if we had any book of Mormons in Romanian, but I couldn't find one anywhere. While we were showing him the chapel, I felt like I should check out the music stand and there was a Romanian Book of Mormon laying on the music stand. It is small things like that that shows me that the Lord really does care about his children.