Hallo meine liebe Familie und schöne Freunde!

Liebe Grüße from Deutschland.

It has been a crazy week. It is about to be another crazy week. First of all, we have transfer calls on Saturday. I have almost been here a month. Weird right? I am really nervous though because Sister Kreth is going home, and Sister Mosher has to travel all the time, and 11 new sisters are coming in this month. Which means the days of my being trained are just about over and perhaps the days of being a trainer are about to begin. I can't think of it at the moment, or I'll have a heart attack. I barely speak German and we all know how well I can find my way around, so I don't feel very prepared but the Lord qualifies who he calls I guess. I'm going to need extra help from him though if that turns out to be the case. You will hear next week I guess.

Where do I even start with this week.

I think I'm just going to tell you about Sunday, so I can save a little time to tell you more about Germany and Friedrichsdorf and all the cute little places around.

On Sunday we did a musical number in church. We started preparing last Sunday here and there and probably got about an hour and a half of practice all together. Sister Kreth and I sang, Sister Mosher played the violin and Daniela, from our ward, played the piano. We invited a bunch of people to come hear us sing and come to church, so the pressure was on. The song ended up being okay, but the exciting part was, so many people came! We had 5 investigators at sacrament meeting! Sister Kreth and I were sitting at the back and looking around at everyone who was there and we were trying to hold in our excitement, but we couldn't wipe the giant smiles off of our faces. It was so awesome. One of the guys who came, we met on the Bahn this week on the way to Frankfurt and invited him to come. We were so excited it was ridiculous. I think it may have affected our singing, but oh well.

Another awesome thing that happened: Nora came to church for the first time in a few years! It was so awesome and I think she really had a good experience. We're all just friends and we love spending time with her. Sister Osterloh, the FHV (Relief Society) President had Nora introduce herself in Relief Society and then told Nora that she had been at her baptism four or so years ago and told her what a beautiful day it was. That was so awesome and I think Nora really remembered how special that was and how special she is. It was awesome.

After church (our church starts at 1:30!!) we had Gemeinsames Essen, basically just a ward potluck dinner after church, which went really well. Alan, the guy who we met on the Bahn came to it and was able to talk to a few of the members who are also Italian. Two of our other investigators came as well and I was able to get to know a lot of people in the ward a lot better.

We also made some brownies for the potluck, but because we had such a crazy morinng arranging everything for church and going to meetings, we made them one step at a time, hours apart. At one point they were a bowl of butter and coco and a bowl of eggs and sugar. Then we had to go somewhere so we left them there. When we got back the sugar and egg mixture had foamed and hardened, but we just hoped that they would still work so we stirred them up and finished the batter, put them in a pan and into the fridge because we had no time to bake them. Then when the potluck started, someone found the brownies in the fridge and put them out on the table and started cutting them up! Thankfully Sister Kreth saw before anyone ate them, but we thought that was pretty funny. Finally we put them in the oven to bake and got them out right as Gemeinsames Essen was over, but we cut them up to find that they were undercooked and runny. We decided to eat them anyway because we figured everyone had already eaten, but no. As soon as they were out, everyone was congregating in  the kitchen. People were raving about the brownies and the bishop even went in the other room and shouted "Es gibt Brownies in die Küche!" We found it hilarious because we thought we had made some pretty bad brownies, but we learned that GERMANS LOVE BROWNIES! The bishop told us "You Sister Missionaries, don't leave this room before you give my wife the the recipe!" It was pretty funny. Sorry I just told a really long story about brownies, but it was quite the adventure.

Speaking of adventures, I'll tell you a little bit about a crazy missionary embarrassing moment we had this week. We had just gotten out of an appointment late and we had to catch a bus to our next one. We got to the bus stop and a bus pulled up. It wasn't the right number, but we figured it would go to Bahnhof (the train station) anyway and we had about five seconds to decide so we hopped on. Everyone sort of gave us weird looks, but we didn't think much of it because that is not exactly uncommon as a missionary. The bus driver even opened the door back up again, but we didn't get the hint. We started driving to the next stop and it didn't take us long to realize that every passenger on the bus was about 13 or under. We realized we had hopped on a school bus and we just cracked up. At the next stop we hopped off and started running to Bahnhof to catch our Bahn. As we ran a probably ten year old boy said "Ihr seht aber hübsch aus!" So we were basically dying trying to sprint and laughing so hard it hurt. We must have looked so crazy, but it was so funny.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you a little more about Germany, but I will next time because it looks like my time is about up. I will try to attach some pictures, but you might have to wait another week.

I love you all so much and I am so happy when I hear from you. I feel so blessed by everyone's letters and emails. Keep it up! You are all so wonderful.

Viele Liebe,

Sister Mary Jane Leavitt