Naaaaaa?
That is a question people here ask when they want to know how you're doing. Does it make sense? No. It's not even a real word in German, I'm pretty sure. Don't worry, it only took me like half of my mission to figure this out. Naja.
So goooood news. We have a lovely lady getting baptized in October! It's extra cool because her husband and all of her children joined the church last year and she was totally against it! But now she's golden. And we have the privilege of being here. The only problem? She doesn't speak a lick of German (they're all from Cambodia). So everything we do has to be translated through her husband or children. It's quite an adventure, and not one I was really expecting on a mission. But it's still great, no worries.
With reference to above, I was thinking about how I'm not really serving in Germany as much as I'm serving in Africa and Asia. And all the returned missionaries when giving their homecoming talks are always like, "Oh, I just love the people of [insert country here]!" or "I really learned how to love the [insert nationality here] people." I don't really feel like I could honestly say that I just loved serving the German people because I don't know as many people originally from Germany as from Ghana for example hahaha. I teach just as much in German as I do in English. And now I'm learning how to pray in Cambodian! I don't even know what my mission language is anymore haha. Naja.
Ok. Now story time.
Cheesy story. So we were going to an appointment the other day and the address was not correct. We were of course bummed, and also not very prepared because we didn't have any backup plan (stupid, I know). So we decide to just walk around and try to make out an appt with someone on the street. Normally I would be totally down for that except we happened to be in a very German part of town, so there weren't many foreigners. This means it's waaaaaaaay harder to make out an appt. I was just totally and selfishly bummed, and ridiculously tired. I bent my head and offered a silent prayer that God would just PUHLEASE let someone here make out an appt with us, or at least that people would be nice. As soon as I looked up I saw a German man walking in our direction and decided to go talk to him. Surprisingly enough, when we stopped him he exclaimed "Mormons!," which is totally weird because most people here have never heard of us. We asked what he had heard about our church and, of course, he said we're polygamists and he thinks we're a cult. Needlesst to say, we cleared that up. And then we totally bore our testimonies to him and the spirit was soooo strong and he agreed to meet with us, even though he was super skeptical at first. It was a miracle!!!! But then I probably shouldn't tell you that he didn't show up for our appt 2 days later. BUT it doesn't matter because a) his positive experience with missionaries probably will prepare him to receive them later and b) it was totally a testimony to me that God really does love and care about us and he listens to our prayers. What is important to us is also important to him, and I was so happy the rest of the day.
And then. IT GETS BETTER.
So after making out an appointment with a German, which is a huge deal, we found ourselves walking into some sort of large outdoor shopping center with a million souls just waiting to be saved! But, still being our natural missionary selves, we picked out the first African we saw. The timing in which we approached her was unfortunate, due to the fact that someone had just barely stolen her purse that had her visa and stuff in it and she was kind of freaking out and didn't know what to do. So we calmed her down and told her that we would accompany her to the nearest police station. After walking a million miles to get there, we finally made it to the station and stayed with this girl while she talked to the police, who were all surprisingly jolly. One officer in particular was extremely nice and helped the girl fill out a bunch of paperwork. After telling us how cool we were to do this for her, he asked Sister Uhlig and I if we had any questions for him. I'm not sure what came across my mind at this point, but I opened my mouth and the words, "Well, do you have any interest in learning more about our faith?" just kind of fell out. Sister Uhlig turned a deep shade of red and just started laughing. The officer just chuckled and began to tell us the story of his religious awakening to agnosticism. We left him with a pamphlet and a card anyway and it was super great.
And that was the ending to a really great day.
I hope you are all loving your lives. I miss you all more than the moon and the stars. Peace and blessings.
Sister Young
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