We had a baptism!

Hallo Familie! Wie war diese Woke?

Battlefield

This week has been crazzzzy busy! But AMAZING! and kinda lamo all at the same time! To start off on Tuesday my rear tire blew out! AHHHH so we had to run all the way to the church because we had an appointment so that I could practice the violin for this week. Then YAYA I got to buy a new tire for my bike and the next day my other tire blew out! Holy moley I think that my bike just really hates me! I don't know, can I get your opinion? lol! oh well All is good with that now! However because of that we were running from lesson to lesson barely making it in time to get everyone in!

Peace mask! They are everywhere here in Osnabrück

This week we said goodbye to one of our investigators (Nana) she is so cool and I hope she gets in contact with the missionaries in the Frankfurt mission! I feel like she is ready and willing to get baptized but her life is so busy right now that she just doesn't have time to meet with us a whole lot. We asked Quan Quan if she wanted to get baptized this week! She is a little hesitant because we have only been teaching her for a few weeks and it is really hard for her to understand German. However we are having faith that she will get an answer this week. If she does say yes we will be planning to baptize her in 2 weeks, 2 days before she goes back to China. Mine Gute! Although I know that she could be so amazing in helping people in China come closer to Christ! Plus she has the best testimony of the Gospel ever! We just go forward with faith every day. Yes guess what I finally got to eat here in Germany?? Spätzle! It was pretty good, however I would have to say grandpa's recipe is way better! This week in Osnabrück the weather has been a little bipolar. It will be 80 and sunny and then five minutes later it's raining cats and dogs! haha. It was good though, it kept us on our toes. lol.

Janinias Taufe!! 

This weekend was so amazing because we had a baptism! Janina! She is 19 and is currently living with a family in our ward because her mom doesn't accept the church. She is amazing and she has shown me such strength because off the commitments she has made in her life. Knowing that joining the Church would change everything. However she is just wonderful and has such an amazing testimony of the gospel. We really don't have to teach her anything she already knows all of it. We went over to watch the restoration with her on Friday and after we watched it she told us she had already seen it on You Tube. Yep that is Janina for you! However her baptism was amazing and the spirit was there! Her mom even came to the service and now her sister wants us to come and teach her! She is such a great example of Jesus Christ! The best part was that she had to get baptized three times because something went wrong every time! You know what they say though three times is the charm. Then I got to play the Gige (violin) horrible at her service as well haha! Although I was thankful that she had even considered to ask me! It's the thought that counts right! so hopefully for her she still felt the spirit lol!

me cleaning the Font soo many flies yumm.. 

Steffans Familie (Penelope)

Familie Lang! 

Steffans familie

Oh I even got to give a talk (all German as well) in sacrament meeting on Sunday. I just prayed really hard that the members would be able to understand me! lol!

Oh best news too Germany won the World Cup.  Everyone got in their cars last night and honked their horns and hollered like crazy people it was so funny! Once in a life time opportunity!

Today we went to a really cool old historical battle field. Germania and Romans fought here in the year 17 AD pretty cool! I didn't learn a whole lot but thought that it was really interesting place! It kind of helped me understand the history of Osnabrück a little better!

Well that is all for this week! Have a great week

Liebe,

Sister Toma

Lots of learning experiences this week.

Holy Moly!!! This week went by in the blink of an eye!

Wie Geht alles?

I'm proud to be an American!! 

4th of July and the Frehners. 

This week for me has been Wonderful!! We have been so busy everyday that I don't even know what day it is anymore! I woke up this morning surprised that It was time to do my laundry again. Its better that way though, When we are busy it means we are working hard! So a little overview of this week. I had my first Zone training meeting! That was fun and sister Blake and I had to teach everyone how to make these little (missionary shirts) We can write cute notes on that back of them and give them out as reminders or thank you notes to members and investigators. We also made a BOMB.com cake called (better than whatever cake) for ZTM! We did a lot of baking this week haha! Oh and MOM guess what I found ingredients to make Enchiladas. :) That was definitely one of the highlights of my week. Ya so we also made sugar cookies for the 4th of July!! Then we handed them out to a much a members who do a lot for the missionaries here in Osnabrück. They appreciated the thought lol although right now they are more interested in the World Cup than any other holiday.. It is really interesting to me here. Germans are not at all supportive of their country. You never see flags here and they never care about the Olympics.  Only during the World Cup do they actually care about their country haha! Flags Everywhere. There is this place in Osnabrück called the Ring. It is just a high way that goes around the center of town pretty much and whenever Deutschland wins a came EVERYONE goes out in their cars on their bikes or whatever and screams and hollers and honks their horns around the ring! It's hilarious! To be completely honest I am not a big soccer fan I dont really understand the game.. but it is fun to support something here in Germany because the people care about it so much. BTW Germany is playing Brazil this week...its gunna be good!! We didn't really get to celebrate 4th of July on Friday, however on Saturday we did. There is a family here in Germany from America and they invited some people over to celebrate the 4th of July it was so good to talk about America for once haha. It was pretty much like Thanksgiving I stuffed my self so full  it was great too because then fast Sunday was pretty easy.. however..(never again) I got to be careful here all they eat are carbs so ahh... I started a diet this week! :D we shall see how that goes. 

Little Farm between Osnabrück and Dotiseide

As far as our investigators are going it has been pretty good! I got to teach some of our "less progressing" investigators. Which was fun one that I love her named Nana. She is from Africa and is So beautiful. We taught her about the priesthood, she believes what we telling here is true however she doesn't want to get baptized because she already has been. I feel like that is most of our investigators problem.. they all have been baptized and don't understand why they have to get baptized again.. however it was really good and now she wants to give a Book of Mormon to her mom! So Cool! We also have a really great investigator and his wife. His name is Herr Westphal and they are some pretty Classy people let me tell ya.. haha. He is a really philosophical man. He also has been struggling with the idea of baptism however last Sunday he came to church and played a musical number on the violin. It was good. Then my wonderful companion had told Janina (she is getting baptized on Sunday) that I play the violin and so now she wants me to play for her baptism.. oh man now i wish I would have practiced more before my mission. So when we were at the Westphals Sister Blake had told Herr Westphal about my musical number I will be playing and then he just got up and gave me a violin.. He said that It is mine to keep for as long as I am living in Osnabrück. He is such sweet man and I am really grateful for his generosity. So ya this weekend I will be playing Nearer my God to The haha wish me luck lol. ;) I feel like we have had a lot of learning experiences this week.. One of our girls we have on baptismal date is really struggling.. It has been an interesting experience trying to help her realize her potential. hopefully we can keep progressing however it is really making me sad that we might lose her. :( We pray and try our best everyday however everyone has their agency to choose whether or not they want to change and accept the gospel or not. That is what so far has been the hardest thing for me is all these people who are throwing away the greatest gift of all.. Eternal Salvation.

Oh haha another great experience I had was on Monday my front tire went flat on my bike.. (we literally ride only ride our bikes) I don't think sister Blake knew what to do because she told me to keep riding on it till we could get it fixed.. I tried that for about a day and then it just got too hard. We then took it to a bike shop, but it wasn't open yet so we hopped on the bus and left it in front of the bike shop all day. The next day when we went to go pick it up they had moved my bike into the bike shop and of course again it wasn't open, so then we had to go and buy another day card for the bus.. It was a little stressful trying to make sure we got all our appointments in.. lol However when worse comes to worse we just have to have patients and everything works out how it is supposed to. Well that is all for this week!!

Hope you all have a great week,

Love

Sister Toma

Rain, rain. . . .

Hallo Familie,

How are all of you doing? It sounds like you have had a pretty busy week! How was girls camp mom? And HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRADEN!! I can't believe that he is 17 holy moly! Time is flying by! You better start holding on to time mom and dad, before you know it all the kids will be out of the house! I can't believe I am half way through my first transfer! Ahhh it is a little scary for me... especially since my Mission President told me this week during interviews that I would most likely be training either in August of September!! Ahhh pray for me please that I will be able to learn German so my companion and I can speak to the people here in Osnabrück or whereever I get sent next. So I have a few letters and packages that I sent this week home! It is so cheap to mail things here! Hallelujah!! haha anyways one is for Braden's birthday the other is just a letter for the family and also a letter that I would like you to send to Hunter, because I don't have his address! THANKS!

Ok so mom had a bunch of questions for me that I guess I have to answer now haha! So my living conditions are great! No complaints there! They are however supper weird about sorting their trash out here so we have to separate all the paper\ containers\ and biodegradable things and sometimes that makes our apartment stink... other than that houses here are really nice! Just super small. Everyone lives in either a townhouse or an apartment. The members here in Osnabrück are few but powerful! They are so amazing and do so much work to bring the community together. And yes they feed us usually on Sundays we get fed sometimes more during the week! Just depends because people are really busy here! And when I am home we usually just cook something easy like pasta or rice and chicken! haha However this week we will be doing lots of baking for the Fourth of July. Even though no one here would celebrate it we have many members we just wanted to thank for all their support they give to us. Then one Saturday we get to go to a members house and they are from America and we get to celebrate the fourth with them! ahh I am so excited.. So as for my Mission President -- he is wonderful, way funny and laid back about a lot of things, however he has high expectations for us to work hard and make sure that we stay focused with our work.  I don't know why but he loves my group from the MTC. There were 6 of us that came in from Provo and he just raves about us all the time apparently.  That is what I have heard from all the Leaders (sister training leaders and zone leaders). I guess he talks about me a lot too and says some funny things that I don't think are true but I don't know maybe I am just too hard on myself to be a good missionary. He is really funny, warm and friendly everyone in the mission loves him! That also reminds me. . . we are allowed to listen to so much music here so if you can at some point send me a USB drive or whatever it is called that holds files and stuff with music and pictures and whatever else you want to stick on it. And make sure to stick Disney music on it haha I miss that. 

So this week was so good and tiring. We have been riding our bikes so fast we didn't even realize how much it had been wearing us out. So after Friday we realized we could probably slow down a little bit, just so we could conserve some of our energy for the whole day. We have been trying to stop and talk to more people while on our way to appointments as well. We have sooo many appointments with investigators it's amazing, however because of that we find it hard to have time for finding and that is just as important as well.

So our mission has made it a goal to read the Book of Mormon together, and right now we are in Alma.. so great I just read yesterday Alma 16-22 and man those are good missionary stories. I will never complain about how hard it is on my mission because I only have to be here for 18 months and I probably won't get thrown into prison or go hungry. Alma and the Sons of Mosiah worked hard and put all their faith into Christ. That is what we have to do as well. Trust in our Savior and have Faith in Christ. I can work on that too! I know that when I trust in the Savior that even through my German is not so good, he will tell the people I am teaching what they need to hear. What a miracle. This week it has been raining almost every day blah. We usually are pretty good and get to places fast enough to not get completely soaked, however Wednesday we went and visited a less active member who lives about an hour away on our bikes. We can't take the bus out there though because they only take you around the state that you live in, and she lives in another state. It was a good day all day however, it was about 20 minutes once we started our trip and then BAM it started pouring rain like crazy there was nothing we could really do except keep going so for about 40 minutes we just kept riding away in down pour like (Monsoon rain) The best part was I was wearing a white skirt!! YAYA.  When we got to our appointment we were just soaked to the bone however the sister we visited was so sweet and she made us some hot chocolate and we had a great lesson with her about prayer and We are now setting up a schedule for her to finish the Book of Mormon before the end of the year. YES! I am so excited about that. She is from Russia so she also made it a goal to read all in German too! How wonderful is that?  I would have to say only about 20% of the people I have been teaching so far are even from Germany most of them are from Russia or Asian countries! So cool, however sometimes is makes it hard because we can't really communicate with them. For example this week we were teaching one of our investigators Quan Quan (Chen-Chen) she is from China and is still learning Germany she can speak a little of English and German however it is still hard for her to understand us. Last week we gave her a Book of Mormon and told her to pray about it and read it and a bunch of other stuff, this week we stopped by her house and asked her if she had been doing this. We found out that she really didn't even understand have the things that we had been talking about the last few appointments we had with her so we had to in English and German explain how to pray!  It was a really good lesson though and Hopefully the next time we meet with her she will have made a little more progress. We also ran into another Rain storm yesterday on our way to eat at members house.. The poor member had to welcome two soaking wet sisters into his house he kept pulling out blow dryers and other things just to make sure we were dry and warm enough. However it was a great appointment and Elder Boos read my favorite poem Foot Prints in the Sand. We had a super fun ward activity this week called Summer Fest and the whole ward got together to eat and they all brought their non member friends with them! It was so great! Ahh Missionary opportunities. Also our mission president gave us permission to watch the US vs Germany world cup game, and Finlay. I don't really understand anything however our ward mission leader invited some of his non member friends and we go to know them! Oh and if you were wondering we lost to Germany so that all that they are talking about now.. haha Oh I also told my mission president about my great grandfather and He thought that was soo cool. Thanks for all your love and support I miss and love you all so much! Have an amazing week!!

Love Sister Toma