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
