Joy in His Service

Highlights from this week (if you want the details, email me back ;) ):
*I called 911 (technically 112) for the first time in my life and it
was in GERMAN
*I had my cheek caressed by a drunk woman
*I went to the American Commissary (the grocery store on the American
Base) for the first time and it was like shopping at Macey's or
Wal-Mart...I forgot for a second that I was in Germany!

So Sister Hadfield and I have this thing where at appointments I drink
all of the stuff that she doesn't like and she eats the gluten things
for me...I think I got the short end of the stick this week when she
got to eat delicious pasta Ablauf and I got to chug two glasses of
stone cold chamomile tea...ungerecht...oh well.:)

The other day we were doing a Go-by on someone who used to be
interested in the church, but had lost contact with the missionaries.
We found her name in the area book and decided to pay her a visit.
We found her apartment pretty quickly and one short glance at the door
made it clear that she no longer lived there. Sister Hadfield felt
like we needed to ring the doorbells at this apartment anyways.
I told her that we would do every other one.
I did the first one...
No one answered
Hehehehe
Then she klingeled and it didn't seem like anyone was going to answer,
but then all of a sudden, this gruff voice answers.
Sister H stares at me for a second and I motion at the door. Then like
a champ, she starts in and introduces us as missionaries. She barely
finished the introductions when there was a loud
"GAH!" From the speaker and he hung up. As we walked away, Sister H asked
"Sister Roderer, what does "gah" mean?"
I was like
"Erm...you know it's an expression...of disgust. It's not just a German word."
We laughed. Disgust is apparently universal.
We walked for like a block and then she turns to me and is like
"I think we need to go back and ring the other apartments"
...
So we did.
I klingel and the person in the other side buzzes us in without saying anything.
Not having ANY idea which floor this person lives on, we run in and
start checking all of the apartment doors, looking for a name or some
sign that someone is expecting visitors. (Usually they will open their
doors slightly after they have buzzed someone in, so that is always a
good indicator).
FOUR stories later we arrive on the landing of a lady with the door
open, with all the grace of a pack of Rhinos.
I begin
Hallo *inhale*
Wir sind*inhale*
die Missionarin von *ihale*
dirKircheJesuChristiderHeilige

nderLetztenTage *inhale*
She stared at us blankly for a minute
"I was expecting someone else, I don't have any time. Goodbye."
So we truck it back down the stairs back to the door to try the other
doorbells. Once we get outside, we are about to pick the next
doorbell, when we notice this guy staring at us. He obviously wants to
get into the apartment that we are in front of. We try to tell him
that he can go ahead, but he just looked at us with this funny smile
his face. Long story short, he flat out asked for a Book of Mormon
without any introduction from us. His mother tongue is also Polish,
and I "happened" to have one in Polish in my bag.
Miracles are legit, my dears.

Also, I am a wonderful trainer. Please see the following photo for details. 

 

Thresholds

So I wanted to talk a bit about thresholds for a minute.

If you were standing on the edge of a cliff, what would your threshold
be? Would you go right up to the edge, or would you place a lot of
space between you and the edge? I think that as long as I had some
sort if handhold or something that I could trust, I would just hang
out over the edge. Where would you be?
Then I started thinking about thresholds of expectations. What is your
happiness threshold? What do you expect happiness to be like? What do
you expect that you will have to do before you can be happy? What is
that point from your current emotional space to "happiness" ?
I think faith is simply acting beyond your threshold. That is why
commandments and inspiration and the Spirit are all so important,
because they give us enough guidance to act beyond the threshold of
our own knowledge or experience. We taught someone this week who said
that God would have to appear to him before he would believe in his
existence. That he has thought about it so much that there is not
enough logic to prove that Christ could be Savior. True fact. It
requires a threshold. That is truth that no mortal process is big
enough to encompass.
But that's the overly complicated part of my week.
Missionary life rocks. Sorry this email is super lame. I love you all!!

Cross your threshold. Believe in something beyond what you've yet
experienced. Act according to truth, not to what you feel. Truth can
come only through Christ. There is truly no other way to truth,
happiness, or love.


Sister Roderer

Pooped Out

It has been a really crazy, really fun week.

 

For example, this is what Monday looked like:

 

* missed our bus stop because I had my nose buried in the bus book, (Oh the irony)

*spilled chocolate milk on a white table cloth at an appointment, (two colors that DO NOT go together)

*had an awkward conversations that left the member looking at us like we were from Mars, (whoops)

*we were late to an appointment, (I blame the bird)

*we couldn't find the right bus stop, (I think my bus angels are still earning their wings, so they can't keep up with us in time to provide accurate info the first time around)

*I tripped on like thin air and broke my shoe open (WHO DOES THAT?),

*and Sister Hadfield got pooped on by a bird. (every party has a pooper)

 

 

But I have also learned a lot about miracles. (not that the above mentioned events were  not pretty miraculous...)

 

There was this moment where I was not feeling so fabulous and I turned to Sister Hadfield and declared:

"I really want gummy bears. I hope someone gives us gummies today."

Totally natural missionary request. At least in Germany. :)

Lo and behold, that night, we had a dinner Termin with this AMAZING couple in the ward. We went with the Ehepaar Stevens, (Geneology Record Missionaries) to act as Translation. They fed us Raclette, which was SO GOOD. Made me so proud to be Swiss! :) anyway, after the meal, the member put two large bowls on the table to facilitate conversation. (JK)

One of the bowls had gummies!

And she gave us a bag to take home with us.

I almost fell on the floor when I saw them. The Lord was just so thoughtful. It was like my mini Haribo miracle. But it got me thinking. If I could give my desire about gummies to the Lord, and expect some sort of something in return, then what else could I have faith in? I felt a wee bit selfish, asking for gummies when I could have asked for..I don't know...a change of heart or something? It reminded me that we cannot lose sight of the Lord's mercy, and of His understanding of our needs. He knows what we Need before we ask, but He also knows that WE need to ask for it to be something that we can learn from.

 

Other Story, sort of about miracles/umbrellas/Irons

 

We went to a member's house to help with ironing and such, and I was taking my turn at the iron.

So, you have to know, that I am not in any way shape or form an ironing profi. I was the "artistic ironer" before my Mission, which basically a fancy way of saying that I would try to iron something, end up ironing really strange looking creases into the fabric, grunt in frustration and ask someone else to come save my clothes. I PURPOSELY buy clothing that does not need to be ironed.

But, Mission miracles, all of a sudden all of the times that I WATCHED my Mom iron came back to me, and I was able to iron decently.

But...

this miracle didn't extend to "turning the iron on or using the settings" profi. Oh no.

The Lord had something else in mind.

So the member had left the room, and I promptly bumped something on the iron.

"Well"

I thought

"It's still hot, and is making a difference, so it must be fine" (or something to that effect).

So I am ironing this great huge white bed cover, and it is HARD WORK. I am really laying down the muscle, and it is not getting very wrinkle-free very quickly. I am also very grumpy at this moment, counting sour cherries instead of blessings, and I am getting increasingly more and more frustrated, and applying increasingly more and more pressure to this blasted piece of fabric.

I was having a pouting session with the Lord, and listing all of the things that I thought I couldn't handle, or didn't think were fair, or wished I could be better at.

Then all of a sudden my brain switched to complaining about how hard it must have been for all of those awesome mothers back in the day that they only ironed with a hard piece of metal and elbow grease, and how LONG IT WAS TAKING TO IRON THIS SHEET!

About at the climax of my pouting, the member comes back in to check on things. She then showed me that I needed to put on the steam setting, and that I had bumped it off.

After that, the stuff basically ironed itself.

It got me thinking about my sour cherries, too. I think when things get hard, sometimes we get hard too and then it becomes a mess. We only grow when we cross a threshold. Otherwise it's not faith, it's habit. It also made me think of President Uchtdorf's suggestion to close the umbrellas of our doubt and fear and feel the soothing raindrops that are the Windows of Heaven opening, pouring, raining, flooding down light, truth, hope, joy, love, experience, beauty, and all of those other good things.

 

 

 

Haha, also sometimes it is good to let off a little steam in a healthy way. ;)

 

All my love,

 

Sister Roderer

The days...erm fields are white

Hello all!

It has been an interesting week! First split, first "white" day, first super super hot days of the summer, and that's just a snippet of what's been going on in Wiesbaden!

So last week I talked about the "missionary exchange rate" and I wanted to highlight an example from this week.

White-day blues

So a "white" day is when you don't have any appointments at all scheduled. After four solid hours of study, we went out to talk to people randomly on the street.

We talked with one woman who thought that according to the TV, we were that religious group that wasn't allowed to go on the internet, use phones or computers, and that we could have several spouses.

That seems to be a consistent assumption on the side of the Germans.

If that's what they think when they see us, no wonder they get angsty and refuse to look at us! haha

I told her, that actually, we were very normal, and that we would be getting iPads next week. :) 

Here is a pic of us venting our frustration about our white day under our desks. :) You should see the movie! hehehe

Another lady we talked to thought the same thing, but she could also see how it could be convenient to have more than one spouse...

We weren't sure what to say to that one!

It was really funny, she was almost disappointed when we said believe in just one man and woman. But, she did take a Book of Mormon. She was a violin repair woman, and she was carrying some violins, so we were able to chat for just a second about the joy of sharing music with children, Those small moments are the best!

Then we headed back to our apartment to wait for a package that was supposed to arrive from the church office, and in Germany (like other apartment-rich places that I've lived in), if you aren't there to get it, you aren't going to get it. We were tired, frustrated,and stressed by our white day, and so we started looking madly for a solution. I had the distinct feeling that we needed to pray and then start reading in the Book of Mormon, and that there we would find our answer. Now, it's not like we didn't have ideas or things to do, it was more that we didn't want to waste time doing something that wasn't worthwhile, and it was there that we were having issues. We prayed and then proceeded randomly open and read out loud in different sections of the Book of Mormon. I think I was somewhere in Alma, and Sister Hadfield was in Mormon. We went back and forth, one verse from Alma, and one from Mormon. Within the first 2-3 verses, we had our answer.

And so that's what we did.

And along with a very specific answer, the Lord also sent us this feeling of love, acceptance and power.

It was incredible.

It has totally redefined my understanding of success. Like, I always knew that success, especially as a missionary, but not really, was defined by criteria that encompassed so much more than we usually think. Success is so much more than the happenings of an exact moment, it is the conclusion that comes over time. I think it is more of a "lose the battle, but win the war" kind of idea. Or a Helix? Is that what it is called? I don't know. But the idea of growth through repetitive evolution.

Also, the Atonement is REAL. Like I am more positive of the reality of the Atonement than I am of anything else.

LOVE YOU ALL!!

Sister Roderer

We're singing, and dancing, and teaching in the rain

So things are lovely and VERY rainy here in Wiesbaden. As you can see from the picture, my companion is adjusting well to missionary life. haha JK she is already a profi, and I love getting the chance to follow the promptings she gets. She is such a powerhouse!!

It has rained like EVERY day this week, but it has presented such fun opportunities to do missionary work in different ways. It's natural that people get more "tunnel vision" when they have to tromp through a downpour, or they fly from place to place, never being quite certain as to when the next flash flood will hit, so our goal has been, more or less, to GET THEIR ATTENTION. :)

For example:

Sister Hadfield has history with dancing in the rain, so we took a moment to capture some poses in the rain. This young family came up the sidewalk, and we flagged them down, asking if they would be willing to take a picture of us posing together in the rain. They did so, with big smiles. Then they asked us where we were from (I guess because based on our dance moves, we were DEFINITELY not from Germany). :)

We had a bit of time that we wanted to do some street contacting, but we got outside and it was raining. Again. So we decided to stand on corner of the street that opened up into a huge shopping complex and sing hymns. So we sang hymns for like and hour, and people stared strangely at us as they waded by. I made sure that we sang "There is Sunshine in My Soul Today". hehe

Two young girls waited patiently as we finished a hymn then asked us why in the world we were standing on the street corner singing in the rain?? I told them because we were so happy. Then they asked how long we would have to stand there. Once they found out that we were from America, all they could talk about was how awesome fast food is. It was a fun moment to just stop and share love for fries and for spiritual things.

Something that we have been experiencing this week is what I like to call "missionary carnage". Meaning, we have talked so much to the people that live in the surrounding neighborhoods of our apartment, that we now can wave to people on the street, because we KNOW them. Also we can see evidence of us having been there, like dropped pass-a-long cards. The first time I noticed that, I was depressed, because it meant that people weren't listening, but now I think it is awesome because it means that we are working HARD!

It's been fun to learn more about the the "exchange rates" of working on a mission. There were days this week when in talking to the people on the street, all that we got was rejection. That's discouraging. But every time we chose to see the situation as bigger than that moment, we were blessed with a miracle. Faith really is about stepping a few steps outside of the light, and acting not on evidence, but on trust. If we don't do that, we will never have the capability to progress beyond the boundaries of what we have already experienced. I don't know about you, but I would love to experience deeper happiness, more understanding, and limitless possibilities. I don't want what I have known up until this point to the be the end or the limit.

I am righteously greedy...

Street Contacting in Kirchgasse

but not really.

It's not greed at all.

That's the best part!

It's truth,

Alles Gute,

Sister Roderer