Saturday, February 11, 2012

Week of February 11 from Berlin

Wow, the first week of the transfer is finally come and gone, so many crazy things happened and it was truly an amazing week!
 
Sunday night we picked up my new companion at the main train station in Berlin.  The new assistant gets picked up early so he can be at our office staff meeting Monday morning. He came from Kiel, so that was an instant ice breaker we had to talk about, but we´ve known each other from zone leader meetings pretty well also, so we´re going to get along great no doubt about it.  He´s one of the most loved missionaries in the entire mission.
 
 

But Monday ging alles los, we hit the ground running trying to prepare for all the new goldens coming in the next day. Planning everything out, printing off all the materials they needed, and making sure we were in the best position to help them start right. Tuesday came eventually and we got to go pick the goldens up from the airport, easily my favorite part of being here in the office.  It was so fun to see all their bright, smiling and confused faces as they got off the train. We´ve had a pretty bad cold front here lately.  We´ve made it all the way down to -15 C° so the goldens got a good taste of the cold European wintertime when they got here. It´s always so refreshing to spend time with them and reflect on those days way back when when we were starting our missions as well and how nervous we were... ahhh i love it so much! We spent most of the day with them though, and at night we took them out to eat and then took them to do their first street contacting.  It was super cool.

Wednesday we met with all of the trainers in the morning to train them and then we had our golden conference. I always feel so envious doing the trainer training, because I´ve wanted to train so bad my entire mission.  It´s the coolest experience to watch as the companionships are announced and how excited everyone is. Usually in that meeting we talk a lot about the Standards of Excellence in the mission, and my companion and I enjoyed getting to bear testimony to the goldens that their assignments came from the Lord, because we witness it first hand, and how they can expect to see miracles in every single area in which they serve, of which we are also first hand witnesses.  It´s a great group though and they´re going to do fabulous here in Germany!
 
 

The next days consisted of entering numbers and generating reports for our Zone Leader Council, and preparing for a special visitor from the first Qourum of the Seventy. He had visited our mission before and is notorious for being pretty intense and critical. So we were all pretty nervous, and by this point in the week I was already feeling like a zombie from lack of sleep and all the mental exertion. Most of the time were weren't in bed til after midnight working on everything, but every morning we started at 6:30 and worked the whole day through. Anyways yesterday morning was the meeting. The general authority´s flight came in later so he was only going to attend the middle portion of the council. He came in right as we finished going through each zone's status report and as we started going through the mission charts, it was kind of nerve wracking trying to facillitate the conversation, but it went super well! After that we broke for lunch and my companion and I got to sit next to the visiting authority and talk with him. He was super nice, and in our short conversation I felt like I learned a lot about him. After lunch he gave a two hour instruction period and then left the meeting. After he left, we finished some number stuff up and then gave a quick workshop on comp unity. Overall it was one very memorable meeting and it was so awesome to be a part of.

On the side of all this, we taught some awesome lessons this week too. We met with our new Russian investigator as well as our RLDS family and had some good appointments. It was good to get out and teach a bit as well.

So ya, after all the stress and things to do, which I cannot even begin to convey in writing, p-day is finally here and it´s time to unwind.:) We´re going to go to the stake center in the middle of Berlin and play some sport together, so we´re super excited. Hope you all had a wonderful week back home! Love you all so much!

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