Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Halleluja! Our window closes :)




Hallo!

It has been an awesome week here in Göppingen. The members here take care of us very well.  They may have to roll me away from Göppingen I am eating such good food so often. 

One of my favorite moments from this week was when we were eating lunch with a family in our branch. They have a six year old daughter who had just lost a tooth and was so, so excited to put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy. Unfortunately, the envelope she was carrying it in ripped and she lost it in the gravel in front of their house. This gravel is made of a mixture of little gray, black and WHITE stones. So, as you can imagine, tears ensued. The world as she knew it had come to an end. The 13 year old daughter went to go comfort her; meanwhile, the mom asked if we would go look for the tooth with her. Before heading out we said a quick prayer. Then we went to the front of the house and bent over the gravel and started looking. I kid you not, about 1 minute into our search, Sister Ackerman calls out "Gefunden!" She found it! The mom was so happy, the little girl's tears dried right up, and we put the tooth in a little tupperware for safe keeping. 
The best part was how the mom took a minute to talk to her daughter about what had happened. She told her that her Heavenly Father is there and that He knows her and loves her. They said a thank you prayer together. As we were sharing the spiritual thought later, the mom talked again about how it wasn't the tooth itself that was important, but the fact that it was important to the 6 year old. She lost it, which made her unhappy, which in turn made her mom unhappy because she was sad. That in turn made Heavenly Father sad because His daughters were sad. And because Heavenly Father loves His daughters, He took the time to answer this small little prayer and put smiles back on the faces of a mom and a daughter. 

That made me think more about how the Lord really is in the details of our lives. He is in the small moments, in the small things. Sometimes the smallest things have the biggest meaning. That moment with that family was a perfect example to me of how God is always looking out for us. Other people might look at our situation and wonder why we worry about "silly" things, but God knows what's important to us, and everything will be okay in the end. 

On Tuesday we went on a "Finding Day" (basically tracting all afternoon) with the Elders in the neighboring area of Ellwangen. We were Klingeling (i.e. ringing door bells) when the most adorable family from Afghanistan actually let us in! It was so cool, they gave us a place on their couch, brought us water to drink and we just talked to them about Christ and prophets and the Book of Mormon. We ended up giving away some copies of the Book of Mormon (one English, one German) and promised them that the Elders would be coming by with some more books in Persian. They even had a few friends over who were also interested :) That was pretty much one of the best lessons I have ever taught. 

Saturday we headed out to Heidenheim, a town that is in our area but is a whopping one and a half hours away with the train. We went out to visit a member family there and to try and find some new people. We doored into this older woman whose husband died last year (they were together 60 years!). It was a sweet experience to testify to her that she can see her husband again someday. 

Sunday after church we spent the afternoon visiting some of the older sisters in the ward who because of their health can no longer come to church. It was the perfect way to end out the week :)

Ich weiß, dass wir niemals allein sind. Manchmal fühlen wir uns ganz klein, aber Gott denkt an uns immer. Er liebt uns und will, dass wir glücklich sind.
(I know that we are never alone. Sometimes we feel quite insignificant, but God is always aware of us. He loves us and wants us to be happy.) 

Tschüss!
--Sister Stewart 

p.s. As to the title of the e-mail- today they came and fixed our window so that it actually latches. Hooray for not having to bundle up all the time! We are very excited :) After they were done it was the funniest thing, one of the fix it men actually said "Halleluja!"


No comments:

Post a Comment