Called to Serve in the Albania English-Speaking Mission (week 7)

What everyone says about understanding your mission language pretty well in the MTC and then coming to the field and not understanding a single word is exactly true. Exactly. True. I don't understand German anymore. In other news, this week was literally the longest week of my entire life. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Monday March 31

Packed all day before having our final class with Bruder Goldsmith and Sister Pingree. I sang "Come Thou Fount" for our last song as a distrikt, per Bruder Goldsmith's request. Watching those those two teachers walk away for one last time broke my little heart into pieces. This day, our last full day in the MTC, marked the first time I cried on my mission.

Our distrikt with seriously one of my favorite people on earth, Bruder Goldsmith.

This guy is gold. Yep.

One of our other teachers, the one and only Sister Pingree!

Tuesday April 1/Wednesday April 2

Today became the second time I cried on my mission. We woke up at 2:30 in the morning to get ready and finish packing everything. After everything was in my suitcases, we weighed them, and both were over the 50 lb weight limit. I just started sobbing. My dear dear Sisters somehow made it all work. We were supposed to be at the travel office 30-40 minutes early, but we had to use that time to make my stuff fit. We made it there just on time. A miracle. There we said goodbye to Sister Blackhurst and Sister Jefferies. Heart breaking again. We rode Frontrunner to the airport, flew to Minneapolis, made phone calls home, flew to Amsterdam, then flew to Berlin. We were able to walk right off the plane onto German soil. We got our luggage and then found our President and drove to the church in Berlin. We went "finding" with random missionaries for the first time, probably two hours after we got there. On the train, the Sister I was paired up with, Sister Darrington, was talking to this really nice young girl, and when I tried to say something, all this girl responded with was, "what?" And there went all my self-confidence. Oh I felt horrid. This is what I mean when I say that I understand German in the MTC, but in Germany, I understand nothing. Nichts. Okay, maybe 5%. It's so rough. We had Dominos for dinner and then we went to a hotel and slept for 14 hours straight. Heaven.

Three of my most FAVORITE people in this world. I miss them every. day.

Sisters Blackhurst and Jefferies are serving in the Frankfurt mission.
Sister Bell and I are in Berlin. This was the night before we parted ways.

Thursday April 3

We ate breakfast at the hotel. It was so good. We headed back to the church, where we got our companions and areas. SO. My companion is Sister Danna Stuart, and we are serving in Hildesheim, Germany! Check out the mission blog for pictures of us and the rest of my MTC zone. At this point in the day, we had to say goodbye to everyone, and my little heart was ripped out yet again when I said goodbye to my Sister Bell. Ah. We eventually left with all my luggage and rode a train to the Hauptbahnhof, where we ran into some of the people we had just said goodbye to! Man, that was a nice surprise. We took a 2 hour train ride to Hannover, then 20 minutes more to Hildesheim, where we dragged all my luggage to our apartment (which, I hear, is one of the nicest Sisters apartments in the mission. Holla!). We went grocery shopping and met the Hildesheim Elders, Elders Bone and Roberts (our DL), there. Unpacked until bed.

Friday April 4

Today was just plain rough. We had 3 appointments today. One of them was actually pretty interesting: We met two Albanian men at the park and they took us to go get some tea. One of them spoke better German, the other spoke better English. While we were drinking tea, Sister Stuart taught the German speaking man, "F", while I taught the English speaking man, "A". I basically just taught him about God, the Book of Mormon, prophets, and General Conference. Success! We're in Germany and I'm teaching in English. Good stuff. Our other Termins were in German though haha. We went to the church for Tischtennis (ping pong) and we played with some members and investigators. So. Much. German. It was so overwhelming. Afterwards, while Sister Stuart and I were planning, she said that Hildesheim was on fire! With all of our success. Just today, my very first official day, we gained 3 new investigators. Great stuff.

Saturday April 5

Today was considerably better than yesterday (which translates to, we spoke less German). We went shopping today for a picnic we're planning on having tomorrow with some of our investigators between conference sessions. We met another Albanian, "P", at the park. While we were teaching him, another man who was listening to our lesson, came up and asked where our church was. Sister Stuart gave him our card and he left. "P" is really prepared, and we are meeting with him again in a few days. In other news, we traveled to Hannover for District Meeting and General Conference, where I ran into one of my good MTC friends, Elder Cook! He's serving in Nienberg, which isn't actually in our zone, but he came for Conference with his companion, Elder Savage, who is from American Fork. Man, it was great to see a familiar face. On the way home, our train was extra late, so we didn't get home until 10 (way after curfew).

Our Elders in Hannover for District Meeting and General Conference.

Sunday April 6

We had weekly planning this morning for a few hours. We met "H" (recent convert) and his two sisters at the Hauptbahnhof so we could travel to Hannover for conference together. We watched the first session in German, and I couldn't understand a single thing. I fell asleep probably 4 times. We had a picnic with them afterwards and it was pretty fun. The last session we watched in English (thank heavens) with our Elders and a few other Elders. I talked to Elder Cook on the way to the Hauptbahnhof again before they headed off.

General Conference watchin'

Trying my first Döner!

Welp. I'm in Germany. Like I said, we're in Hildesheim, near Hannover, and (this is for Dad and Tessea) we have bikes! It's really actually so nice. It's pretty tricky riding in a skirt though. The German is really, really rough, but everyone says it'll come. The people here are really nice. The food is GRAND. There's a lot of cool stuff to see. German parks are so cool. My companion is really great. She's been out less than 10 months, and I'm actually only her third companion. Life is hard. Life is good.

Bis nächste Woche,

Sister Bianca Seamons

Interesting experience for this week:

The Elders gave me some Milka chocolate as a welcome gift. I read that this chocolate had jellybeans in it, so I started eating it, and before I knew it, my mouth was popping. Turns out, this "new" Milka has poprocks in it. I actually like it a lot!