Infected [plus stolen bikes and lost phone!] (week 16)

 THIS WEEK WAS ONE FOR THE BOOKS.

It started last Saturday while we were at the Becker's house doing some yard work. I mentioned briefly last week, but I was bitten by something (some kind of bug, but who knows what), and by Monday after emails I could barely walk. We had to rush to Hauptbahnhof to make our train on time to be at Familie Meyer, so we locked up our bikes there. We called Sister Kosak and she recommended that we get some allergy medicine to keep down the swelling. Sister Meyer took us straight home, I took this medicine that made me super drowsy, and we forgot about our bikes...

Tuesday morning my foot was worse. We were told by Sister Kosak, Sister Meyer, and our district leader to take it easy this day so my foot had time to heal. Let's just say... that didn't happen. We had an appointment with "K L S" at the church, and the best way for me to get there was by bike, so we left our apartment pretty early to get there with enough time to pick up our bikes and take our time heading to the church where we would work on some stuff for mission tour the next day. We show up to Hauptbahnhof, and our bikes were gone.

Our bikes were gone. Our helmets were still there, but our bikes were gone.

Someone had cut through our chain and taken our bikes and left our helmets.

We found a sign nearby that said that we could go to this address out in the middle of nowhere and find our bikes (as far as we knew, I mean, we could hardly understand the dang sign). Someone we talked to told us it was like a 20 minute walk, and, by the size of my swollen foot and my inability to walk, we decided to take a bus. At the bus stop, we asked some ladies walking by if they knew when the bus came, and they told us that it hardly ever comes and wouldn't even take us the whole way and started to walk away, but after a few steps they turned around and agreed to give us a ride!

MIRACLE!! We get in these strangers' car and they drive us... two blocks before dropping us off again to walk the rest of the way.

Hmm. We realized that there wasn't any other option but to trek the rest of the way to this address to pick up our bikes and then ride them back to make it on time to our appointment with "K L S".

We show up to this bike place where they had picked up a bunch of other bikes for construction reasons? Anyway, long story short, our bikes weren't there. Our appointment was starting in 15 minutes on the south side of town, and we were in the northern outskirts of town. There was no way we were going to make it. We decided to just call "K L S" and cancel our appoinrtment, so we go to call him on our phone, and...

Our phone was gone.

We were in the middle of nowhere, bike-less, phone-less, missing our appointment, no one knew where we were, and my foot was the size of a watermelon.

Just let the panic of that set in.

We were able to call the Elders from phones we borrowed from other people and we just walked home, which was virtually our only option. On the way, we ran into a lady that we met the other day at the bus stop, made out a return appointment (which means we got a new investigator), found the Elders who had come to rescue us, were reunited with our beloved phone (which was left in the car of the nice stranger who gave us a ride), took a bus to the church and met with "K L S", who put some weird cream on BOTH of my feet (?), and went home.

And that was just Tuesday.

This email is already super long so it sufficieth me to say that on Wednesday we went to Hamburg, on Thursday and Friday I was in Hannover on exchanges, on Saturday we talked to literally only two people when we were outside and both became new investigators, one of which came to church yesterday, and on Sunday Emily got confirmed.

We've come to the conclusion that our bikes are stolen. We both have to pay 100 Euro personal money to get new bikes from the mission office soooooooooo... yep. Thankfully we got two bikes from members that we can use this week until Sunday when we'll get the new bikes.

As for my foot. We didn't go to the doctor so we don't actually know what's up with it, but it wasn't an allergic reaction, so we think it's just infected. It's still swollen but I can walk on it now so that's definitely a blessing. Where the dumb thing bit me there's a big black bump and it's pretty gross looking, but we're on the uphill.

Transfer calls are coming this Saturday, and that means that I'll officially be a normal missionary in the mission field. We're not sure if Sister Stuart is going to leave or stay so it'll be exciting to see what happens.

The Church is true. Christ lives. I know this with my whole soul. We can only find real happiness through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Regardless of the crazy things that happen in life sometimes, the Atonement can make it better.

Read your scriptures and I'll talk to you next week,
Sister "I Miss My Old Bike" Seamons

Ahhhhh Germany:)

 Our Neubekehrt. Newest member of the Hildesheim Gemeinde. I love Emily.