Supermom has many masks

Since we have been here I have realized how cool my Mom is.  Many people already know what an awesome person she is, but to me she has always just been Mom.  But as we have been doing all the things we do here I have seen her true colors and talents and she is blossoming into a truly amazing missionary and and exemplary role model to all she comes in contact with.  One of the things she has become really good at is playing many different roles.  She wakes up and puts on her name tag and sends us off to school.  She is teaching Tanner and me seminary every morning and learning how to make cookies with our temperamental oven.

Today she gave a talk in church and she was told that if she did it in English she would have translation, so she wrote it all out and planned to do it in English, but when she got up to speak she started speaking in German.  My Dad went and stood by her, waiting for her to switch into English, but she just kept going.  She only got caught on a few words and she gave her entire talk in German only using her English notes.  It was the coolest thing ever!  She goes to the grocery store on at least a weekly basis and talks to the people at the store.  She constantly has missionaries calling, and is worrying about us at school and our classes.  When President is gone she has to run the house and she keeps everything in tip-top shape.  She is still the same person and the same Mom, but I can see how this experience has already truly changed her.  She is so amazing and I look up to her in every way.  I love you Sister Kohler!

fsy!!!

 Last week Tanner and I had the opportunity to go to EFY here, which is now called fsy, meaning For the Strength of youth.  It was six days long and in a place called Blaubeuren.  Neither of us had any idea what to expect because we had never been to an EFY before, not even in Provo.  They had told us before hand that there would be an English group with Americans because there were enough of us.  So that was a big comfort to me in going.  So we packed up and got on the bus and showed up and there was music playing and all the counselors were doing the EFY dance and it was a little bit crazy. We came with at least five to ten English speakers on the bus and we thought for sure we would all be in a group.  The thing was that the girls who were American were not my age.  They were all older.  But that wasn't supposed to matter because we were all going to be in a group together anyway.  So we got off the bus and they whisked us away and we got out lanyards and our books and backpacks and papers with our rooms on them.  Luckily all the counselors there spoke English so I was able to find my room and put my stuff down.  There was one girl in my room when I got there and she spoke a little bit of English so she translated the little not left on my pillow by my counselor. Then all the girls in my group met and we played all these games and I didn't know any of them.  So we played name games and getting to know you games and I had no idea what was going on. My counselor was giving instructions and this girl was trying to translate, which really helped, but she was by no means fluent in English. Sorry, this post is kind of long and all over the place, but I guess if you've made it this far then you aren't bored yet.  So the rest of the day was kind of a blur, and honestly, so was the whole week, so bear with me.  Anyway, the next morning I was able to switch groups to be with an American girl who was from my stake and her cousin.  The girls in that group were 15 to 18 so I was kind of the odd one out, but by the end of the week we were all such great friends.

This is the first day when we were walking around and found Rachel (an American from our ward) and her friend Melinda having a jam session and decided to join them.

These are some girls from my first group that first night

Here's the whole gang.

So the girls in this picture are Eliza (left) and her cousin Madison (right) and they were in my new group.  For the morning devotionals and big meetings they gave us ear pieces and someone would be live translating in the back.  It was SOOO nice.  For the smaller classes sometimes there would be counselors translating or Rachel would do it or sometimes we just listened in German.

Any time we had we would get together with Tanner and his friend Marius from Stuttgart who spoke very good English and Rachel and her German friend Clara and we would just hang out or eat or whatever.  It was really fun.  We were kind of like the American clan plus Marius.  (Clara thought she was American)

Here we have Marius on the right and Tanner on the left.  These two would just jam out to music and were like two peas in a pod.

One of the first nights we had a casual dance.  You may think this is a lovely picture of Eliza, and it is, but the point of this picture is that she's pointing to the guy next to her.  He is wearing lederhosen.  And vans.  I thought it was hilarious.

 We had a disco ball.  Everyone was doing the one dance that they all do here.  It's like ballroom and it's called the "Dico fox".  And yes, that is really what it is called.

 They were the kings of the dance

 After that dance we had a girls night and did face masks in our room and danced and sang music at the top of our lungs and ate.  I know it was EXACTLY what the boys were doing in their rooms, too.  ;)  These were the girls in my group.  Left to right it is Monique, Madison, Rahel, Fabienne, Camilla, Eva, Eliza, and me.  We all look a little scary with our face masks and pajamas on.

 One of the nights we made banners and cheers in our groups and afterwards just kind of had a dance party.  It was awesome.

 This picture about sums up my brother.

That night was the boys' night.  Who knows what they did?

At the beginning of the week they announced practices for the music program.  I convinced Tanner to come because I didn't want to go alone and he was a good sport and had a late lunch to come to the practices.  That night was so amazing.  While the choir was on stage and we were waiting for everyone to file in there was prelude music playing and someone in the choir started humming along.  Soon all of us were quietly humming with the music.  Later we asked it it had been planned and it had not, but when we did you could feel the Spirit enter almost in the form of a person.  It was the sweetest experience that I'm glad I got to take part in.

 One of the days we did a service project and made blankets for people in Bulgaria.  I think we made 130 fleece blankets.  Amazing!

 That night was the formal dance.  So all the girls ran off to get ready.  We took some pictures of our whole group.

The girls in this picture are, from left to right, Clara, me, Regina (in our ward), Eliza, and Rachel.  it was a fun evening, but most of the guys that asked me to dance were very, VERY tall Germans from my group.  I think Tanner was a little bit worried.  :)

 Here is a picture of all of us.

The last day was really hard.  At the beginning of the week all I had wanted to do was go home, but at the end of the week, all I wanted to do was stay.  It was an amazing experience that I would never trade and would do again in a heartbeat.  I made a lot of good friends and became better friends with the ones I already had.  This is my counselor Miriam (Miri) who made this week awesome.  It was hard to say goodbye to such a spiritual week full of fun memories and amazing people.

 The week truly was amazing, but at the end of it we all felt a little bit like this.

Auf Wiedersehen! (Transfers: Part 2)

The sisters slept here that night and the elders slept over at the apartment next to the office and in the morning we had breakfast at the office.  Then they had a training and then left to go to their areas.  Then the departing missionaries started showing up.  they did interviews at the office while we set up dinner at the church.  There were 24 or 25 missionaries leaving so there was no way we could do it at our house.  Sister Gildner helped with the dinner and it was amazing.  She is so awesome!  I walked in when she was peeling the cucumbers for the salad and she had a put a peel on her head and told us that it was a good way to stay cool so she put one on my mom too and they looked really funny.

 The food smelled delicious all day and I couldn't wait to eat it.

 My job, as you could probably guess, was to set the giant table.

 Then they all started showing up and we began to eat.

 The food was AMAZING!

 That night we had a testimony meeting and it was so amazing.  The spirit was so strong and it was so amazing to see what these people have blossomed into after serving the Lord for two years or eighteen months.  It was fun to compare it to the testimony meeting from the night before and to see the potential these new missionaries have.  They slept over that night here and at the office. The next morning we had to get to the airport early so I woke up at 4:15!!!  We ate breakfast and drove to the airport and the sun was just starting to rise.  It was so beautiful as it reflected off of all the glass buildings. It was hard to get a picture, but this is the best I could do.

 Four missionaries we see often were leaving this transfer.  Sister Erdensogt (right) from our ward was getting transferred, and so was Elder Thomas, one of the Zone Leaders.  And Elder Carlson from the office and Elder Jones (AP) were leaving.  But wonderful missionaries have taken all of their places.  Sister Erdensogt was replaced by Sister Motto, Elder Thomas by Elder Vitel, Elder Carlson by Elder Baurfind, and Elder Jones by Elder Nielson. They are all great.

 Here is the departing group.

 We took them all to their gates and hugged them goodbye and it was really hard.  Afterwards we met the families of the missionaries who were being picked up and saw the reunions they had with their families and it was so heart warming.  It may have been hard to say goodbye, but then we were walking through the airport and this is what I see.  These amazing missionaries who have already impacted my life so much.  I don't know what I would do without them.  I can't think of a place I would rather be and a work I would rather be helping pursue.  This is a chance of a lifetime.

Lost Sheep (Transfers: Part 1)

This last week we did our first transfer!  It was very stressful for my Dad, but it was just exciting for me.  The best part was that we are the "experienced"ones now.  Not really, though.  So all of the missionaries that come to our mission come from the Preston MTC in England, but there was one sister coming in that couldn't get a visa or something like that so she had to go to the Provo MTC.  She flew in a few hours before all the others so we got up pretty early and went to the airport with the AP's and Zone Leaders to pick her up.  Then we waited for a couple of hours until the other ones were supposed to come in.  We got some food and just relaxed.  It was pretty fun.  Elder Jones was enjoying his cheese.

 Finally it was time and so we went to the gate and we waited and waited and waited and WAITED until it was like 45 minutes after they were supposed to come in and so we figured something was wrong.  Just then they called my dad over the loud speaker to go to the information desk and they told him they police would be coming to get him and tell him what happened shortly.  Great!  Who knows what happened!  So they came and took my dad and Elder Bellersen with them and they said they walked passed a room with a big glass wall and all the missionaries were inside and they looked really scared and my dad just smiled and waved at them as he passed.  So it turns out that somehow the missionaries had tried to tell someone what they were doing here and the person thought that they meant that they would be traveling as a group for two years around in Germany and Austria and Switzerland and they thought that was a big problem because of visas so they detained them.  Then they tried to ask them all questions, but they could only speak broken German.  Luckily it was all straightened out and they came in and we hugged them and they were all very scared.  Sadly, my camera decided to stop working then, but just picture a lot of bewildered looking new missionaries.  It was actually pretty funny.  So then we went to the office and ate lunch and they did interviews and training while we came back to the house to set up for dinner.  It was a big group and we were planning on doing it at the church, but we decided we could fit it so we squished into our house.

The lady in this picture is Svetlana.  She has a job cleaning our mission home after missionaries stay and she helps with the cooking.  She is so awesome.  She is Romanian and speaks very little English and moderate amounts of German.  My mom speaks pretty little German, so when they try to communicate we all just laugh because it is so darn funny, but we love her.

Our entry way smelled like stinky feet.  It was really gross.

After dinner we had a testimony meeting and they got assigned to their trainers.

This sister on the end is the one who flew in from Provo and she was so tired.  I felt so bad for her.

My dad would introduce one of the trainers and their area and then he would say who they were assigned to and we would all clap.  It was exciting.  When there are small numbers of missionaries coming in they have the trainers come in and they meet in person, but we had seventeen so we handed out pictures of them and in the morning, after a training, they all rode on the train to their areas to meet their trainers.

 Then they took picturs with my parents and the mission map to send to their parents to let them know that they were alive and well.

To be continued...

Bike Rides and Backereis

This kid is my life.  We do everything together now and don't always get along, but he keeps me sane.  He is always wanting to go on adventures.  gotta love him!

 There are some trails close by our house and one of them borders a really big cornfield

 We always ride by really cool stumps and things covered in mushrooms.  It is so cool.  The whole thing is just alive.

Once we convinced out mom to come with us and we rode to a backerei close to our house and had delicious pastries 

 She didn't want to bring her wallet so I loved this tiny Ziploc of coins.

They have these big ice cream cones to show that there is ice cream in little cafes all over.  It looks really funny, but I love it.