All That, and a Chocolate Cake

Before I dive in about this week, let me just say that for P-Day today, Sister Cherrington and I are going to Christmas Markts. In Vienna. What is life. There's apparently like 29 of them, but we're starting with a handful. Last week we just lounged about and cleaned a TON and watched movies from the church and made Marzipan Muffins (shout out to Sister Freimann's mom for the recipe, we`re addicted), so that we`d have time to just spread Christmas cheer today. Yay!

But anyway, we had a great week! This week was different because we had our monthly Zone Training as well as a Super-Tausch with the Graz Sisters! At Zone Training we did all these roleplays to help make us better teachers - and it was so mindblowingly-awesome that it almost hurt, but Sister Cherrington and I have been practicing this week, so now it`s not AS hard. :) We then had a Tausch! Both Sister Pentz and Sister Bishop (who is in her first transfer) stayed with us for a night. While eating lunch we realized that we were all American, but had all lived outside of America at different points of our lives. (Sister Cherrington - Saudi Arabia, Sister Bushman - Russia, Sister Pentz - Switzerland, Sister Bishop - Germany). Except Sister Cherrington is the only one who vividly remembers being exotic, but oh well. :) 

Sister Bushman, Sister Pentz, Sister Bishop, Sister Cherrington

I got to work with Sister Pentz, which was SO fun. She`s an absolute rockstar of a missionary. We had so much fun just trying to connect with as many people on the street as we saw! She's about halfway done with her mission. I love tausch - it´s so energizing to just learn from another awesome missionary for a day. Kind of a funny story...while Sister Pentz and I were out working, Sister Bishop & Sister Cherrington went to contact a referral that we had received. When people go on Mormon.org and request a copy of the Book of Mormon, (http://www.mormon.org/free-book-of-mormon), it comes through as a referral to us. We try to go within 24 hours to bring them the book and meet them. We had received a referral in my last days with Sister Freimann, and on one of my first days with Sister Cherrington, we went to the address...which was a university! Apparently he worked there. We figured out when his office hours were, and Sister Cherrington and Sister Bishop went to try and meet him. Well...when they told us the story later, they told us how the man they found had no idea who we were or what the Book of Mormon was. He was like "how did you get my contact information?" Haha. Awkward. He thought that one of his students referred him as a joke, and apologized profusely for taking their time. We all laughed about it later. Missions are full of fun stories. :)

Sister Pentz and Sister Bushman with cupcake-in-a-cone treats.

Anyways. So while contacting recently, I`ve found that if people aren`t interested in our message, their answers fall into one of two categories. It's generally either "Ich bin Katholisch und ich bleibe Katolisch" (I'm Catholic and I`m staying Catholic,) or they say they're atheist. I've started asking the people who are atheist why they don`t believe in God. It renders some interesting responses. What`s interesting is it feels like there`s answers to a lot of their reasons why they don`t believe. If they still aren`t interested, I like to just bear my testimony that if they don't at least I know that they have a Father in Heaven who loves them more than they can imagine. And we tell them to have a nice day.

I'm also continually amazed by the gift of tongues, and how I see it working in myself. As a kid, I remember hearing about the gift of tongues and honestly thinking yeah right. I can`t just speak Chinese or something if I feel like it. Well, that`s true. Last week Sister Cherrington and I taught Sunday school about die Gaben des Geistes, or the Gifts of the Spirit. One of the points of the lesson is that when we seek spiritual gifts to just get attention or make us cooler people, they won`t come. But when we seek them for the sincere reason of building the Kingdom of God and helping others, they come. We struggle and struggle to learn this language. And even then, we can`t always understand everyone. But I`ve had these cool experiences of having full-on conversations with people on the street, who are shocked when I tell them I only started to seriously study German this year. (I had some in high school, but not much.) I feel like my German has jumped since I became comps with Sister Cherrington. It`s as if with Sister Freimann my German didn`t need to be that good, because Sister Freimann could speak. Now that it`s just us, the Holy Ghost has helped us step up to the plate a little more. It`s beautiful stuff to feel a part of.

On a not-as-spiritual but still totally-wonderful note, remember how I mentioned before how the Elders in our ward bake really well? When at a member`s house a week or two ago, we tipped them off about how Elder Pugmire in our ward can make really good chocolate cake. Like, so good. Mind-blowing. They invited them and an investigator over this week...and asked them to bring chocolate cake. At 8:30-ish that night, we got a call from the Wien 1 Elders, who asked what we were up to. We told them that we had just gotten home and were updating the area book & sending some needed text messages and such. They told us that they had half of a chocolate cake that they'd love to give us if we met them at the bus station. We scurried there, handed it off, and made it home by 9. Holy cow, were we happy. Don`t get me wrong - missionary work is awesome. But sometimes, half of a chocolate cake just makes it all that much better.

Sister Cherrington and Sister Bushman with chocolate cake!

I love you all, have an absolutely wonderful week.

Sister Bushman


To friends of this blog from Sister Bushman's mom:  Sorry I'm late again...have been in a location without WiFi.  Will be on time again next Monday!