Monday, January 19, 2015

I'll walk with you, I'll talk with you

Hallo!

Do you remember the primary song that the title of this letter refers to? This past week, Sister Threlkeld and I were just walking down the street trying to track down this lady we had given a Book of Mormon to in my first week, and we came upon this man sitting on the seat of his walker, just in the middle of the sidewalk. We were walking pretty fast and originally passed him, but quickly noticed our oversight and went back and talked to him. His name is Volker, and he was born with a really bad leg, which makes it incredibly hard to walk. He was trying to go grocery shopping, but had barely made it a few meters before he sat down in pain. We had been speed-walking to find this lady because she said she was only home in the mornings, and it was like 11:40 at this point...but we decided to just talk with this man for a while instead. He talked about how much pain he was in, and literally nothing could cure it. He must have sworn like 15 times during that conversation, just out of pain. We read Alma 7:11 with him, where it talks about Christ taking upon our pains and sicknesses in addition to our sins. And then we just went and got his groceries for him, and we parted ways. It was one of those little moments I'll probably always remember. I hope we see him again someday. 

On a more trivial note, transfers were this past week. It wasn't quite as dramatic since we both stayed, but we got to "babysit" Sister Berry who works in Singen all day until she picked up her new companion that night, so that was fun. We also got a new Zone Leader! Elder Ridd is from Texas, and we already like him a lot. He's way cool. Out of the 4 missionaries in our ward, nobody is from Utah or other "Mormon States," since we're Kansas, Georgia, Texas, and Australia. It like, blows ward members' minds. :)

OH, also, I learned a super great phrase this week. We were at an eating appointment the day before transfers with the Elders, when Elder Smith got a text that was like, "Alles in Butter?" (Everything in butter?) And Elder Smith asked the member with whom we were eating about it. Apparently it's a bit dated, but you can totally ask if "everything is in butter" to mean "everything is okay," or whatever. How funny is that? 

During the week, Sister Threlkeld was asked if she would play piano in the PV, or Primary on Sunday. So we went, and she sat behind the piano while I sat amidst all the kleine Kindern. Okay. So I like kids, but everyone who knows me decently well knows that I'm just not quite sure what to do with them all the time. But, nevertheless, (and I don't know how this happened,) I have won the heart of just about every little girl in the junior primary. It's so funny and SO cute. Like, 5 or 6 different little German girls at different points during primary came and gave me a huge hug around the waist, or were tugging on my arm so I would sit with them, or this or that. At one point there were like 3 cute little girls swarming me and I looked over at Sister Threlkeld behind the piano and just saw her laughing at the whole situation. Mensch, they are cute kids. I have high hopes for my kinder skills!

One final cool experience I want to share. We were over at an American's house this week, and she had made us homemade pizza (oh my lecker [delicious]) with olive oil they got in Italy. She said they had bought it there last year (or so) when they visited. I told her how I really hope I get the opportunity to live in Europe again one day, so I can visit all these places I really dream of visiting. She then answered, 

"Well, the funny thing about life is that you get to do what you want."

It totally caught me off-gaurd, and I've been thinking about it ever since. Obviously I can't just decide to be Queen of Iceland or 16 years old again, and if God has better things for us in mind than what we originally want, He'll make sure we get all of those blessings...but we act so often like we are complete victims of our circumstances, we're completely controlled by whatever life throws at us... But God gave us our agency. He gave us the ability to do what we want and make our choices - for better of for worse. (Just like it says in 2 Nephi 2:26 how we can act for ourselves instead of just being acted upon.)

How cool is that? Food for thought. Make good choices this week!

Love, 

Sister Bushman

From Sister Bushman's Mom - A couple of fun photos from the week:

Sister Bushman on the streets of Stuttgart

The Gregorian Sisters?  Sister Bushman and Sister Threlkeld next to
an advertisement for a Gregorian chorus concert

1 comment:

  1. She is just such a sweetie! I am treasuring her letters each week, really. The story about Primary is hilarious! I can just picture her in the midst of those girls, how adorable!

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