Still Rolling in Stuttgart

Happy Mother's Day!

I translated again in church yesterday, on Mother's Day. I very quickly realized why translating went so well last week: it was testimony meeting. Translating "I know that God lives" is a lot lot lot simpler than talks. I think I translated a few sentences that weren't quite coherent, but at least the gist of it was the same. FUN story I forgot to tell last week: translating generally went well, except for one particular testimony. She was talking about how in Primary that day, they had talked about how Lehi went into the wilderness. And she asked the children if they could only bring one thing into the wilderness, what they would want to bring with them. One said "my family," another "the ward," and another "the whole world". She talked about how there was one thing even above all those other worthy causes that she would bring with her into the wilderness, and she said that that was "her character," but I misunderstood. I thought she said "my carrot". So that was pretty awkward until somebody helped me figure out the real translation.

Besides that, church was pretty fun. Every single male 12 and up got up and sang a song for all the women, and they gave roses out to all the moms after sacrament meeting. (They had extra so Sister Bishop and I got some too. :)) So that was pretty fun. And Skyping was lovely! It was weird because we kind of forgot that it was happening, and then to just randomly get to see and talk to our families after church was super fun.

We also had interviews this week with President Kohler! I always love interviews; there's always something I want to pick President's brain about. We sat down and he was like "So, Sister Bushman, you've been in Stuttgart for 4 transfers. Is it time to leave yet?" And it was like "that's YOUR call, not MINE!" But I told him that I honestly love Stuttgart and Sister Bishop and would be sad to leave, but at the same time I can kind of feel that I have been here for a while. So maybe it's my cue to go. At the end of the day, I'm thrilled that it isn't my call.

I keep getting stressed out though, because so much of my mission is past and there are just SO MANY things I want to learn and study now. An hour of personal study sounded like an eternity before my mission, but now I'm racing to try and read and study and think about all the things on my list. Sister Bishop can see when I'm starting to get overwhelmed at my learning to-do list I make for myself and she reminds me to see just one or two projects to completion until I move on, which is encouraging. 

We had a really funny moment this week while teaching our first lesson to this man that was contacted during a finding day in Stuttgart. We were talking about the Plan of Salvation with him, and before we started this man was like "if I don't agree with what you're saying, I'm going to tell you." And we said that was okay, but this man kept going on tangents...that were complete doctrine. For example, he was like "People think the fall of Adam was bad! But it was necessary! There are opposites in all things!" And we were like "..................yeah. That's totally true." So that was pretty funny. And then a young-ish guy with long hair and a beanie rode right up to us on his bicycle and started freaking out that we were a sect and that we needed to believe in the Bible, (and Sister Bishop pulled out her Bible and was like "we do...?") and how we needed to believe in Christ to be saved, and we were like "we do..." and then the man with whom we were meeting was like "Can you leave, I'm trying to have a nice discussion with these ladies" and he seemed legitimately surprised that we said that we believe in Christ... so I'm glad that that was cleared up.

Also, we went to a castle last day for P-day. The story of how we ended up making it down to the castle is pretty crazy, but to keep it simple we saw LITERAL MIRACLES trying to find this castle. And talked with like 5 people about the gospel in the process, so that was pretty cool.

Have a wonderful week! You're great!

Love,

Sister Bushman