Whenever there is rain . . .

Hey, folks.

This week was by far the hardest of my mission, and maybe the hardest of my life. I don't want to go into super detail, because I don't want to skim over such a tender situation, but Sister Bishop and I were up close and personal with some friends of ours that were really in a lot of pain. But, at the same time, it really strengthened my conviction in the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement of Christ. Because although that pain was unbearably hard for our friend, the insights she shared with us due to her faith were astounding. I was forever changed by that.

I'm grateful for General Conference and for the loving leaders of this church who help guide us to following Jesus Christ. I'm grateful for the Plan of Happiness and that we know why we are on the earth. I'm grateful for eternal families and for the beautiful saving and enabling power of the Atonement of Christ. 

I love you all so much.

Sister Bushman

Shelley's Mom here:

Some photos from earlier in the week . . . 

At Oktoberfest in Munich:

Running into Elder Threlkeld --
her former companion's brother

At Munich Zone Conference:  Sisters Poll, Bishop, Bushman, Earnshaw

The Sister Show

Na, Servus!  (Hello!)

I don't have tons to say this week, just because the week was a whirlwind. I wouldn't even know where to start! Like, we are supposed to do in-depth planning every Thursday or Friday for the next week every week...and we are doing it today for our proselyting time. Because we seriously just had NO other time to do it. Crazy. It's fun to be busy, though.

Yesterday was by far THE most verrückt (crazy) Sunday I've ever experienced my whole mission. First of all, the cards somehow fell that Sister Bishop and I taught the combined priesthood/Relief Society lesson, AND I gave a talk. Since it's a baby branch there are only two speakers in Sacrament meeting each week and there are only two hours of church, so basically it was the sister show. Luckily somebody stepped in to conduct the music so I had a bit of a mental break, but it was pretty crazy how much we had planned on doing. AND with this crazy week we didn't get in all of our studies a couple of days, so we were down to the wire getting all of our stuff prepared. (I think I told Sister Bishop "my stress senses are tingling!" Like 5 times. Haha. She's so long-suffering. :)) AND everyone and their dog showed up at church. All the active members, as well as some WONDERFUL people we are working with, and some Americans on vacation, and the missionaries...there were like 30 people! It was like twice as normal! It was so fun. I think all the lesson-y talk-y things went okay too. Sometimes when I get flustered the German stops working, aber nichts SO schreckliches ist passiert. :)  (but nothing dreadful happened)

In our lesson we talked about Elder Gerald Causse's talk from last General Conference, "Is It Still Wonderful to You?" It was really fun because we got some good class participation. We started out with the question "Was ist Ihr Lieblingslied?" (What is your favorite song?) written on the board. We got answers ranging from hymns to pop to Josh Groban. We then asked someone specific how often they listened to that song - he said like, every day. And we were like "but why? You've heard it SO many times!" And he said that it was still good, and he noticed new little things about it each time. We talked about how that was like the Gospel - we go to church each week and learn about the same topics, but it's still wonderful and we can always learn something new. At the end of the lesson we gave every person there (we almost ran out!) a brand-new Book of Mormon with the challenge to do one of two things - either to try and re-vamp their scripture study by studying the whole book for something specific, or to renew their excitement and love for the gospel by giving it to a friend. It was fun!

In my talk I read Mosiah 2:9 (which is the beginning of King Benjamin's big address) and talked about General Conference and what we can do to prepare. We can liken King Benjamin's advice to listen with our ears, hearts, and minds so that we get as much from it as possible.

Can you believe it's already time for Conference? I feel like it was yesterday when I was eating Marzipaneier with Sister Threlkeld in Stuttgart and Sister Freimann randomly showed up. Be sure to write down a question that you need an answer to and ponder it while watching!

I love you all, have a great week!

Sister Bushman

Photos from the week:

A new German "Trachten" skirt

"High on a hill stood a sister missionary . . ."

Sister Bushman and Sister Bishop were enjoying their invitation to dine!

A little bit of home -- Sister Bushman came across
some sunflowers -- the state flower of Kansas

Everything is Still Awesome!

Hello lovely loves!

This week in Passau was PERFECT. Sister Bishop and I don't really know how it happened, but it seems like all of a sudden all the stars are starting to line up and Passau is beginning to bloom. We have these "standards of excellence" for the mission -- they aren't a quota by any means, but a set of numbers for how many lessons taught, etc. to help us measure how we are doing. They are set pretty high, so they are sometimes tricky to hit. But we hit like half of them this week. Woohoo! We're hoping to keep nurturing this lovely area so that it keeps growing. :)

Beautiful Passau

The Elders are back in Passau! We were grateful for Elder Faux's piano playing skills in sacrament meeting yesterday. And we got to know Elder Faux's golden, who is from Switzerland! He's super cool. He also sounds Swiss which is cool because I haven't had much exposure to Schweize Deutsch. He has been speaking Hoch Deutsch with us, but he has a really different accent. Sister Bishop and I determined that it sounds like he's speaking German with an Irish accent. So just think about that.

We had a FABULOUS lesson with someone new this week! It was SO cool how we found her. We were in Vilshofen (we aren't in that city super often) and waiting for a bus. This lady sat down next to me who was wearing fabulous hot-pink rimmed glasses. So I told her that her glasses were fabulous, obviously. Then we ended up talking and having this incredible conversation, and she told us how she believed in God, but has had a lot of hard times and it is sometimes hard for her to believe that God really is there, because so many hard things happen. We testified to her about how much God loves her, and how we teach people about God and how she could strengthen her relationship with her Heavenly Father. She said she would love to meet, and a couple days later we did! It's so incredibly wonderful, because she said that her husband is super sick and she's about to move to Spain because the climate there is better for his sickness, and she's moving next week and is super stressed - and then she sat down next to us at the bus stop. She wants us to Skype-teach her when she leaves. The coolest part is that Elder Gantner's brother (the Swiss Elder) is serving in Spain, so what would really be cool is if the stars aligned and he got to teach her in Spain - because she only speaks German and Dutch! It was so obvious that God's hand brought everything together that day. So cool!

Passau is a small-ish town, so we ended up befriending one of the bus drivers, who is named Paul. He's way awesome. As we got to know him more, we found out that he has a Book of Mormon from way back in the day from old friends of his. But he couldn't find it...so we gave him a new one. :) But Paul is SO. COOL. He was in the German army for 35 years and is now retired. He drives a bus around Passau so that he can go to Sri Lanka every year and change the lives of impoverished school children. He brought us some pictures of where he has been, and it's incredible how many lives he has blessed by driving his bus. I felt so, so, so strongly that I want to do something like that some point in my life. Whether big or small - volunteering at the soup kitchen or bringing rice to impoverished folk in Sri Lanka - I felt so good looking at those pictures and I didn't even do anything. Man. All I can say is that if Sister Lineback is still going to Honduras to offer dental services each year and she could use a non-spanish speaking not-familiar-with-dental-work set of hands, I would loooove to come. ;)

A couple random tidbits. I have a new theory about dialects, especially Bayerisch. I just feel like people at home don't understand how different these dialects are than actual Hoch Deutsch. Like, other Germans can't understand them sometimes. But I've decided that listening to heavy Bayerisch is a lot like playing that one game Mad Gab. Like, if you listen to the exact words being spoken, you're going to have a hard time. But if you don't listen too closely and just try to follow the ark of the words, you can kinda figure out what they're saying. It's pretty funny.

Yesterday we were knocking on a couple of doors while waiting for the bus, and nobody had really answered. I was getting antsy about making our bus, so Sister Bishop said we should just knock on one more floor and then go. Nobody answered - until the very last door. A middle-aged man and woman answered, and the woman wasn't wearing any pants. So casually. It didn't seem to bother her at all - we had a lovely talk about God and gave them pamphlets about the Restoration and they said we could come back to teach them. So that was pretty funny.

OH one more quick story. There was a day this week with unbelievable wind. Like, cyclone scene from Wizard of Oz level of wind. Sister Bishop and I were both wearing pretty flowy skirts, so we had a couple of Marilyn-Monroe-moments when we had to just stop everything and hold all of that billowing fabric down. There is an overpass that goes over the railroad tracks that we have to cross in order to get home, and we thought that the wind would be better inside. False. Oh my false. It made a total wind tunnel, and my skirt was just blowing here and there and everywhere and Sister Bishop and I just started laughing so hard because if I held it down from the front it would fly up in the back, and then if I held down the back it would fly up the sides, and we were just in hysterics trying to get through this wind tunnel. A couple of people passed us during this whole scene and we exchanged knowing glances and chuckles a few times. I hope we made their day. It was pretty funny. Note to self: don't wear the navy with pink flower skirt on windy days...

Hard-working, jubilant sisters . . . in skirts!

I love you all! Have a great week.

Love,

Sister Bushman

& the Adventure Continues

Hello everyone!

We had more lessons this week with people who are interested in the Gospel than we have had this whole transfer COMBINED. Woohoo! It was really satisfying to teach so much this week. We hope that it keeps growing through continued effort. :)

Also, on that note, transfer calls came! And the lovely Sister Bishop and I are doing ANOTHER transfer! Squeal! It'll be our 4th transfer - and therefore, we will have spent 6 months (a whole third!) of our missions together. No complaints here. Hopefully I don't drive her crazy by the end of this transfer, but we're excited to have another transfer because it feels like things are really starting to pick up even more!

Eating dinner on their Passau apartment
terrace because of the lovely weather

The view from their Passau apartment terrace

Finding was actually really fun this week. There was randomly this big Töpfer (pottery) fair that came into town, so we went and talked to a lot of people.  The idea of going to such a place to find felt like cheating in the past since it wasn't p-day, but I've since learned that casually walking around such a place leads to a lot of organic opportunities for talking to people. It's fun. We struck up a lot of conversations with craftsmen selling their work, and they almost all asked about our tags, and we had some cool discussions. One guy told us that we both were dressed really nicely - we were both wearing shirts that Sister Wilkes had left behind in the München 3 apartment, haha.

We also got to go to a street Ausstellung! I hadn't been to one in a LONG time. But it was so fun! It was in Neuötting's area, so our whole district went down there with their ward mission leader, and we had this big stand set up with info about the church and pamphlets and Books of Mormon and mini "For the Strength of Youth"s and stuff, and the best part - the GML (ward mission leader) brought this electric keyboard and a bunch of hymnals and he played hymn after hymn and we all just SANG our hearts out, and it was so fun! The weather was absolutely perfect and a lot of people would just stop and listen. There was one guy who was like, "Could I request a song?" Apparently his daughter married a Mormon guy in the states, so he's semi-familiar with the church. He requested "Näher, mein Gott, zu dir" ("Nearer My God, to Thee") so we sang it with him and it was really nice. We got a lot of telephone numbers for the Neuötting elders to teach! We are going to go to Rathaus (city hall) this week to try and figure out how to do the paperwork so we can do one here in Passau while the weather is still so nice. It was so fun!

The Elders at the Ausstellung in Neuotting

Hm, what else. Elder Faux is temporarily in the office, so we were the only missionaries at church yesterday... And there wasn't a piano player. Gulp. I repeat myself - if you want to go on a mission, LEARN. THE PIANO. I BEG OF YOU. Sister Bishop and I were both kicking ourselves yesterday because we aren't Elder Faux and therefore aren't proficient in piano... Sister Bishop plunked the main line while I conducted, and we just did our best. We just thought it was funny, but we made it through the meeting without any major mishaps.

I wanted to share something I've been thinking about a lot in my personal scripture study in this past week. We read in the Bible that we should "love our neighbors as ourselves", and something dawned on me this week. We always focus on the "love our neighbor" part, which is obviously incredibly important, but the other half of that talks about how it's a commandment that we love ourselves. Sometimes we overlook that. I know that I do sometimes. I've been trying to make a more concentrated effort to be kind to myself and not to just beat myself for being an averagely imperfect human. But the secret is that no matter how we try, we're always going to be imperfect. But the enabling power of the Atonement is a real thing - and Jesus Christ invites us all to come unto Him to feel His perfect love.

So if He loves us, we should too. :)

Sister Bushman

More photos . . .

With current and former companions at the Munich Zone meeting:
Sister Berry, Sister Bishop, Sister Bushman, Sister Cherrington

Sister Bushman had blood drawn this week;
but reports are that she will survive.

Everything is Awesome!

Today is a good day. Do you want to know why? We had Kürbiskremesuppe for lunch - that's right, pumpkin cream soup. It's more of an Austrian thing than a German thing, but since we live so close to the border, we found the soup mix at the supermarket. Score! It's mainly eaten in fall and we both just LOVE it from our Golden days. :) I'm amazed that it hasn't caught on in the States yet. I feel like Americans would LOVE that stuff. Do you know why else it's a good day today? I studied about the Last Supper in John with the Institute New Testament manual and understood the little things about the chapter SO MUCH more. I love the manuals, they're such a good resource! Do you know why else today is a wonderful day? It's my absolute favorite weather outside -- slightly chilly, but not cold. Fall is coming! Hooray! Also we went to visit this big, ambiguous church thing on a hill that we found. Turns out it was a monastery. We didn't see any monks, but we saw monk graves and monk pictures. And tomorrow we have Zone Training and got permission to go up today and spend the night in München, so that's happy too! And Deutsche Christmas cookies have made it into the grocery store and we're currently snacking on Vanille Kipferl, my favorite type! EVERYTHING IS AWESOOOOOOOOOOOME.

OH and Sister Bishop and I got dirndls last week (my second, her first) and they were super cheap at a second-hand shop and we wore them to church yesterday and everyone said that we looked really Bayerisch and I was giddy about it for days.

Elder Gibbs and Elder Faux with the
dirndl-clad Sister Bushman and Sister Bishop

And, work in Passau is going well. We're at the point where we have some weekly appointments with a few people - which we are STOKED about. We're building up Passau! I fall in love with this city and with the branch here a little bit more every day. I don't think I would mind finishing my mission here, honestly. I didn't like the idea of walking into my last area, so I was almost hoping to get transferred one more time - just so that this wouldn't be the end, but the branch members are SO great, so I don't know if I would even mind staying here until the end. Yay Passau!

Last week there was one day where I was sitting at my desk and was just like SISTER BISHOP I CANNOT SIT HERE ANYMORE. I guess when you have been sitting at a desk for a couple of hours every day for a long time...you get a little stir crazy. So we rearranged the furniture in the living room so that we face different walls to study - and it completely solved the problem! I love when easy solutions are enough. :)

We had a really interesting conversation last night. One of the Elders we work with has to go back to the States to get surgery, so we dropped by some cookies last night to say goodbye instead of eating dinner because we ate a huge lunch and weren't really hungry anyway.  On the way we saw this group of 2 couples, talking and laughing really loudly in American-sounding English. This was odd, because most of the time the Americans on the cruise boats are only out during the day, and then they go back to the boat at night. We said hi and asked them where they were from, because it's fun talking to people in the mother tongue. :) They said Sweden, and when they saw that we were missionaries, kind of scoffed with each other, and one made a polygamy joke, and another said that they were "agnostic, thank you very much" and started to turn away. We just smiled and said that we were just being friendly, and continued walking.

It kinda made me think of Lehi's vision of the tree of life in 1 Nephi 8. In the vision there is a rod of iron headed toward this tree full of incredibly delicious, bright, beautiful fruit (which represents the Love of God). There's a dark mist around the rod, and so you have to HOLD ON and keep pressing forward to make it to the tree. Meanwhile, across the way is a huge, beautiful building full of beautifully-dressed people having fun and partying and laughing at the people trying to push their way forward on the rod. I think this was the first time where I felt like I saw his vision represented in real life. I have no idea what made this time different - heaven knows there have been plenty of occasions where people have been rude or offensive or made fun of us or been downright mean, but for some reason it clicked this time. From an outside perspective, we may seem kinda weird. We wear skirts in summer and snow and will stop you on the street - something that isn't too common in Germany. As members of the church, we drink Sprite when others around us drink beer, don't watch a lot of tv shows deemed as okay by the world, and pay tithing. It seems weird. But I guess it just goes to show that the blessings are worth the price, because here I am as well as many other people who find peace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Ain't the Gospel great?

Commitment for you: Write a missionary you know a hand-written letter this week (and I'm not fishing for letters - I really do mean ANY missionary you know) because it will make them rejoice. I know they would love to hear from you. :)

Love,

Sister Bushman

More photos:

Mold

Schönen guten Nachmittag!

Hello my lovelies! This was a LOVELY week in Passau. It's not that we set 5 baptismal dates or anything absurd like that, but I've just been appreciating my days with Sister Bishop in this lovely little town. I'm falling in love with it more every day, really. It's just so cute here.

The Passau missionaires:  Elder Gibbs, Elder Faux, 
Sister Bushman, Sister Bishop

The title of this email is maybe a little weird, but is entirely accurate about life right now. Sister Bishop the other day was like "If I were to describe Germany in the summer in one word, it would be this: Mold." And she's right. We don't know how, but food seems to go bad SO FAST here. Something with the lack of preservatives. Or the humidity. Or lack of centralized air conditioning. No idea - but it's helped me deal with my food mold phobia. :)

But holy cow, are there a LOT of Americans around right now, seriously. You have no idea. Since there's so many cruises that stop here and we are in the height of the summer tourism season...yeah. You get the picture. BUT. It's just SO FUN because sometimes there are members and they see us and are so kind and wonderful and always say hi and meet us! There was even a couple the other day who took us and the Elders all out to dinner at this yummy Bayerisch restaurant. It was so so kind of them. I've made a promise to myself to love on the missionaries when I see them randomly in my life. If I'm on vacation in Texas (or whatever) in the middle of the summer and run into the Elders biking around, I'm going to take them to Sonic and buy them milkshakes. It's not that the Elders (or Sisters, of course) can't go themselves if they want to, but you just feel SO SPECIAL as a missionary when people are so kind. If you go see the missionaries, give them a handshake and a smile. I promise it will completely make their day.

We had a couple really cool opportunities just kind of finding people as we lived life this past week. I really believe that God leads us to people in such a subtle way, that things seem coincidental. Like, I want a Bierstein SO badly. I really want to bring one home. (For root beer, no worries. :)) Aber die sind ein bisschen teuer (but they are a bit expensive). So one day we had been contacting for a while, and I saw some really beautiful Biersteins in the window of an antique shop, so I popped in with Sister Bishop to see how much they cost. The shop owner recognized us as missionaries, and said that he has a friend who is Mormon who gave him a Vietnamese Book of Mormon many years ago. He met with the Elders and LOVED what he learned, but he has a big family to support here and in Vietnam, so he's crazy busy. But he said that when he's old and doesn't have to work, he wants to come back to church! He even talked about how he really respected the Mormon pioneers, and how he kinda feels that way himself having left his country to come to Germany. He was super cool and said he would love it if we come by to talk again!

And then, one time we were simply standing on the boardwalk next to this tourist shop (I think we were debating whether to get ice cream or not, haha) and this shop lady came out to see if we needed anything...and it turns out that she's majoring in theology and wants to hear about what we believe! It's so cool how we'll just "happen" to run into people who are excited to see us. :)

Oh! And another one! We went to go visit a friend of ours who lives at a refugee home on Sunday. We knocked - and she didn't answer. Ack! We hadn't been in contact for a few weeks and we were a little worried. We were in the stairwell trying to decide what to do (which bus to take, if we should door the building or not, etc.) and then our friend walked out into the stairwell! It turns out that she had barely moved rooms, that was all that happened. So she let us in and we talked about prayer. It was great!

It should cool down a little bit next week, weirdly enough. I don't know if it will be tights weather, but I can't help but think about the fact that after the season changes, the next time I won't HAVE to wear tights with a skirt, it will be in America. :/ ENOUGH OF THAT TRAIN OF THOUGHT.

Hm, what else. It's crazy that September is this week. This time last year, I was still gallivanting around Vienna with Sister Smiley and Sister Freimann, who are actually Anna and Sarah now. Weird. Man, I can't believe how fast the time is going.

Love,

Schwester Buschman


Sister Bushman's mom here:  some more photos from the week . . . 

The missionaries worked on a service project:

God's Orchestra

Hello, lovelies!

So this email is going to be a little short and full of typos because we have less than half of our regular email time today - because something simply WONDERFUL happened.

So today for P-Day, we decided to go visit Veste Oberhaus, our local castle on the hill (what the heck is this mission, amirite?) and then we went to check out some of the cathedrals on our little peninsula. We then had just enough time to get groceries and do emails before FHE tonight, so we headed off...until somebody called out to us, "Hey, Sisters! We were looking for you!"

With Sister Bishop at the castle

Long story short, it turns out to be the son and daughter-in-law of the late apostle Marvin J. Ashton, who are on vacation through Europe before becoming the new MTC Presidents of the South Africa MTC. They said that they had been praying to find missionaries, so that they could buy them lunch or dinner. And then they ran into us. So we sat down at a little cafe and they bought us pizza, and I cannot even begin to express how wonderful it was to sit and talk with them. They just brought the Spirit so strongly. They asked to hear our testimonies, and we all laughed and talked together about our mission experiences, and we heard about their experiences running a mission in Washington. It was just so amazing and such a miracle that they found us. It just strengthens my testimony over and over that God is really there and he orchestrates everything. It was so, incredibly wonderful. I have such a strong testimony that God's hand is in everything.

With the Ashtons

We also got to have exchanges this week! I tausched with the lovely Sister Abram, and it was lovely working with her. She's a really great missionary, and an all-around classy person.

With Sister Abram

I know that the Gospel is true, because I've seen God's hand in my life. I know that when it seems dark and dreary outside, it's not the end. And Jesus Christ is the Light in the darkness. If we look to Him, we'll never be lost.

Love,

Sister Bushman

Sister Bushman's Mom here:  a few photos of lovely Passau . . .

Umbrellas in the sky

Half of the windows are painted on