Herbst is endlich angekommen!

(Title Translation:  "Autumn Has Finally Arrived!")

Hello folks!

Probably the most exciting/wonderful/all the things EVER is that one of our dear friends in Stuttgart got baptized this past Saturday. Sister Bishop and I started teaching her in my last transfer there, and our first lesson with her was my favorite lesson I've ever taught on my mission. The Spirit was just so strong. I got sent some pictures today from a wonderful member in Stuttgart, and I almost started to cry. I just love her, and all those wonderful members of the Stuttgart ward who now love her so much. It almost hurts. I feel so blessed that I had the privilege of being there for over 7 whole months. 

So Autumn finally arrived in Passau. It was so funny because Passau was just flirting with Fall for the longest time, but now at a drop of a hat it's cold and there are beautiful leaves everywhere, and that's that. No complaints over here. We make cinnamon-clove tea almost every day. Fall is my favorite season.

Do you know what else is fun about Fall in Passsu? THE STUDENTS SHOWED UP LAST WEEK! So Passau almost reminds me of Provo, Utah just due to how much it is a university town. But in Germany, the Uni term doesn't start until mid-Oktober. Like a week or so ago, we were walking near where the Uni is, and we noticed a lot of groups of students being lead around. We realized that it was some kind of student-orientation day. Since then, we've noticed that there are alot more students walking around. And so this past week we started dooring in the student housing - it was so fun! The first door that opened said that we could come back and share a message with her! We're definitely going to keep trying to contact students. It's way fun because we can relate to them easily - since we're the same age. :) 

Another fun thing from this week is that I got to go on tausch...with Sister BERRY! :) I loved getting to spend a bit of time with her again - she really is just so lovely and fun. I got to work with her in München. I've been to München a number of times, but we normally just go straight from Bahnhof to the church close to Bahnhof and back. I got to see a lot more of the city than I had before, plus even went to the mission office because we had to pick something up. (That was weird...I hadn't been there since I arrived in München the first time.) I always thought München was just a mini-Wien, but it was actually way different. There are tons of trees and plants all around München, even more than there are in Stuttgart. A pleasant surprise.

Sister Bushman and Sister Berry

Tausch was also SO fun, because we got to teach this CUTE girl from China. Her name is pronounced "Ee-fay" and I don't remember how to spell it, so I'll just call her Eefay. Sister Abram and Sister Forsberg had found her when they were on tausch. She's studying here and needs help with her German, so the sisters offered to help. And so we went! We told her how we are missionaries, and therefore we would love to help her with her German, and how our main purpose is to help others learn more about God and our purpose in this life. So we said that we'd love to practice German with her, and then we'd like to share a short message about God with her afterward if she would be interested. She said yes (yay!) and so we practiced German with her for awhile, mainly just getting to know each other and teaching her phrases she wanted to use but didn't know how to say as they came up. (Funny side note - I was just going through typical get-to-know-you questions and asked her how many siblings she had...........she told me that nobody had siblings in China. DERP I knew that.......also, she said that she was from a small city in China near Peking. When we asked how big her little town was, she said 10 MILLION people. ?!?!) Oh, China. You're just so big.

Anyway I'm rambling. At the end of the lesson, we talked about God as simply as we could. It was so cool, because she has absolutely no background of religion, but was really excited to hear what we had to share. We talked about how God is literally our Father, and how He loves us, and He wants to help us. We told her how we could pray to Him for help. We asked if we could say a closing prayer, and that Sister Berry would say it. She said "Okay, what do I do?" We told her that she could close her eyes and listen quietly to what Sister Berry said, and think about how we were really talking with God. It was just so cool, because I've rarely done that on my mission - teach people who legitimately have no background with God. It was so cool. And they made out a return appointment. :) 

This is super random, but Sister Bishop and I saw two really cute instances where punk-looking kids guys did really cute things. Both instances had guys with multi-colored hair and earrings and hoodies with slightly-scandalous things printed on the front, that type of thing. The first one was at Bahnhof. There's tons of construction there right now, so there's no elevator. (We often help people bring their strollers and suitcases up and down those steps between the platforms.) There was one lady who had a huge bandage over one of her eyes, and she was holding this grocery bag full of fruit. This punk-looking kid (maybe 14 years old?) came up to her and tried to take her bag of fruit. We were kind of nervous (Leave her alone, kid!) And she was like all nervous, but then he ended up taking the bag from her and taking her by the arm and escorting her all the way down those steps and up those other steps to make sure she didn't trip, since she couldn't see that well. 

And then yesterday we were at the bus stop, where there was this punk-looking guy with the cutest little 2-year-old girl. And he was just in love with this little girl and was playing with her. It was the cutest thing. I guess you really can't judge people by appearances, because you never know the story from people.

Funny little thing. There is this pizza place in Passau Monastero or something like that - it's a pizza place called "monastery", and we always found it so intriguing and funny that we finally went...right inside there is a huge statue of Christ on the cross, and all the waiters are dressed like monks. It was the most random thing in the world, but it wasn't expensive and such good pizza. 

My very last transfer call (that means anything, of course) is this Saturday. I feel like I wasn't old on my mission and still wasn't old and still wasn't old and then all of a sudden I was about to go home. What on earth? It kind of dawned on me yesterday that it was actually going to happen and I was actually going to have to go home soon and may or may not have teared up with Sister Bishop. I just love these people and this country and this message and wearing this tag. I don't want to give it up. Is it hard? Flip, yes. Have I had days where I wished it would be over as soon as possible? Many. But here I am, nearing the end of the road, and I just wish I could travel it again and again.

Sister Bushman and Sister Bishop
in the town of Gumperting

The joy of serving a mission!

Anyway. So we'll see what happens. You'll certainly find out next week. :)

Alle meine Liebe,

Sister B

You never know who's watching

So a happy thing happened last night. When somebody gets married in Germany, all of the guests' cars follow the bride and groom in their car and just HONK THEIR HORNS SO MUCH. So last night we were reading in our scriptures, and all of a sudden we hear a bunch of car horns going at it. We looked at each other and were like "Yay, somebody got married!" Isn't that fun?

We had the best testimony meeting ever yesterday. The Spirit was so incredibly strong that I felt really bubbly and I got up and said "Ich fühle, wie ich explodieren könnte, weil ich einfach so glücklich bin dass ich hier sein darf!" (I feel like I could explode because I'm just SO HAPPY that I can be here!) 

Earlier in the meeting, one of the men got up and told a story from a few weeks ago. One of his friends (who is Catholic) came up to him and asked if he was still a Mormon. He said that he was, and his friend asked if it was possible that there were also girl missionaries in addition to the boy missionaries. He smiled and said that there were. And his friend went on to tell him how one of his favorite things to do is to look for the Elders (and now the sisters, since he knows that they exist) in the city center of Passau. His friend told him how the missionaries always have this glow about them and are just happy and reflecting light. He never says anything to the missionaries, but he loves seeing if he can find the missionaries talking with people or even just each other. He said that in the last week or two he saw both sisters and both elders at the bus stop, and they just seemed so happy. It was really cool to know that other people see us and see the joy of the Gospel. I know that I'm not a bucket of rainbows all the time - but it's cool (and incredibly humbling) to know that we can be seen that way by people we've never met. 

And I thought about how that applies to all of us, really. We never know how our actions are being watched by those we love and those we don't know. 

Have a lovely week!

Sister Bushman

Photos from the week:  a short boat ride on the Danube in lovely Passau . . . 

Friends of a former AGS missionary
take a picture with Sisters Bushman and Bishop

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: