Christmas!!!!!!

Christmas!!!!!!
This week was way cool. I am also way tired because we played ultimate
frisbee today so if I don't make sense that's why.
This week we just hung out with members all day. Tuesday we had
someone fix our shower. Now we have a way cool machine in our bathroom
to dry it out. We both actually really like it because Germany is so
humid and this machine makes our bathroom not humid so everything
actually dries like it does in Arizona!
For Christmas Eve we were at bishop's house. It was really fun. We ate
lots of yummy food. And we watched Paddington. It was super cute! But
it was kind of hard to understand because it was so quiet, so we
missed some of the jokes, but we got most of it.
The first Christmas we were at the Familie Roth. We also ate yummy
German food. Then we watched frozen. Then we Skyped! That was awesome!
I wish we could just skype forever! Then we ate more food and played
uno.
The second Christmas we were at Familie Wenger which basically was us
hanging out with Jens and Urs who are twins in our ward that recently
got back from their missions. Urs is our GML or ward mission leader.
We ate yummy food. We played mofia. Then we watched tangled! It was
awesome. However I was very done with people by the end of this week.
Too much just hanging out.
Yesterday we had church. Then we met with this guy named Amber. He is
from Napal. We were excited to meet with him. Then we saw that he
brought his German girlfriend and I was honestly disappointed. I
assumed she was just going to bash on us, but turns out she is super
cool! She recently found the bible and loves the idea that she can
always be learning more and more about God. She basically taught our
lesson for us. They were supposed to come to family home evening
tonight, but he just texted us to tell us that they aren't able to
come. Schade. Next time.
Recently I have been reading in Helaman 5 which is a way awesome
chapter. I really liked at the end though when the one lamanite who
used to be a nephite sees that Nephi and lehi are glowing. The other
lamanites ask how they can get rid of the darkness and his response is
to repent and pray and have faith. I thought that was super cool. The
gospel can get rid of all the darkness around us. All of it.
Well I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. It was wonderful being able
to talk to you! Happy new year! I won't write until next year, so I
hope you will be able to survive that long. :)
Liebe
Sister Carroll

Look what I found!

Christmas morning!

Christmas Dinner with the Roth Familie

Roth Christmas Tree

Gifts for the Missionaries

I found a cool sticker!
STOP
Think about it!
Are you going the right way?
Where will you be when you die today?
Jesus is the way
the truth and the life

Our new friend

Second weihnachten schwester Wenger is behind jens's head

Frohe Weihnachten!!!

This week has just been all over the place!
So last pday we emailed. Then our plan was to go to the Bochum
Weihnachtsmarkt, but we had found a cool very Christmas looking store
earlier in the week so we decided to stop there first. We walked in
and realized it was a thrift Flomarkt type store. At that point we
were all like ok 5 min reicht. We don't need to stay long. Then we
found some cool very German Christmas things that would normally cost
hundreds of euro at a Christmas Markt. We asked how much they cost.
€15 tops. Let's just say we did Bochum Weihnachtmarkt today. We walked
out of there with so many treasures and I only spent €20. It was so
cool!
This week we also had a split wi sister Terry. I say we because splits
this transfer were weird. Since there is a dritt for the STLs sister
Roderer and sister Johnson split with e sisters in Hamm while sister
Terry hung out with us. We finally found her Wednesday night and
finally made it home. We planed for Thursday only to have everything
fall out. We spent the whole day contacting and found all the people
who were not happy to be talked to. We attempted caroling with the
elders and again found only people who were angry with us. Then we
spent the last three hours trying to figure out how to meet up with
the other sisters and split back. It was crazy.
Saturday we finally went caroling again and this time found people who
actually liked it. It was way cool. All the old people sang with us.
We also found this guy who was so grateful. We sang for him and he
begged to give us money. Then we asked if we could sing something else
and what he would like us to sing. He requested stille Nacht heilige
Nacht. Which surprised all of us because you don't sing that song in
Germany except for in Christmas Eve. We sang it for him and he was so
touched. He was super grateful. It was awesome to see the spirit touch
him.
Today has been interesting. It started in an attempt to fix our
shower. See our bathtub hasn't been draining super good. We found some
drain cleaner in the closet, and after using a flashlight realized
that the drain was weird so we unscrewed the metal piece off the drain
and were able to clean out the drain really good. It was really cool
drain cleaner and fizzed and smoked really cool! We were so excited we
had fixed the shower! Later this morning we got a call from our
Hausmeister. Apparently the reason our drain was draining so good now
was because the water wasn't going through the drain, but instead
through the floor into the apartment under us...... So much for that
repair. Tomorrow they are coming to fix it. I guess when we unscrewed
the thing off the drain, we disconnected the pipe from the bathtub.
Oops.
This week is Christmas! I can't wait! Christmas is such an amazing
time of year. People just like talking about Christmas. For the most
part. It is so cool to see how Christ can just touch people so much!
Yesterday we met with this cool guy, Benedict. I think I told you
about him before. He has been really sick and is still sick, but he
let us just come to visit for a little. It was super cool because we
showed him the Christmas video and , well first off he commented one
the "fellow African sister", but then he talked about how God loves
all his children no matter where they are or who they are. I really
liked that idea that came from the children in the video. Make sure
you have seen the video. It doesn't count unless you have it
memorized! Nur Spaß. But me and sister Schuring defiantly quote it
while we are walking around.
I can't wait to talk to you on Friday! Bis gleich!
Liebe
Sister Carroll

Cool German Christmas thrift shop

And his is what happens when you spend all day there.....
The best part was that once the owners saw what we were doing they
brought out more cool hats and things to play with!

Zum Beispiel......

Our Christmas tree!!!!!!!

I found Arizona!!!!!!

I found a schnauzer!

Christmas!!!!!!!!

Check out what I got for 20€ last week!

Our adventure in repairing our bathtub.

Keuschheit

It's weird to think that's it's only been a week! This week was so
crazy. We had so many points where we were laughing so hard. I love it
when you can just find the joy in life. I love think the theme of this
week can be summed up as language barriers. That basically defines all
of our crazy stories. That and our theme of Keuschheit (chastity).
Awkward enough chastity has showed up more than we have wanted it to
this week. Some of the n correspondence with the language barriers,
others not. Ask me after the mission and I might be willing to share
all the stories from this week, but for now we will just share some of
them.
This week our chastity streak started with Andre. We taught him
Keuschheit at a members house. We had told the member before hand that
we would be teaching Keuschheit. He was so excited when we got to his
house. Normally they talk about police stories for ever then we start
our lesson, but he was super excited to start the lesson. It actually
ended up being a really cool lesson. The member had really thought
about what he wanted to say and he shared some really cool insights.
This week we also met some people who don't speak English. Our
investigator from Pakistan brought a friend to an appointment and then
set up a time for us to meet with this friend and another one. The
funny part is that the two friends we met with spoke to us in English.
But when we spoke English to them they didn't always understand it, so
they would translate our English for each other into English. It was
really funny. We had to speak very simply. " you phone? I call?number?
We go there? Family Germany? Family big? (Fill in country) hot?
Germany too much cold. Me house America. You Jesus? Me Jesus. Me talk
Jesus." That was a very interesting conversation. Afterwards me and
sister Schuring couldn't speak normal sentences to each other in
English or German!
We had a similar lesson with some men from India. We taught them
German and then told them about the Book of Mormon using lots of
pictures and very simple sentences. But we ended up with 6 new
investigators in one day! It was so cool!
We also met with the lady who works at the pizza place we go to every
week after district meeting. She is so nice. The funny part of that
lesson was that we had just had a way good conversation about God and
prayer. Then she wanted a picture with us so she asked the lady who
had been sitting at the table next to us the whole time to take a
picture for us. After she took the picture, she was like, " that was a
really good conversation. There is this cool website with the TRUTH
that I think you would like." She then proceeds to write down jw.org.
Me and sister Schuring just stared at each other. We then told the
lady that we were from our church and asked if she had heard of us.
She left pretty quick after she realized who we were. We laughed
pretty hard after that one.
Yesterday we had zone conference in Dortmund with elder Johnson of the
seventy.That's  why we have pday today. Last week my email got sent on
Tuesday because of internet problems again. It was really fun
yesterday. I got to see Sister Roderer! She is my new STL! It was so
awesome!
This week I listened to the face to face discussion with the piano guys.
It's on the gospel library under youth. It was super good. And it went
well with things I have been studying. In preparation for zone
conference we were asked to study the Christlike attributes in PMG.
One at really stumped me this time as I was studying was virtue. I
didn't know how I could develop virtue. Partially because I didn't
really understand what it was. What I understood was things related to
law of chastity (it just keeps coming back! :)). But really there is
more. In the face to face broadcast one of the guys talked about
virtue being having good thoughts. Ja klar. But he pointed out that
means thinking good things even about other people and especially
about yourself. When you start thinking things that are bringing you
down, like comparing yourself to others or telling yourself you aren't
good enough, you aren't being virtuous. That really made me think. Am
I being virtuous. Does virtue garnish my thoughts unceasingly? Or am I
bringing myself down? Am I have bad thoughts directed at myself? It
was a different way of looking at virtue and I really liked it. It was
a good reminder to be nice to myself. I like how the commandment is to
liebet eure Nächsten wie dich selbst (Love your neighbor as yourself).
 Das heißt, you need to treat yourself like you would treat others.
I hope you all have a wonderful week! ITS ALMOST CHRISTMAS!!!!! Have a
fun time preparing for Christ! Ein Erretter ist geboren! Freut
euch!!!!!!!!
Ich liebe euch!
Liebe
Sister Carroll

No explication required.

This is Martina. She works at the pizza place. She is super cool!

These are the girls who had to translate what we said in English into
English for each other.

Zone conference! Just missing Sister Nielson to make our group complete!

This is what happens when I fall asleep for he last 5 min of studies.

This is from last week in Dortmund. Elder Taylor got transferred
though so he isn't in our Herne group anymore.

This is Elder Crossley. He replaced elder Taylor. He just got to
Germany. Can't you tell? :)

Christmas in Herne

This week was a pretty good week. We had transfers this week and me
and Sister Schuring are staying together! That means I get to have
Christmas here with the awesome members in Herne. It will be awesome!
This week we had some pretty fun adventures.
We learned how to call the police in Germany. That was an adventure.
We went to invite people to our ward Weihnachtsfest and a lady stopped
us and had us call the police for her. Apparently her Mann had just
hit her and ran off with her purse. Some girls helped us out and we
called the police and helped her find her Mann. So much for contacting
that night.
We also had a wWiehnachtsfeier! It was so much fun. A little weird,
but our phone didn't stop ringing the whole time! We had a whole bunch
of people show up. And most of them were invited by our investigators!
We had an Albanian table and an Indian table and a random African
table with guys that no one knew why they came, but we welcomed them
anyway. It was super fun! And stressful. But that's ok.
Yesterday after church we decided to go visit an investigator who
slept in and missed church. Her name is Sahitya and she is from India.
We got there and she had made us this huge meal! It was so good and
soooooooo much food. It made me think of Athi. She would have made us
similar food. What was funny though was that she gave us cola which
has caffeine in it and my body that has had caffeine a total of maybe
once thought that was interesting. Sitting still and focusing during
studies afterwards did not happen. :) there is a reason I don't drink
caffeine.
Also this week we set a baptismal date with Andre! He wants to read
the whole Book of Mormon first but he is already done with 2 Nephi and
who knows, maybe Jacob by now. He is way cool and really wants to make
sure he is done no the right thing. He asked us what the covenant was
that he would make when he got baptized. Looks like we need to go over
lesson three with him.
Today we were in Dortmund again at the Christmas Markt. It is so cool!
I got some cool stuff. And we just enjoyed everything in the Markt. It
is a lot cooler when it isn't raining. But because we spent so much
time in the Christmas Markt I don't have much time so.... Hope you
have a good week! Ich liebe euch!
Liebe
Sister Carroll

CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

Pretty sunrise. This was probably like 9 in the morning.

German ward Christmas party

German ward Christmas party

Sahitya

Andre