Excerpt from Ariel's email to Lyndel

Lyndel, 

  The new mission presidents, the Kosaks came on Friday. We are having a zone conference in Hannover on Wednesday to meet them. The zone leaders called Sister Openshaw and I and asked to give a thema (topic/spiritual thought) on the message of the restoration. It adds just a little more stress for meeting them for the first time. We have to look good and blow them away with our teaching! I'm actually really excited to teach the whole zone. Sister Openshaw and I are a great team and love to teach so it'll be fun. Our temple trip is this month. I'm super excited and so is everyone else!! We will be going to the Freiberg temple and don't you worry there will be lots of pictures taken. We plan to go to the a baptismal session and then have a picnic outside. I can't wait!!

  So on Sunday we had 4 investigators at church. XXXXXX, who is like 6 foot 5 and 350 pounds got up and bore his testimony. He began sobbing talking about how the gospel has changed his life and helped him recognize the blessings he has. I was so touched, I got up and bore my testimony and was just over come with love for the people there I began crying. When I sat back down Frau XXXXXXX wrapped her arms around me to comfort me and asked if I was crying because my german is bad. It just made me laugh so hard. You just can't be offended by that. I found out when I get emotional I turn into speaking danglish. Note to self: don't get emotional.

  Thomas had a dream that Sister Openshaw and I were so fat that we couldn't fit through the door frame. We asked if he was happy in the dream ( he always says he's going to make us fat)  and he said no because it was all his fault. Haha! Yesterday we went back to Emersleben for our appointment with the really awesome guy we met last week but he didn't answer :( So we continued to door more in Emersleben. It seemed people were in not such a happy mood yesterday. This one lady we spoke to was interested and we told her about the Book of Mormon. She said she was skeptical and we told her thats why we invite people to read from the book and pray about it because we can't convince or persuade anyone of the truth but the Holy Ghost and that this is her chance to do that and then she said no. It feels like riding a roller coaster and slowly cranking to the top and then people push the stop button and the roller coaster goes backwards and doesn't get to go over that first hill. We have some finding time this week so hopefully we'll be able to find some more people.