Week Zwei!

Hello!

I want to start off with a really cool spiritual experience that I had this past week.

We have an investigator named Frau Meiwald and she is what we like to call an ewige untersucher (eternal investigator). She has been receiving the lessons for the last 4 years and has made huge progress but she wont commit to be baptized. We decided to teach her about prayer and how prayer is such a huge gift. After we talked to her about prayer, I had the random thought to talk to her about her praying to know if things are true and I asked her if she had prayed about the Book of Mormon. After the question left my mouth I was just praying she would understand what I had said. She responded with "no, I haven't? no one has ever told me to do that" and then she said a bunch of stuff that I didn't understand, but we asked her to pray over the Book of Mormon and I hope that goes good. I'm super grateful for the Spirit, and for this opportunity to be here, the church is true!

Here is what happened the rest of the week...

This week was supposed to be very successful... We were going to get three people on baptismal date and we had like eight appointments and Elder Bretzing and I were both really excited with our prospects. Of all the times for the German train workers to decided to strike and all the trains shut down here in Saxony! The only way we have to get to all of our appointments was by train. Here in Meißen you can't really get anywhere without either the train or an hour long bus ride. So our planned successful week quickly turned into a high stress week of running to catch buses and walking miles and miles to get to places when we missed those buses...

I am loving it here! Even though I can't understand a word through their super thick Saxon accents and they can't understand my broken German (that is still correct, thank you Brother Garlick and Sis Allman!) I'm still enjoying it! 

Or even when the homeless guy yells at me or the punks that don't really do anything but sit on the corner all day throwing insults at us, I still come home and lay in my bed and I am happy! The only thing I will never be happy about is that there is no ice to be had in Germany! All of our drinks are lukewarm and disgusting, because ice is the only way to go... other than that, I'm enjoying it!
Also, the other thing that has been worrying me is that I think I might get hit by a car while I'm here! I am serious! All Germans drive really too fast down cobble stone streets that don't have any safe side walks, and as a missionary, you kind of have to walk on those cobble stone streets to get to places... Luckily that's just in the city center, out in the country they drive even faster, but we have sidewalks and paths to take... Pray for me!

Hopefully this week I can find a way to send pictures and you can see how beautiful Dresden and meißsen are.

Thank you so much for your prayers and for writing and emailing me. I appreciate all the love and support I can get!

Love, Elder Schmalz

The scripture that has buoyed me up this week...
D&C 121: 7-9
My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes. Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.