Geistige Nachdenken‏ (Spiritual thoughts)

“To be known, the truth must be stated and the clearer and more complete the statement is, the better the opportunity will the Holy Ghost have for testifying to the souls of men that the work is true.” B.H. Roberts

“You cannot convert people beyond your own conversion.” James E. Faust

“It is true intelligence for a man to take a subject that is mysterious and great in itself, and to unfold and simplify it so that a child can understand it.” President John Taylor. 

“Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things, proceedeth that which is great.” Doctrine and Covenants 64:33 This scripture really hit me at a time when I was really struggling to understand that the little things that I was doing actually mattered. But then to hear the Lord tell me that these things are really making a difference, I know that these things are true. And I find peace in those things. 

 

“The most important work you will ever do will be within your own home.” President Harold B. Lee

“I think that if God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves, otherwise it is almost like setting ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.” C.S Lewis

C.S. Lewis always seems to know how to make me feel better about myself. I found this quote when I was having a hard time forgiveing myself for something stupid I’d done, something foolish, but something that was really holding me back. But that’s the wonderful thing about the Atonement. You don’t have to feel all that pain. He can take it away. You just have to ask.

“No wicked man could write such a book as this, and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.” George Cannon [speaking about the Book of Mormon] I really love this quote. It gives me chills every time I read it. 

“I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgement bar of God that I declared to the world that the Book of Mormon is true.” Jeffery R. Holland.

And last, I was reading, this morning, in Jesus the Christ and it was talking about the miracles and other such things, and I came across this quote that struck me to the very core:

“We cannot classify the Lord’s miracles as small and great, nor as easy and difficult of accomplishment; what one may consider the least, is, to another, of profound import. The Lord’s word was sufficient in every instance. To the wind and the waves, and to the demon-ridden mind of the man possessed, He had but to speak and be obeyed. ‘Peace, be still.'” Jesus the Christ James E. Talmage.

Bloom Where You’re Planted

I’m convinced that I’m never going to see Summer again. 

It’s rained for the last three or four days and it hasn’t stopped. It’s also really cold. I’m wearing tights and my jacket and es ist ein bissien frisch!

I’ve gotten some really good use out of my umbrella!

The weather is not normal and no one knows what’s going on with it. 

Anyway.

A really cool experience we had this week, we got up early to go to Eferding so we could meet with Romana. We got off the bus and we were feeling really, blah. So we decided that we would sit on a bench, sing a song, pray, and then practice our lesson. 

So we sit down, sing “Praise to the Man” auf Deutsch, and we weren’t singing very loudly, but we noticed a woman sitting on another bench about a hundred meters away. Then we prayed and began going through our lesson, the plan of salvation.

Sister Judd then looked over at the woman on the other bench and said, “Maybe we should practice our lesson on her.” 

And so I stood up and walked over to the woman and said, “Entshuldigung. Können wir, unsere lektion mit ihnen uben? Wir komme aus Amerika und wir müssen diese lektion auf Deutsch geben.”

She looked at me and asked me what kind of a lesson it was, and we told her that we were missionaries.

She told us that her husband had died on 11 März and that she had cut off all things religous because of it. But she said that hearing us sing, and seeing us pray to God, had really been what she needed right then. She said that it brought peace to her soul and she felt better. 

We were supposed to have an appointment with her on Saturday, but she never showed up. But maybe one day she’ll remember the missionaries and she’ll take lessons. 

Our lesson with Romana went well, Romana is really the sweetest human being on planet earth. Her ex-boyfriend, though, is part of the reason that she won’t come to church. He just got a new girlfriend. JUST barely and that’s really hard for her, especially since this new girlfriend is active in the church and Romana is still taking lessons. But we hope that Romana’s not just taking lessons because she wants her boyfriend back. She really needs it, and she wants it, you can see it in her eyes. She’s truly amazing and I hope that she understands this gospel and gets baptized because she’s one of those people that will visibly see the difference in her life is she does these things. 

This last week and the week before we found nine potentials! So that’s eighteen in two weeks! That’s awesome, especially for Wels where we were lucky to find even two potentials for a week. We’re on fire! 

Yesterday during personal study I came across a line in an ansprache from General Conference and one line that really hit me was “Bloom Where You’re Planted.”

Especially out here in the mission field it’s really hard with not knowing if you’re going to be moved at the end of the six week period or where you’re going to be, if the area is going to be easy or hard or whatever. But the important thing is that you need to bloom where you’re planted. Not just grow. Not just sit in the dirt and refuse to grow, but to BLOOM! To live bright and cheerfully, to be happy and vibrant. 
That is probably going to be my motto for the next fourteen months! 

Okay, spiritual moments and quotes and thoughts and other such things are going to come in the following email, so just so you know you can put the next email up on the blog too.

 

 

ANOTHER feier tag in Austria!‏

Okay, so here is the thing, there are so many feier tags in the spring! They have one for forty days after Easter for when Christ ascended to heaven, today I think is for Pentacost…Iäm not entirely sure! 

Iäm on another computer that doesnät let me change the language for the keyboard, so Iäll try to get the y und zäs undercontrol, and I’ll try to get the apostraphe working too. But it’s hard cause you have to relearn the keys!!!!!!! AHHHH!!!!

Anyway!

I got the Ensign this week! I was so excited! And the necklace is BEAUTIFUL! I love it! I put it on right when I opened the letter and I’m also wearing it right now! Ö

We had an awesome week.

Wels is the place that when people talk about it, they say, ‘Wels has the GREATEST ward in the mission!’ It’s true! This ward is AMAZING!!!! But that’s where the talking about Wels stops. 

No one talks about how awesome the investigators are, how fantastic the finding is, or anything further than just, ‘Wels has a great ward.’ 

:I 

Sister Judd and I are determined to change that though. 

This week we found nine potential investigators. NINE!!!! That’s incredible for this area! We were one PU from the mission standards of excellence! AND we found a new investigator!

To start with the beginning of the week, we went to the Salt Mines on Montag, and that was really super cool. I’ll send you pictures in the next little while, once I can print them off when things are actually open!

Tuesday we went to Zone Training where we found out about the new Sister leadership position. Sister Training Leaders. Sister Smith and Sister Reid, in Neumarkt are the first Sister Training Leaders in the Salzburg Zone. 

On Wednesday we got up early and got on a bus to go out to this little Dorf called Efferding where we met with a woman named Romana. 
She’s super sweet, has two little boys, and she was investigating the church a few months ago when her boyfriend, who she lived with, broke up with her because he decided that he wanted to reactivate himself in the church and told her that if they wanted any chance of a future, she would need to join the church.

It never went anywhere because she told the Sisters before that she wanted them to go through her exboyfriend to make appointments.

We’ve had Romana’s name written down for several weeks and we’ve never called her. Then the Friday before last we called her and spoke to her and got an appointment for Wednesday.

We were thinking and praying about who we should bring with us for a joint teach and we had the impression to ask Claudia, a woman in our ward about the same age as Romana with three kids, one nineteen, thirteen, and six. 

On Wednesday we went to our appointment with Romana and we had an awesome lesson about the Restoration. Claudia bore awesome testimony and came prepared with a story and even pictures of Joseph Smith. 

We had planned to commit Romana to be baptized, but the spirit wasn’t right for it, and so we didn’t. 

We did invite her to come to church and to read in the Book of Mormon and when we asked her to read in the Book of Mormon she asked us how she should read to get a testimony. Should she read a chapter here and there throughout or should she read it from cover to cover.  It was an awesome moment to hear her say that. 

Thursday we went to Gmunden to visit a member, Val, who owns a cookie/bike shop entitled, Armadillo Bikes and Muffins. She has a facebook page, you could look her up. She said to identify yourself and she’d respond.

She showed us her perfume collection, and she was very proud of it. She also gave us some samples. 

I wish you could know some of these people!

Friday was hard, Saturday was rather uneventful, and Sunday was Sunday. 

And that my friends is the last week in the life of Lillie Marguerite Maren Hammock.

Love,

Her 

 

 

Ukulele Lady!

Yep, that’s me! Ukulele Lady with the pink Ukulele that I bought today! We were in the store and it looked fun and it was cheap and I really wanted to plan an instrument since it’s allowed and so I  bought it! Now I just have to teach myself to play the Ukulele! And I have to tune it too!

But today we went to Salzburg and we went to the Salt Mine there. Which, guess what! That’s where the name comes from! SALZ is SALT!!!!!! WHAT!!!!!! Salt City!!!

Cool deal.

But yeah. And we went to Germany! 😀 Part of the mine is in German territory so I left the country today! Actually it was really quite cool! We went down into the mine on this car thing and then we walked a little ways and we actually went through this tunnel that was created like three hundred years ago.

But the tunnel has gotten smaller and smaller over the years because the pressure in the mine is so intense! The tunnels compress about a centimeter every year, which is a lot!

So…yeah. It was just a really interesting experience! I actually really enjoyed it. And we got to slide down these mine slides. It really an awesome experience. And we got on this little boat (which, as a missionary, you’re not technically supposed to do…but…yeah! And then we watched some videos about the Prince of Salzburg who owned the mine a long time ago.

I took a lot of pictures and I also took video, so I’ll send you my SD card and then you can watch the videos cause their too long to send over email without compressing the file and I don’t have the time or the capability here to do that.

I still am having the hardest time grasping that Katie’s moving to Houston! It’s just for the summer right?

It’s just so weird!!!

Oh, and I got your mother’s day present out today! So you’ll be getting that hopefully this week! No later than next, that’s for sure!

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!

I’ll send you post cards that I bought from Salzburg!

Love you!

Lillie

Erdapfel

Lillie Hammock (lillie.hammock@myldsmail.net)

3:33 AM

 

 

Okay, before I forget! Mothers day!!!!! I’m going to call at five my time, which will be like seven your time. So that means that you´re going to be getting an early morning Skype call! Okay, this is a pain because I can’t change this keyboard to English so the y and the y are switched. So…this is what’s going to happen. When you see a z that should probably be a y, then you’re just going to have to change that around. Sorry! And the ä is supposed to be an apostrophe. 

But yes, I’m very excited to see you on Sunday! It’s actually going to be really weird to be completely honest! 

Make sure that Katie’s there too! Don’t want to miss an opportunity to speak with all of you! It’ll be a little early, but hey, you get to talk to me for forty minutes!  ÖD—Okay, I can’t even do smiley faces….

 

Well, this week we really had an interesting experience! On Tuesday we went to the Bauers, the family is AMAZING!!!!! So…they are a part of a church that is based in Korea and it’s pretty small, but they haven’t been active in a long time because there’s been a power struggle with the leader in the last nine years, but the leader died last year and so now I guess it’s even worse than it was before. But their parents are still really active in it, but they are looking for a religion to identify themselves with. They made it very clear that they are just looking to learn more about the Church, but they were really interested. 

Emmanuel, the husband, was very interested in the structure of the Church. He wanted to know about the first presidency and the prophet and if we worshiped Joseph Smith and if we had a founder’s day etc. 

We tried to explain everything as best we could so that they could understand, and I explained more than I should have, but, it was okay cause they took it all in really well. 

Emmanuel asked if the Brethren had wives, and when we told him that they do and that family is very important for us, he said, ´´I can agree´… identify with that´´ It was really cool to see that in their minds being worked out. Because really, there is just so much about this gospel that we don’t realize that other people don’t know. 

But the lesson went really well and since it was a null lesson we made another appointment for the 22. She’s going to be in New York for two weeks, visiting her family and so we won’t be able to talk to them until then. But they truly are so amazing! I love them so much already and they have been prepared by the Lord for this gospel! 

Their church and their revelation that they had from it, called the Principle, is something that prepared them for accepting the Book of Mormon. I just am so glad that we have the chance to talk with them!

This week we also went to go talk with a less active member who is older and she’s not very happy with her life, but when we went to go speak with her this time she was a lot happier than before. We saw her walking outside as we were leaving her apartment because she wasn’t there, but she was returning as we were leaving and so we walked up with her and then she proceeded to get undressed, almost completely, before putting a shirt on and then a robe. But as soon as she was all adjusted she sat down and said, ´´Now, what does the Book of Mormon say about Hobbys.´´

We both sat there for a second thinking that we had misunderstood. But no, we hadn’t . 

After a very long conversation we learned that the Book of Mormon doesn’t allow for Hobbies, only things that are Notwendig. (necessary) After further conversation we learned that everything, including the television, is notwendig and that the only thing that is a Hobby is pets. So Sister Judd is a sinner for wanting a dog. 

But she’s just a sweet old lady from Bulgaria. It was just an interesting little week. 

There really isn’t anything else that you really want to hear about from our week. Lots of doors closed on us, canceled appointments, rainy weather…

I have some pictures from yesterday that I’m actually excited about! 

Yesterday we went to the Schmidls for lunch and the Schmidls are a big family, but we only ate with Papa and Mama Schmidl, all their kids are all grown up and have their own families. 

We also ate with Rahel and with her man friend Mario. Sister Judd and I think he’s in love with her, and she’s not really interested in him. 

But during our dinner meeting the Schmidls went to take a nap and so Rahel, Mario, Sister Judd, and I headed out on a walk looking at pheasants, cherry trees, and dead snakes. It was very fun, and I’ll send pictures. 

But yeah, that’s our lovely day yesterday. Not much else to really talk about!

Oh, but Erdapfel is the Austrian word for Potato. Literally an earth apple. But in Germany they call them Kartofel. So that’s exciting. 

Another cool little random fact, in Austria and Germany they wear their wedding rings on the right hand, if they’re on the left it means you’re engaged. Cool deal.

And Durndls too. If you tie the bow on the left you’re taken, on the right you’re single, and in the back you’re widowed. 

Interesting little cultural things to know and to learn! 

Love you So much!

Lillie