I’ve seriously just had the best week! (March 3)

Sister Allman and I titled this transfer the Traum (dream) Transfer. And that, my friends, is exactly what it is.

This last week has been AMAZING! First, I want to share my favorite miracle.

This week, we called an old potential from about a year ago that wanted a Spanish Book of Mormon but was never contacted. So we call her, and set up to come to her house. When we get there, we cannot find her name on the Klingle (door bell listing) anywhere. A man drives up and asks us if we are the JW, we say no and have a great conversation with him. He tells us no Spanish people live here, but he was super interested. Turns out, he is good friends with the Elders progressing investigator!!! And knows the conversion story from one of our members. He is really interested and we exchange info. Then we continue our search for this ladies house (wow. I just had to write out house 3 times before I remembered how to spell it in English, embarrassing, we thought my spelling was bad before...) Well a couple minutes later, the same guy, Ph____, comes back out. He says, wait are you looking for someone from Dominican Republic (stupid white girls don’t know the difference :) ). Well, turns out its HIS WIFE. We set up an appointment to meet with the WHOLE FAMILY. Well fast forward to our appointment...We walk in and they have knödle all prepared for us. We eat, have a wonderful time, and then have the most wonderful first lesson of my mission. We explained the Book of Mormon, read some promises and both Ph___ and his son promised to read the first 3 chapters and pray about it. When a potential is saying things like, "This is so true, its important to pray with your whole self, mind and heart" and saying he believes he can get an answer, well that’s when you know they are golden!!! :) We are having a faschings fest (carnival) tomorrow in the ward house that the whole family will be coming to. I AM SO EXCITED. All the son wanted to do was read... :) PERFECTION.

Okay, funnest day ever. Tuesday. It was like were South American missionaries in that we had so many appointments scheduled. We had to call on 2 younger single adults to do splits with us. SO FUN!!!! And every lesson was life changing. Seriously! One was with a less-active member that since I have been here, has always said no to us coming. Well, she gave us the okay. It was great- their family needs the gospel so badly!!! I know by accepting the gospel, she will be able to cope with her depression, and remember the happiness the gospel gives her. Then we had a lesson with Sk___, remember the miracle story of finding a member that no one knew about?? Well that went great AND the bishop was able to bring her to church and she was able to stay long enough to be there for the first hour, Relief Society. I saw her, and I just BROKE DOWN. I have never been so excited to see someone in church. I’ve never met someone that wanted it so bad but literally couldn’t because of situational factors. Holy Cow. SO COOL!!! Then we had a lesson with a less active-part member family. Well they agreed to start reading in the Book of Mormon together and take the missionary lessons. MIRACLES!!!! All in one day!

P__ is doing great, he’s preparing for his baptism and just doing great. We just got the OK to start doing a Gospel Principles class in English. That is going to help so many less actives and members! I am so excited. In the future, I would LOVE to see an international ward here in Graz. That’s what I am praying for. Graz is a HUGE melting pot of cultures!

Well, I’ve seriously just had the best week!

HUMILITY

I have had a lot of opportunities to study humility this month. And it was just so awesome!! I’ve learned A LOT.

The Lord instructs His servants to be humble because the process of being made whole spiritually begins with a broken heart. Think of the good that comes from broken things: Soil is broken to plant wheat. Wheat is broken to make bread. Bread is broken to become the emblems of the sacrament. When one who is repentant partakes of the sacrament with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, he or she becomes whole. As we repent and become whole through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we have much more to offer the Savior as we serve Him. “Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him.” –Elder Randy D. Funk, “Called of Him to Declare His Word”

Humility includes gratitude for his blessings and acknowledgment of your constant need for his Divine help.

Alma 26:12

D&C 112:10

Mosiah 4: 11-12

If we look up humility in the Topical Guide we see these words:

contrite heart, meekness, poor in spirit, submissive, teachable. These couple words mean so much!!

Pride is My will not THY will. Pride is so much more than I have ever thought. There are so many ways I am prideful without even noticing!

Something big I learned is that by being humble isn’t always "demeaning yourself", because God made us how we are, so by realizing your strengths and seeing God gave them to you, that’s being humble. IDK my thoughts are a bit jumbled. But I really have learned a lot. There is so much to always improve on. This has been my favorite to study because I feel that my grasp on it was so different than what I recently learned.

I hope you have a great week.

I seriously just love this work! It’s going so great!! :) I know, that everything that happens is done with the Lord, we, as missionaries, are so privileged to be able to see God work his miracles right in front of us.

I am so grateful for my Heavenly Father who loves his children so much and does everything for us.

Love you!

Sister Regnier

My Companion--Sister Allman

Stake Conference with Elder Bednar (Feb 24)

This week consisted of a lot of member appointments! It was so great! I am so grateful we have so many great members in this ward!

It was pretty crazy with Sister Judd leaving, but I am amazed with how well she handled everything. I’m telling everyone now, when I have to come home, I’ll be a wreck, simply said.

On Transfer day, Sister Jencks and I spent the day together working in Wiener Neustadt. I learned a lot from her and its so fun to do tausches (splits)!

It seemed as Sister Allman and I finally pulled into Graz, we had to turn right back and go to stake conference. So, we have had one whole day together in Graz :)

But Stake Conference was so great. I love how much the members in this area of the world focus so much on Missionary work. The stake created great goals to help them and us! My favorite is praying for the missionaries and the investigators by name. I think that will really help the ward become more involved and just have a love for the people learning about the gospel.

For the Sunday portion, it was a broadcast. This broadcast was specifically only for the German speaking members. Elder Bednar even spoke in GERMAN! It was the coolest thing ever! He served in this mission, and I was so impressed with his words. He’s getting a bit old though :/

Overall, this was a great week. I am expecting great things to come out of Graz this transfer!

Sister Allman and spent a lot of time planning and making goals for this transfer. I can feel that we are going to really expand our teaching pool and meet some really great people. It’s off to a great start, and I am just loving it.

Have a great week!

Liebe grüße!

Sister Regnier

Week of Krapfens (Feb 17)

Well, this week flew by. It's crazy to think this transfer is already over. Now, thanks to dad, I also realized I am 11 months into my mission.... mensch. This goes WAY too fast.  

This Monday, we were invited by the young adults to give the spiritual thought in FHE. It's so fun to spend time with them and see how strong they are in the Gospel.

This week, I was able to attend two district meetings. One here in Graz, and one on my tausch (splits) in Wien. I really loved them! In one of them, we talked about approaching people about the family. It's something that I am not always the best at. But we worked on introducing the Family Proclamation and bringing it to the restored Gospel. It was really educational for me! I then felt ready to go find a bunch of families! I also learned a lot from my district leader this week about being a good leader. He is so great and really has a desire to help as well as learn from the other missionaries. I was really impressed how he used humility, which I have been studying so much lately (I even had a district assignment on it.... Maybe Heavenly Father is trying to tell me something :) ).

We had a week full of working with appointments.

Sister Kosmath, has made so much progress, a week or so ago I told you that she’s started to do genealogy. Well she has finally started reading again in the Book of Mormon. She is marking her copy all up! Its wonderful and brings tears to my eyes how she’s learning how much strength she receives from reading it.

We had quite a few member appointments. One of which was on Valentines Day. Because it's not celebrated too much over here, we weren’t expecting anything. However, one of our members from America invited us over and fed us Mexican food and played games. It was really fun! She was so thoughtful and I just really love her!

Both of our investigators are doing great. They are taking the information in and just realizing how important it is. I love teaching them and seeing them accept the gospel. I am so glad that this Gospel is for everyone. Every single person will benefit from it. I Love being a missionary.

I am really sad to see Sister Judd go. We had some really good times and saw so much progress in this ward. I am also really excited for my new companion, Sister Allman, to come join the force over here in beautiful Graz.

Also, I ate a ton of krapfens this week. Every member wanted us to eat these apricot filled donuts. Never again.

Have a great week! love ya!

Crazy Goodness (Feb 10)

Wow. I am pretty sure, somehow, this was the longest week of my mission. I feel like last Pday was a transfer ago. That is not a bad thing! A lot of craziness has happened. And I've been in a lot of cities. So, I will use my planner to write this :)

Dienstag (Tuesday):

Well we caught a 7:25am train to get to Wien. We had zone training as well as a Golden7trainer meeting. Zone training went great. Sister Judd and I talked on humility. I must say, I loved preparing for this one. I learned a lot, and it was very... humbling :) We also worked on our street contacts. It was all the stuff we learned from our big meeting in Munchen (Munich) but it's always fun to put a Vienna twist on it. I think everyone really enjoyed it. The golden7trainer meeting was really cool. We split the Goldens (new missionaries) from their trainers and talked to them in groups. We then went back together explaining all the concerns were the same. It's so funny, when I was a golden, I was so "pity me" and thought that I was the only one feeling like how I was. Well that was wrong. All Goldens go through the same stuff. I hope they were able to see that from our meeting. :) Well, today we had a bit of a panic because Sis Judd left her stuff on the train. So we had to figure out how to work with the OBB(rail system) people. But members love us, and were really able to help us out. Everything was returned. So grateful.

Mittwoch (Wednesday):

Zone Conference! Loved it! We got to hear a lot from Sister Miles and President Miles. I loved it, I thought a lot about how we, as members of the church, are huge examples in everything we do. I remember this time in Passau when we were dooring and someone told us that they had seen us on the bridge. They knew that we were Mormon missionaries from that moment... good thing we weren’t doing what you did on bridges during you mission dad!.... :)  We also had a district leader meeting. All went well. Then, we started our tausch (splits). Well, picture this. Sister Packer, the elders, and I are sitting on the train, when 5 min before it leaves I realize we haven't printed tickets for it. We had to sprint, told the elders to throw our stuff out if we weren’t back in time. Well as we realized we never received a ticket number we run back to the train, as I am pressing the button to open the door, it drives off. Leaving Sister Packer and I in dirdles (German dresses), jacketless and wallet-less. At least we had our phone. We just had to wait a while before the elders could come rescue us. They are seriously great. Well, we got home, very, very late but had a miracle tausch the next day.

Donnerstag (Thursday):

I will go into details for the tausch, because it was great!

We first dropped off some Book of Mormons that a less active member wanted to give out! Sweet. Then we headed to our first appointment: We were about 30 min early so we decided to do street contact, which I hadn't done for a VERY VERY long time. We were both nervous, but we put our trust in the Lord and had some GREAT conversations. Seriously! It was so cool! We talked about the purpose of life, modern day prophets, and church organization. It was great. We had a lesson with a less active. She had a hard week but had started doing genealogy. With the help of another member, she found a whole family, they are already sealed in the temple :))) We then went to our appointment with Sk____. It went so well. We talked about Joseph Smith and the priesthood, she loved it. On the way to the church from there, we found another person!! (That means, I am hitting my record for potentials found in one day). WE then have a WONDERFUL lesson with P___. Schwester Rauch came, who is also from Ghana. She helped SO MUCH and was able to explaining so many differences from what their culture believes, BEST JOINT TEACH EVER. Then, P___ taught the Elders the plan of salvation. It was the best lesson we have ever had with him. So heading home from that lesson, to hit our goals, all we needed was one more potential..... She Rauch offered to drive us home, so that cut a lot of bus contacting time down. We were nervous. Walking down the street to our house, I was a bit nervous and told Sis Packer, no one is in sight, and were are a minute away...... Well just then, 2 guys turned the corner... We talked to them, they took a Book Of Mormon and ASKED if we could meet to talk more. WOW!!!!!!!!!!! SO MANY MIRACLES in one day, and I didn't even explain everything! It was wonderful! It was a wonderful tausch!

The next day, Freitag (Friday), Sister Judd and I also saw miracles. We had a great day, even after the bus schedules were VERY against us... haha. We had a lesson with a less active that is making so much progress within a couple months, she is already reading in ETHER. We showed her the Mormon messages, she LOVED THEM. We have been using them a lot, and everyone just loves them! The Spirit is really present when people ponder the messages they contain. We also met with a member, and her non-lds friends. It went so well!

Now we come to Saturday, we had a finding day in Bruck. That means we went to a little dorf (village), Kampfenberg and doored. Well I always thought this town was called krampfenberg (donut mountain I guess). Sister Judd and I mentioned how fun it would be to eat a krapfen here..... WELL Someone let us in! We talked with a mom and her daughter. They have an uncle in America who is LDS and she has talked with members at her flower shop.... how cool! She took a Book of Mormon and the elders will be contacting her to talk about the chapter she is going to read. It was seriously so cool to get to know this adventures family. Oh, and she fed us Krampfens :)

After finding day, we had a lesson with Pe__. We watched the Joseph Smith movie that is on Lds.org. She loved it. Before the movie she told us she knew that he died young but not how. It was such a great experience because she only knew about him seeing God, the Father and His Son. But we were able to see what else happened in his life. I am seriously so grateful for his life and all he did. I am also grateful for lds.org and how much we have used it this week! It is such a wonderful tool! Sunday was great. There were many people at church and we were able to spend the day in meetings and planning.

What a successful week!

Sorry this email is so crazy. But it describes my week pretty well :) Crazy goodness :)

Love you!

Sister Regnier