Hello

Hi Family!

I forgot to tell you about Elder Heslop, my bad. He is serving in Sister Hinkle's home branch and I did get to say hi. It was kind of fun. Her Dad asked me where I was from and when I said Claremont he asked what it was by and then got all excited and said their new Elder is from there! It was cool to see the small Mormon world in action.

This week was pretty good. I taught a lesson in Spanish. It was strange. I felt like a new missionary, not understanding everything. But I didn't have a Senior Companion to save me! After the lesson, Sister Hinkle just laughed and said that she understood even less in that lesson than she did in her first German lesson. It made her have a little more confidence in her German. Why am I teaching in Spanish? We're going to baptize the husband from the Spanish family that just moved into our ward, that's why! When finding out that there are 3 SPanish speaking families in our branch (about a third of our branch) I figured I needed some Spanish. So I called the office and asked if there was a possibility to get the MTC Spanish learning materials and they were able to get them for me! I was so happy.

We were not able to get a joint teach for this lesson because of work schedulas so it was just us and the Spirit with the family. I taught about prayer and how that helps us know truth. For Dad, here's a little of my lesson: (the grammar is probably all wrong, but remember, back to new missionary here) (I'm using German letters with accents because there are no spanish accents on my key board)

La oraciön es un los Mandamientos. 

La oraciön nos permite obtener un testimonio del Evangelio y Jose` Smith. 

?Puedoo hacer la oraciön? 

and maybe most importantly was lento por favor.

I also said a prayer in Spanish. Yup. Spanish in Germany. Who'd 'ave thunk?

Also talked to a man who was speaking Italian and got his address to send to Anziano Walker. We did not have another Polish Sunday School lesson sadly but there was also English this week. I wish I could just speak everything. And am greatful the Spirit can!

Mike was confirmed and ordained a priest last Sunday and yesterday was his first time blessing the Sacrament! It was so fun to see him at the Sacrament Table and doing that. He is going to be a joint teach with us this week. And we're talking about sending him on a mini mission in the Berlin mission (2-6 weeks with a pair of Elders) to help him decide if he wants to go on a real mission. How cool is that?

Sister Hinkle and I gave talks again on Sunday. No BYU devotional this time because someone else was speaking too. We were asked to speak about missionary work, of course. It's kind of funny to me to talk about missionary work in sacrament meeting. We had 3 investigators at church and all they heard was about missionary work. If I was an investigator that would be weird. I did kind of make missionary work a background topic not the main topic in mine. I rewrote Pres. Uchtdorf's forget me not flower with waht not to forget about missionary work. 1-have faith 2-the difference between a good and bad example 3- to see success now 4-the why of missionary work and 5- that God loves ALL His children. The Relief Society  thought it was cute :]

Sister Hinkle did like her 9 things we love about her book. The other Sisters were excited that we could give it to her together at Zone Conference and she almost cried. It's been hard but I am slowing down a little and giving her jobs I know will take her more time than if I did  them but I'm trying to trust her more and encourage her more. Things are getting better. She even contradicted me once. I was so happy!! She spoke her mind not just followed. I think she thinks I'm crazy, that I got happy when she disagreed with me. That is crazy, but so it is.

This week on Tausch I went to the city of Lübeck and we did a service project in Lauenburg. Lauenburg is a city in my district where the floods did come and the water was still up so much higher than normal! This was my first time going down there since the floods and I was a little shocked at how high the water still was. For our service project we cut a tree into itty bitty pieces and I have some giant blisters from it. But it was fun. The member family we were helping lives on a farm in the German country side. So pretty there. And this picture is from one of the animals they raise- giant bunnies!! I was so happy I got to hold this one :] there were new babies born last weeka nd they are as big as this one's nose. It was pretty fun. The other sister in the picture is Sister Sykes from Colorado.

We were focusing on Less Actives this week and with one couple we had a cookie bake-off. I lost. I cried. Not really though. But Sister Hinkle's cookies beat mine. (But then we did it again with the smae cookies and active members and mine won there.) I was doing the bake-of in the Pommerville basketball bracket kind of style, you know with smack talk and alles so it was really kind of funny to lose. (mine were rollo cookies but with sugar cookie dough and Sister Hinkles were chocolate chip) maybe I should have done chocolate dough too.  Oh well, i can share my baking crown.

I don't know when I will watch the Leadership training. We have an exchange this week and can't go to Ward Council and I hope we don't miss the training. I'll ask Branch President about it.

I hope you all have a great week! Have fun in Summer school boys! It will be great! I want to know how fort building goes. I expect pro fort builders when I get home.

Did Alyssa send you Paige's announcement too? That was cute.

I love you!

Love,
Sister Walker

ps- no Sister Dittrich did not call me, I don't know if she's allowed to sicne I'm no longer in Cottbus. I'll let you know if she does though.

I forgot to say that we had a Mormon Helping Hands day! Here is my Branch before we started cleaning a park.