Solothurn - Week 5

Sali zäme! Grüaß ous der Schweiz!

Dearest Family and Friends,

My goodness, another week is behind us. They just keep flying by. My last April Fools Day is gone, but no worries, we made good use of the holiday. ;) 

Beautiful Bern!

This been a week of relief, spiritual power, great conversations, and some magnificent missionary work. The older I get mission wise, the faster the weeks go by, and the slower I am and the harder it is to recognize all the tiny daily miracles I experience. This week was a great week to slow down and catch up on some of those. 

This week I got to go on exchange in Bern with a Elder Killpack. We were greenies together in a district and Zone Leaders at the same time and we are just really good friends. This exchange was way helpful because I thought I was the only one really struggling with a new culture, new people, new language, missionaries I didn't know, missing my zone leader area, and all that, but Elder Killpack has a lot of the same things as I do going on, so it was really helpful to me to see I'm not the only one struggling with change and that its okay to struggle a little with the change. That's how one grows, I suppose.

Man, what else can I say? Life is great. Teaching people about the most important thing they will ever hear in their lives, and having them recognize it for the first time is the greatest feeling in the world. One of my favorite things is to see a persons eyes for the first time when they understand the complete idea that they're a son or daughter of God. We taught Mulugetha and his whole family this week and they understood the Restoration very well. We are really close to a break through point with them.

After our Matterhorn PDay trip, we were at a members house. The Schmidtke's, to be specific. They're from East Germany, which makes them a lot more understandable than the Swiss. When we got there, the kids had hidden us Easter eggs in their backyard, and we had to find them. Sister Tauche and Sister Baugh found theirs before we could find ours, somewhat embarrassing. But eventually we did find them. The family made us a rare German delicacy. Hot Dogs. Hahahaha. I felt right at home. After about 5 of those, she asked if we could eat anymore, and she assured me I could handle two more. So I agreed. She said she had to cook more bread for them really quickly and disappeared into the kitchen. About 10 minutes later, she comes out with 2 huge baguettes and places them in front of me jokingly. She's so funny. But I threw 2 hot dogs on each baguette, loaded them up, and threw them down. Hahaha there is a certain type of respect that comes from a family when you can do that. I was so full. I thought I might explode, then the kids asked us to come bounce them on the trampoline. Oh my goodness.. It ended up okay though. 

The greatest part about the whole evening though came with the spiritual thought. We were talking about Easter, and the Spirit just testified to me that without Easter, we wouldn't have a purpose in life, or a plan at all. No church, no authority, no prophets, no revelation, no Savior, and certainly no truth. That makes me thankful for the everlasting sacrifice that Easter is.

General Conference was fantastic. I really enjoyed listening to Elder Bednar, President Uchtdorf, and President Nelson. I was somewhat waiting for Elder Bednar to get translated during his talk, but didn't quite get there. He talked about the exact same things as when he came to our mission last April, so it was cool to hear it in a conference talk.

Answering a few questions here:

The food is relatively the same between Switzerland and Germany. There isn't too big of a difference. Just more fancy here and you can't really buy bakery items because they are way expensive. 5 Franken for a pretzel compared to 40 cents in Munich. Hahaha.

I love Elder Harradine's outlook on life. He's a funny funny kid, and just has the right direction for sure. Always a hard worker and just a great young missionary.

Things are great. I hope you all enjoy your Masters week, this is the last Masters I will miss in my life. Thank heavens. Love you all, make good choices!

Elder Hadfield