Goodbye Solothurn!

Dear Sherri

I just would like to thank you for your wonderful son. He has been serving in the Solothurn ward the last couples of months. We had a great time with him. He is a hardworking, humble, funny and good missionary. We laughed a lot and he has been a great help to our daughter Rahel.
You will have him back soon!!! I need to wait for my son to come home from his mission in Denmark. He has still a year to go!!!

Elder Hadfield tried to match a pile of our washed sockes while waiting for his Sunday dinner,. I hate looking for a paire of sock who match.... He actually did my job :) I wondered if my son would have done something similar on his mission????? 
Then we needed to wait outside because my husband wasn't home and I was alone with my daughter. No double date permitted :) so sitting outside is ok, but it got a little cold...
He looks happy doesn't he :)

Best wishes from Switzerland
He soon will be home. You can look forward to a great son.....
Love, 
Claudia Ziegler

Zieglers

Matching black socks for the Ziegler Family waiting for Sunday dinner!

Solothurn Youth Sunday School Class

Hey Family and Friends!  Another week and another month down. School is officially out for the year. Summer is beginning! ☀

S/O to my boys for bringing home the State Championship!

With the beginning of summer comes for me the beginning of a new area, and possibly my final area. I'll be moving over to the country of Austria in an area called Haag am Hausruck. I'll live in Ried Im Innkreis, which I'm almost sure is either a place where my dad served on his mission, or very close to a place there. I'll have a car as well, rolling down the city streets. I'm not too excited for the car, I'll probably be leaving it at home most of the time. There's not too many people you can connect with in a car. My companion will be Elder Liechty from Provo. It'll be a good time, I'm sure. It's a pretty tough place, so it'll definitely be a challenge for my last few transfers. I just hope I've got the steam to finish out really strong.

Goodbye's sucked yet again. It's so difficult to say goodbye to people you love with your entire heart, and have no idea if you'll ever see them again. I hate that part of the mission experience. I LOVE the members here in Solothurn. If I had one wish it would have to be to come back after my mission and visit all these good people I've met. 

My thought this week comes from an experience I had this week and a quote from Preach My Gospel. The quote is from John Taylor, and goes:

 “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.”

I've found this quote to be pretty true on my mission in a few different senses. One sense of course is teaching investigators the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Restoration of the Church. I'm teaching people, who understand about as well as a small infant, the most important, complex doctrine they'll ever hear in their lives, which is peculiarly at the same time the most simple, basic message they'll ever hear. I spend my time trying to bring it to their hearts and help them take it in, just like spoon feeding a small baby, (hoping as well that they can hold it down and not regurgitate it).

Another comes in the sense of my personal study of the gospel. I've found myself studying some of the most deep topics and interesting aspects of the Gospel on my mission. Things so complex I could spend a lifetime studying them. They're also those things that people start to question and raise worries at when they start to look at too deeply. My job however, isn't to dwell on those things, but rather become as a little child, especially as I study the gospel and try to understand it better. Just like a kid will always trust his parents and the basics he's taught, I build myself one principle at a time, always falling back onto the basic truths that I know when times get tough. Too many people forget that we are supposed to become like children, when the one thing that we all are is Children. Children of divine Deity, destined to become like Him, but only when we hold strong to the title that we are His children. Quite interesting right?

So the application of this principle made itself manifest at a member appointment and in a lesson we taught in Sunday School. The lesson was to a rowdy group of 8 or so young men, with 4 young women as well. The regular teacher, the bishop’s wife, has had a difficult time lately getting the kids to focus. So she asked if we would give it a try. We went in and talked about prayer, seeing as some of the boys struggle with prayer. We asked them all what was important to them, and made a list of like 20 things, including soccer, games, phones, girls, food, sleep, friends, family, you name it. We asked them why these things were important to them. Then came the question: If all these things were to be suddenly taken away, what would be left over? Then we talked about personal relationships with Heavenly Father and personal experiences with prayer.

 Coming on a mission really makes you rely on that relationship between you and God. All of a sudden, all these things are torn away from you. Cell phone, girls, friends, family, sleep, games, personal time. All of that is gone, and what's left over? If you don't have the personal connection to the creator of the Universe, our Father, it's going to be difficult. It was a really good lesson with them.

We were then after church at a member appointment and we were ready to pray over Sunday Dinner. The 5 year old daughter wanted to do it all on her own without help from her dad. This was pretty close to what she said. "Dear Heavenly Father, I'm thankful for this beautiful day, that we could go to church and be home. I'm thankful that at Christmas we got presents, and that we got our scooters. We love them. Yesterday, my sister and I rode around the neighborhood really fast. It was so much fun. I love my sister. Please bless this food. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." We were all laughing, but I thought to myself, man.... This little girl understands prayer.

Until my mission, I just figured God wanted a report of what I did that day, what I was thankful for, and what I needed help with. Here, I've discovered that all He really wants to hear about is the things that are important to us. If it's important to us, imagine how important it is to Him. Even if it is something as small as riding a scooter around the neighborhood. I know when He hears from us, He's just throwing a party up in Heaven because that's how much He cares for us. This gospel is so cool. 

I love you all, prayers on their way!

Elder Hadfield