Happy Thanksgiving!!

 I know I already sent one this morning, but that was from last week and I didn't have time to send it. 

Man it has been a good week. My companion and I have had a lot of fun together. After I warmed up, things have been great. We love to listen to Christmas music and dance around our kitchen while we cook. My comp like tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini so we've been having those a lot. Sister Barden is hilarious so we laugh a lot. I think she's exactly what I need. She's a great example of obedience to me. She pushes me out of my comfort zone, but she always shows me compassion which I need. 
I've been getting more used to the German life. It almost feels normal to be living here. I'm still amazed by how beautiful everything is. We went to visit this one lady in our ward and she lives in a town maybe 20- 30 minutes from us by train. But her town was so pretty. Everything was still green and there was an old castle on the hill. Then next to her house there was a little forest and a lot of her neighbors lived in cabin looking houses. I think I fell in love.
This week we've been really trying to focus on getting to know everyone. Our ward, friends, and potentials. So we've been calling and texting people a lot trying to set up appointments. We've had some lessons with the members which were really good. The members are all super sweet here. They also like to feed us which I wasn't expecting, I thought it was just an American thing. But we've already eaten at 2 members homes and have more scheduled. We've been trying to do a lot of service and the only things we've found that we can do is baking things for people. So there was a family in our ward who had covid so Sister Barden and I made banana bread for them. We've also had some super kind neighbors and so we were going to make them lemon cupcakes. We don't have a muffin pan so we just put them on a cookie sheet. Needless to say they looked more square then circle but it's okay. We tried to find this one lady who has been super kind to us but we didn't know where she lived. So we decided to knock on random people's doors and offer them our cakes. The people were really nice about it which I also wasn't expecting. I still picture Germans as cold like the ones we find on the street, but I guess once you add sugar to the equation it always turns out positive. But it was really sweet to see their reactions. We met one man who's from England that we were able to speak English with. But he really appreciated our offer and mentioned that religion is a big topic but it's our actions that really matter. I thought that was sweet and glad that we were able to plant so many different seeds.
Funny story for the week: our area has bikes so we wanted to bike to the church yesterday. After 20 minutes of searching we finally found our right Keller (storage room). It was a whole thing and our basements are pretty spooky and our lights kept turning off. But even we were able to find our bikes. But that wasn't the worst of my problems. Now I had to figure out how to ride it. I'm on my tippytoes trying to keep the bike upright since I couldn't figure out how to putthe seat down. Then I had my bag which kept throwing the weight off, so I was swaying all over the place. It legit felt like I was relearning how to ride a bike. Well I hope you all enjoyed imagining me riding my bike like elder Calhoun because that's exactly what it looked like.
One fun thing we did today is that we visited the places in Nürnberg where they had the nazi rallies and the trials. It was super cool and I enjoyed learning about some of Germany's history. I didn't know any of these sights existed. You learn all about how the trials went and what it looked like. 
Covid is becoming a big problem again. We didn't have church on Sunday because a couple families were sick. You also can't get on any public transportation without a negative covid test or your vaccination card. It's quite a hassle. There's a possibility Germany might shut down again and we have to go into lockdown.
I'm so thankful for you all and love you very much!! 
1. Our square lemon cupcakes
2. The cute village with the castle
3 & 4. Our banana chocolate chip bread
5. Our church looks like a cute log cabin
6. We have a mini pool set in our apartment 
7. The outside of the courthouse
8 & 9. The courtroom where they held the trials




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