A Roller Coaster Week

Oh this week was a roller coaster!  

So Wednesday and Thursday Sister Fast and I went back to Wien, again!!  SO SO awesome :)  We went on an ultimate tausch (tausch = companion exchange) with the new sister training leaders.  Ultimate just means that we all stayed in their apartment in Wien but just switched companions for the day!  It was the best thing ever.  I learned soooo much from Sister Baugh about faith, and learning German, and just how to be an awesome missionary and an awesome person.  She is about to go home so I was just juicing 
everything I could out of her.  That night was like a giant slumber party...that ended promptly at 10:30! haha ;) but it was so fun!  

Then when Sister Fast and I were coming back home on Thursday, we got stuck in this tiny creepy place called Leoben for like an hour!  It was so weird, and what should have only taken us three hours to get home, actually took us five!  So we were very exhausted.  But I will still never get over the beautiful scenery on these train rides.  Like we are train tracking through the most beautiful mountains in the world!  Just winding around the sides, and over the rivers and through the woods.  I feel like I'm in a movie every time I get on a train here.

Friday was our service day!! We helped out at the ward primary carnival which was LEGIT.  People here go all out for the primary and they are the cutest kids, and mostly it's just cute to hear their German in squeaky voices instead of deep scruffy voices like most people have.  Sister Fast and I were in charge of face painting, and it was so fun.  Afterwards we went with the elders to get ice cream cuz it was my 100TH DAY AS A MISSIONARY. EEEP!  It's so crazy, it feels like it was just yesterday that I left, but at the same time it feels like AGES ago!  Time is just a very strange thing on a mission.  

This whole week we have also been working on cleaning out and organizing our apartment in hopes that the office will let us move.  We have a giant moth problem.  Like they eat our food and lay their maggot eggs in our kitchen and I just want to throw up it's so gross.  We also have major plumbing problems because our sink floods like every day and we have moldy peeling paint on our ceiling!  So pray that we will be able to get a new apartment!  Or at least get it renovated and exterminated!

Saturday we had a super awesome day full of lessons and finding planned, but everything basically completely fell through.  And to top it off I had the most embarrassing moment of my mission so far, which I'm not even going to talk about because I'm still embarrassed (hahaha.)  But just know that that happened!  

Sunday was DIRNDL DAYYYYYY!  (dirndl = a type of traditional dress worn in Germany and Austria)  Literally the best day ever.  I bought my very own dirndl last pday and on Sunday Sister Fast and I wore ours to church because people actually wear trachten like all the time here. It was so fun, and the members LOVED it.  Best way to reach the heart of the Austrians is to dress like them ;)  

Today for pday we hiked Schlossberg again with our elders and the Wiener Neustadt elders and sisters. Just can't get enough of that place. :)

So how has the 21 day challenge been going for you people?  If you haven't started it yet I hope I am pricking you with guilt because you should probably start sometime soon.  What's a commitment without a follow-up right?  I would love to hear from all of you to see how it went when you're finished!!  This week I was able to start reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning again, and it is just so great.  The Book of Mormon really is true guys.  I am going to challenge all of you to read the whole Book of Mormon, cover to cover, in 6 months.  I'll even attach this fun dot to dot chart to motivate you :)  Read with a specific question in mind, write it in the front on a notecard, and just watch how that question is answered even within the first few pages of reading.  If you are already in the middle of the Book of Mormon, just start from where you are and read all the way back to where you started!  The dot to dot chart should make that easy :)  

My testimony of the Book of Mormon has strengthened so much since I've been on my mission, and so has my love for my Savior, Jesus Christ.  I am so grateful for everything He has done for me, and everything He continues to do for me every single day!  Like I am a very hard person to help sometimes!  It's like carrying a sack of potatoes through the sand!  But He loves me more than I can imagine, and I know He is always on my side :) 

Love you guys, and thanks for the prayers and love and support :)

1 Nephi 3:7

"Ich will hingehen und das tun, was der Herr geboten hat; denn ich weiß, der Herr gibt den Menschenkindern keine Gebote, ohne ihnen einen Weg zu bereiten, damit sie das vollbringen können, was er ihnen gebietet."
(And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father:  I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.)

Liebe Grüße,

Sister Thunell

Oh yes... 

P.S. Sorry for the typo last week (haha) I meant schönen Woche (beautiful week.) #germanprobs

Last week, Savannah ended her email with "Schönen welche!" which I wanted to add a translation for since none of us reading this actually speak German, but she was already gone before I could ask her.  Google Translate said that it meant "beautiful which"  ????
"beautiful week" makes so much more sense.