This past week has been full of great moments and I am grateful for the opportunities I have had to strengthen new friendships and learn! Monday was one of my first days being sort of alone in Germany, I say sort of alone because I had many people checking in on me and reaching out which has been wonderful, but this week my friends the Geary’s went to visit another part of Germany, so I had the apartment to myself. I decided to try my hand at exploring on my first day, but that turned out to be an interesting experience. I went on a run down a path that I had gone on previously with Sister Geary, but this time I decided to go further down the river, and to my surprise I found another path that I had never been on before. It was a forest path which sounded really cool, and early on down the path I saw a sign that said waterfall ahead, so then I became really excited.

As I continued walking however, I began to notice the sky disappearing which was weird because it was relatively early in the day and it doesn’t really get dark here until 10:00 PM. I discovered that the culprits were the trees. I had entered a deeper part of the forest, very quickly might I add, and the trees were grouped densely enough that the sun only managed to shine down green tinted beams instead of it’s characteristic yellow light.

It was at this point that I started to think about the movies where a unexpecting youth goes into a forest all alone and then gets lost or chased by a monster, so instead of heading back I did what I thought was the next best thing, I started to walk faster so I would get to the waterfall quicker! The next thing that I noticed was that I needed to go sideways along some of the paths because they became narrower and overgrown, then it started to get a little darker.

At this point I had the thought that if I went further I might get lost or something bad might happen, so after seeing google maps had no idea where I was, I quickly sprinted back and I made it out safe.

The Holy Ghost, or the Spirit of God, can guide us to keep us safe from danger or things that might be harmful to us. If we will listen to His voice we can be kept safe! Also we may turn onto dangerous paths sometimes and go pretty far down them, but with help from the Savior, we can be guided back safely into His light!

The days after that I did not do much more exploring, but I did have some great conversations with my friend Heide and her family. She is so patient in helping me learn German, and she even prepared food for me on the evenings that I went to visit her!

I got to eat some delicious Gulasch and Abendbrot with all of the fixings! I also got to play a great game with her that is called Mensch ärgere Dich nicht which was really fun! It has been very peaceful here in Klotten, and I am grateful to be here!