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| With President and Sister Fingerle |
Joey, tell Martee I love him too...and Jehk, Ziek, Ahbee and Sevanuh. I believe that scripture was said by Paul (which I only know because Lisa also shared that quote). Not bad, quitting Hearthstone, I seemed to have as much trouble getting into that game as you did getting out. You're definitely right about listening to promptings, it's probably something I could work on more, not only tuning things down to listen to the Spirit, but also to act on whatever it tells you to do. Elder Anderson took German before his mission, but he is also just some kind of genius. He's from Texas. Dad: We're the only ones in our apartment, there's just one ward in our area and so far I haven't really experienced anything unique in terms of food. It's all been pretty good. Our 2 most promising investigators are Cristian and Silas. They both are from Africa and speak English. Cristian is pretty awesome, if we allowed him, he could probably tell stories about when he was in Africa for a solid 24 hours. He's had a lot of miraculous experiences and he knows that God is real, he just wants to know for sure that our church is the right one. We're trying to pound in the fact that in order to know, he's got to read the Book of Mormon. Silas is pretty close to being baptism ready, it's just hard to get a meeting with him. Other than those 2, most of our efforts have been focused on finding and working with less actives. Well Andy, It's nice to know that the media always has something to cry about.
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| In Front of the Freiberg Temple |
So I've discovered that I'm not a particularly patient person. Sometimes I just expect everything to be like a light switch. If I just find out the magic word, I'll be able to instantly learn German, become perfect at finding and teaching, be filled with charity, etc. Eventually I'll accept the reality that these things will take time. Rather than constantly worrying about the things that I'm struggling with, it's nice to look back and see how much God has helped me to learn and change in just a couple months.
I sure never would have said this back in MTC days, but it would be great to actually teach more than (at most) a couple lessons a day. This last week we spent hours doing street contacting, and the longest conversation we ended up having was with a drunk man who claimed to believe in Satan. Something good did come out of it though. He asked me a couple questions that I couldn't understand, and Elder Anderson explained that I was brand new in Germany and couldn't understand everything. The man in response asked, if you don't know German, why are you here? It was a sobering question (can drunk men ask sobering questions?). It allowed me to remember that I was here because an inspired Prophet of God sent me here. It's a good thing to remember. Anywho, we did have some success finding, but I'm definitely open to any tips or advice in that regard.
German is an interesting language. I remember jokingly thinking at the MTC that 70% of what I said in German was grammatically incorrect, and then upon arriving here I discovered that 70% may have been too generous. It's gradually starting to make sense though. There are quite a few situations though, even if I'm familiar with most of the vocab, that due to the weirdness of sentence structure, accent and how fast they speak I end up not really understanding. Add another element, like talking on a phone or having a conversation when there's a lot of background noise, and I basically have no chance. I look forward to the day that the enormous puzzle that is German finally comes together.
Life is good and Germany is awesome. I look forward to 2 years of being a witness of how much the Gospel of Jesus Christ changes lives. Enjoy the mountains back home for me (I'm discovering that the big city isn't the place for me, haha). Have a good week!
-Elder Larsen
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