Woooooow!

Merry Weihnachten!

Very true Joey. So you're spending Christmas in Arizona. Does that mean you aint even gonna be a part of my skype call? Also, I love you as much as Garen loves to spin. Yeesh Lisa, how many years ago was Pizza Factory? It really does feel like ages ago, since then I've met so many people, experienced so many new things and learned so much. Paul is getting married in just a couple weeks??? Looks like I'm missing out on all the excitement. Quite the story Mom! I feel like I can relate to it pretty well. Don't worry too much, I'll be rejoining you in your tooth adventures in a couple years. My attempts to jam my bottom retainer on in the MTC just ended up breaking it, tehee. And yep, got the Christmas package. Pops, my Sunday schedule is: Ward mission council, church, lunch appointment, then back to normal work. Finding, appointments, studies (for the 12 week training thing). P-day: Excercise, go shopping, do studies, clean, eat lunch, write emails and then do whatever (visit cool stuff, sleep, eat food) until 6. If we're invited by a member to FHE, we do that, otherwise just normal work. Our heating and air conditioning is good, showers are a bit chilly. Training meetings we typically learn more about teaching, finding, the Holy Ghost, etc. Also, my call is probably going to come around 9:00 AM.

President Fingerle sends us a miracle of the week in his weekly email, and this week a guy referred himself (he googled "what is the point of life?" and found the church website) and now has a baptismal date with Aaron Peatross and his companion.

Quite the week this week, 4 of our investigators that we were just about to give up on decided to finally come back to life! We were in our weekly planning, and like 10 minutes after making the decision to give this guy a break (we'd been trying to call him for a few weeks) he gave us a call and set up an appointment. Crazy stuff. And then that evening  we got back in contact with 2 others. The fourth one finished up with school and we'll finally be able to start meeting him more often. It takes some time, but once we put in our little bit of effort, God really starts to work with people. Not only those we come in contact with, but ourselves too. There's a quote (I think from Elder Christofferson) that says how the best way to find ourselves is by helping others. The actual quote is a lot better, but I can't remember it completely.

So we've been teaching this guy (for the sake of privacy I'll name him John). He's smart and has a lot of faith, but he also has a whole lot of weird, fantastical stories. Ghosts, magic, imaginary houses, doppelgangers, slow-motion knife fights, you name it. All things that he has apparently experienced. Somehow he's always able to connect it back to our lesson, but not before saying (several times) "and I thought to myself: wooooooooow" every few seconds as he tells his story. Pretty entertaining...I've tried unsuccessfully to mimic the level of excitement and wonder that he manages to express each time he says wow. He's pretty awesome, I'm excited for the day, whether in this life or afterwards, that I'll know whether or not any of his stories are actually true, haha.

Aside from that, we had another caroling party (this time as a whole zone) by a winter market in Berlin. We sang some songs, shared tons of cards, and even attracted a few drunk dudes who joined in singing with us. I'm excited to see what'll come from it all. Granted, some people just took a card for the packet of gummy bears attached to it, some took them so we wouldn't keep bothering them, some probably took them out of curiosity...but either way it's an opportunity for Heavenly Father to start/continue working in their lives.

I can't believe Christmas is this week. We've got a solid Christmas tree (Car's wrapping paper cut into triangles), lots of quality member time, last second Christmas-card sharing and lessons with returned investigators. Above all else, a week centered on Jesus Christ, what could be better? The Gospel is awesome. God and Jesus Christ love and understand us perfectly, and are with us every step of the way. Merry Christmas!

Elder Larsen