Brrrr Diggity

Well Hurro There,

Geez Mom, I'm sure glad that person let you help her! Cause I mean, it's
not like you spend 95% of your time helping people anyway. That
doesn't seem fair that Grandma got to see President Uchtdorf...I'm the
one in Germany. But yeah, several people, upon hearing that I'm from
Provo, asked me the same question about Sister Walker. But nope, never
met her, in or out of the mission. Andy why haven't I heard any news
of you smoochin it up with you know who?  Get on that ship before it
sets sail son. Lisa, I've thought
about that same kind of thing, and I'm not sure if I'll ever fully
grip the concept of miracles. One interesting thing though is that
even when Christ was on the earth it's not like he just healed every
sick person in sight. They had to be faithful and willing to act. I
love the bible video with the blind man. All Christ did was put clay
on his eyes and tell him to wash. Rather than asking why or being
annoyed about a guy telling him what to do, he simply did it. And then
came the miracle. But yeah Lisa, you can go ahead and stop getting
sick. As for our angel friend, I'm not sure, Joey. Elder Anderson said
there's some sort of trick you can use to get in the church. I've yet
to meet any board gamers, at least ones that know anything other than
settlers and ticket to ride. We had the same topic in Sunday School
here, Dad. At least it was supposed to be, we really just talked about
the BoM in general. Good to hear that everything's going Bueno.

Germany still hasn't figured out that there's supposed to be snow in
the Winter, but they've got the cold part right. We didn't have any
appointments  one day so we got to do tons of finding in  the freezing
cold. I think I may just be a wimp though, none of these Germans seem
to even mind the weather haha.

So multiple sources have told me (you were the first Lisa) how it's
weird in Germany for a total stranger to ask someone how they're
doing. Well after 9 weeks, I finally discovered it for myself! So
there we are having family home evening with a part member family. We
had barely started sharing a spiritual thought when one of the sons,
probably about 22 years old (also a member) went on this long tirade
about Elder Anderson asking him how he was doing. It took probably
about 20 minutes to get everything settled down and back to the
lesson. So... I Suppose I'll have to use a little more caution in the
future with that one.

This week we also had the opportunity to teach the daughter of a
witch. Pretty interesting stuff. It's always quite the struggle in
knowing whether or not people are telling the truth. Quite a few
people seem to believe in witchcraft, voodoo, flying people ("It was
on the news, didn't you see it?!"). But that's  why the Book of Mormon
is so awesome. You can actually know that it's true, rather than
having to take someone else's word for it. It was actually a pretty
good lesson though, hopefully this lady can find some peace
(apparently she was cursed by her mom). Whether or not that's true,
she could definitely using the healing power of the Atonement. We also
started teaching a guy that had stopped to listen to our caroling from
a few weeks back. He called and wanted to meet with us, so (never
thought I'd say it) hooray for caroling.

To kick off the New Year everyone in the mission got to run a 5k (I
guess that's a thing in Germany). At the end of it they had a bunch of
booths set up and were giving out free stuff. There was some sort of
drink, which I assumed to be apple cider or something. It wasn't apple
cider, but it tasted alright and was warm, so I didn't really think
much of it. When I walked back to our group, a couple elders came up
to me and asked if I was drinking beer. I basically had a heart
attack. I had no idea what beer tastes, feels or even really smells
like. I started thinking how on earth I'd be able to explain to
President Fingerle that I'd been drinking beer, and what on earth it
would feel like to be drunk. But then I looked around and saw that
basically every other missionary had it as well. It was just cider
after all...phew.

My thought for this week: trust in the Lord! Being a disciple of
Christ doesn't mean that life is just automatically easy, or that all
your troubles are taken away. What prophet is there that didn't have
to go through terribly difficult trials? What it does mean though is
that through the Atonement we can receive the strength to deal with
life's difficulties, and still be happy despite our hardships. In
Nephi's vision he saw the extinction of his entire posterity, and yet
his faith didn't waver. Instead he rejoiced in the glory and mercy of
the Lord. Abinadi, Mormon, Joseph Smith, all stayed faithful to their
dying breaths. Why? Because they knew what mattered, and they knew
where they were going. So yeah...feast on the words of Christ, pray
always, go for the gold (figuratively, not literally). Have a great
week!

Elder Larsen