A Whole New Flippin World

Interesting, so apparently the first paragraph of my email last week didn't disappear...for some reason it just wasn't showing up on my ipad. Bro, you´re gonna have to give me more information than "a ring box." Is this for the same girl who had the sign at the Timpview Car wash? And I see you´re already bringing shame upon the family name by not wasting everyone in frisbee. Tut, tut (tehee). Lisa, you´re just gonna have to blame Joey for asking such vulgar questions. If you liked my ol atheist friend, I´m sure you´ll enjoy this. A couple weeks ago we met this lady who was also of the opinion that we were enslaved by our religion. And yet you could hear how much smoking had destroyed her voice. Apparently not even obvious physical evidence is enough to convince people. That´s a rough way to lose a client, dad. The concept of being a friend to everyone and loving the Lord is definitely a topic I've thought a lot about. Well Mom, you may be interested to hear that I did indeed bear my testimony as well (granted, it was somewhat expected since it was my first week in a new city). Unfortunately there´s still little to see in terms of mountains. That 90 second crying thing should come in handy. I´m basically just bawling all day long, but with that I´ll be able to disperse it into 90 second intervals. I guess great minds think alike Joey, because my old companion also told me that I needed to make Captain Barbosa jokes. How about instead of dictating a letter from Jake to me, you just send Jake to me in person? Since you neglected to match the names, I suppose I can do it myself. The Spleen-Joey, Bowler-Michelle, Blue Raja-Smarty, Shoveler-Jake and Invisible Boy-Zeke.

Well, in case the title didn't make it obvious enough, Stadthagen is quiiite a bit different from ol Berlin. After spending p-day at a Holocaust Memorial (since I guess it´s important to leave on as depressing of a note as possible), I got shipped off to West Germany. Met Elder Barbosa in Hannover and then we were off to Stadthagen, which so far hasn't stayed very true to it's name...haven't met anyone named Hagen yet. But aside from that this place seems pretty great. I didn't really notice it until leaving, but everything in Berlin just seems a little bit drearier. Here things seem to be a bit more alive. Rowdy teenagers, sarcastic members, friendly strangers. The only downside is that there are no longer a billion people on the streets to talk to. In Berlin over the course of an hour you could try talking to dozens of people, whereas here you might get a solid 20... and some of those may be from trying to talk to the same person 2 or more times. So basically it means we do a lot of dooring.

Elder Barbosa is also pretty great. Definitely miss Elder Burns and his constant hilarious sassiness, but Cap´n Barbosa is pretty solid too. He can sing, play piano, speak good German...basically everything that I can´t do, haha.

In terms of the work, we had a few pretty solid lessons. 2 of our investigators are teenagers from Afghanistan, who want to be baptized but still haven´t gotten long-term visas. Right now we´re going through the 5th lesson and working with President Fingerle on what we can do to speed things up. After our lesson we took them with us to the ward sports night and played some soccer. Unfortunately a year of not playing soccer hasn´t made me any better (oddly enough, it´s almost like I´ve gotten worse! shocking...). It was still pretty stinking fun though. We also taught an older lady, who is making good progress but has trouble coming to church because of work. Other than that, finding central over here. We did manage to find a new investigator, a guy who has been going through some difficulties in his life. He´s got some interesting ideas (reincarnation, dead bodies turning into starts, etc.) but he´s open to change and to a better life. Which just happens to be what the Gospel helps people with, what a coincidence! :)

That´s about it for this week, hope y'all have a good one!

Elder Larsen