A Totally "Sick" Week

Ja Mutti, ich kann dich doch verstehen. Ich liebe dich auch. Hoffentlich werde ich eines Tages die Celestiale Sprache so gut wie Englisch beherrschen. What snacks are going to be German, Mom? I've learned that there's more to Germany than just beer and brats. Strangely enough, I don't think I even had my first brat until 3 or 4 months in. Lisa, am I supposed to know who on earth this Lambchop person is? Glad you and Joey are spreading the good news of ultimate frisbee. I'll keep your advice in mind, Heidi. If I'm ever 36 weeks pregnant, I'll try to avoid giant shopping sprees. Funny that you asked, Joey. It was past midnight here at the end of the last session of General Conference, so I was indeed asleep for the closing prayer. Sounds like you're rocking the missionary work over there. Andy, have you been playing at all with the old dudes? Go remind them who the best ultimate players are. The German's coming pretty well, I can understand most of what's said. Still some annoying grammar rules that I don't really have totally figured out, but it's sure a lot better than it was a few months ago. I really liked Elder Holland's talk as well, Dad. I think that's a message that a lot of people need to hear.

Quite the exciting week over here. Monday evening we listened to the last session of general conference (due to the time difference we weren't able to watch it on Sunday). I think what happened would be pretty well explained in that picture that Elder Holland showed during his talk. Tomorrow caught us. In the middle of the night I hear some unearthly noises coming from the bathroom. A couple minutes later Elder Barboza enters the room.
"Are you ok?"
"Nope"
After which he rushes back into the bathroom. A few hours later there wasn't really much left in his stomach. That morning the ward mission leader and I gave him a blessing, and finally in the afternoon the vomitting came to an end. With him obviously being in no shape to work, I spent my time calling ancient investigators, updating records and watching cheesy old church videos. On Wednesday we received reinforcements from the Minden Elders and basically tag-teamed with them so we could keep some of our appointments in Stadthagen. After that Elder Barboza was starting to feel better, and we managed to get a bit of work done. Poor Elder had it pretty rough. Still can't eat any meat without pretty much dying.

We did manage to talk for a few minutes with our investigators from Afghanistan. With the policies on teaching people from potentially dangerous countries, it's important that we make sure their parents aren't hostile to christianity, so we had them call their parents (who live currently in Iraan) a few weeks ago. Ever since then it's been very hard to reach them. Their parents don't want them to have any thing to do with us. No baptism, no visiting the church, no Book of Mormon, no meeting with missionaries. It's really tough, because they have strong testimonies. At the end of our conversation they told us that they just need time to try to work things out.

Yesterday we got our transfer calls, and me and Elder Barboza will be staying here in Stadthagen. After the last couple difficult weeks, it'll be good to have this transfer to get back in the game. Having had a couple days of doing basically nothing, I'm ready to go back to work. It's funny, part of me thought it would be nice to relax for a couple days, but not being able to go out and work is actually a bit depressing.

Anywho, keep being awesome and keep strengthenin them testimonies. Have a good week!

Elder Larsen