The Celestial Language

Hallo,

Sorry about not sending this yesterday, for whatever reason people
only seem to be able to meet with us on Mondays, so we keep having to
ask if we can move our email time to Tuesday.

The crowning event of this week was, of course, the dedication of the
Freiberg Temple. Not only were we able to hear President Uchtdorf
speak in German, but Elder Bednar as well, who served his mission in
Germany. I suppose German really is the celestial language after all.
Unfortunately the satellite connection at the stake center in Hannover
was struggling so we ended up missing a good chunk of President
Uchtdorf's words, but it was still pretty legit.

Nothing else from this week can really compare with that, but we did
have a couple cool experiences. So the typical German teenager when
stopped on the street will typically stare at you for a second and
then start laughing before walking away. After experiencing this
rather often, I've become somewhat wary of the mysterious creatures
known as teenagers and wasn't particularly excited when we crossed
paths with one a few days ago. Well instead of walking away, laughing,
he listened and asked questions until we had shared pretty much the
entire first lesson. Though he didn't have interest in meeting, he did
have interest in the Book of Mormon ("I can have it for free!?").
We're hoping and praying that he'll read it and one day have interest
in learning more.

Second cool experience, we were walking through the center of town and
this random guy comes and talks to us in English, "are you guys
missionaries?" He's a student from Syria and had met the missionaries
(not sure where or how much he met with them) but he gave us his
number and said he'd like to come to church. It was kind of awkward,
because we had to tell him he'd have to wait a week because of the
temple dedication, but we have an appointment with him later today. It
was a nice reminder of who is really in charge of this work, at the
end of the day it's not really us doing anything, it's just God using
us as instruments in His hands.

That's all for this week folks, have an awesome week!

Elder Larsen