Getauft! (Baptized!)

You may be interested to hear Mom that I too, can't believe that Zeke is one year old. Boy aside from having seen pictures I can hardly find a reason to believe that he exists! As far as I know I'm just seeing pictures of Jake when he was younger. Boy Lisa, I never knew your true calling in life was to be a model. A B+ with a class average of 70%, Andy? Look who's turning into the family nerd! But hey, it seems it isn't too uncommon these days to see the nerds getting together with the babes, so it may be a smart way to go. What Wouard, you mean you aren't also going on the Dirty Devil? Boy it seems to be birthday season around these parts, Savvy turning 7??? Dad, you aren't the only one to mention Mom's new hair cut, yet I still haven't had the opportunity myself to see it. Thanks for the prayers Pops, we can feel them. Well Joey, while it's still not 100% if we can give Jake a baptism for his birthday, you may be interested to hear that Zeke got a surprise baptism for his birthday.

So funny story. Shortly after writing emails last Monday we got a call from one of the assistants to the President, Elder Day,  informed us that at a meeting they had had that morning, President Fingerle had the feeling that this week we could have 5 baptisms in the mission. So Elder Day asked us if we had anyone who could potentially be baptized...within 5 days. To make a long story short, our investigator Beate got baptized this last Saturday. Though we had to have a few jam-packed lessons, we were able to teach everything and despite the rushedness (yeah I don't think that's a word) of it, we had the feeling that she was ready for it. The whole time we've been teaching her she's had an excitement for reading the Book of Mormon, praying and keeping God's commandments. The ward wasn't super thrilled about how spontaneous it all was, but we had their support 100%. Her husband Peter was able to perform the baptism and all in all it was a pretty stinking awesome experience. Now the two of them mention every time we see them how impatient they are to be sealed together in the Temple, haha.



Though that was naturally the highlight of the week, we did have some other cool experiences in the last few days. One being on Saturday, when we had set up an appointment with a former investigator, where upon arriving instead of seeing him again we ran into his brother, who looked and acted so similar to the first guy that for a few seconds I legitimately wondered if he had tried to disguise himself. So we ended up teaching him and although he was really friendly and nice, he felt that there were too many evidences that the Book of Mormon couldn't be true. Upon asking him if he had read any of it, he said no. I guess it's a clever strategy of the adversary, doing whatever he can to keep people from reading the Book of Mormon, since all the points that people can bring up against it would be crushed if they were to sincerely read in and pray about it.

We're continuing to work with Frau Putschli, who is still working toward the 29th of October for her baptism. It's a little hard to see exactly where she's at in her conversion, and it's been difficult to get her to come to church, but we're pressing forward.

That's all for now folks, love you!

Elder Larsen