Endure

Yeah Mom, Germany is quite particular about such things. So particular that they wouldn't let Elder Anderson do it, because you can apparently only de-register a week before leaving, as opposed to a week and a half. So we need to still get that taken care of. I guess Chase getting home is just another sign of my advancing age. It's quite terrifying. Well Lisa, sadly the state in its entirety that I'm currently in probably couldn't satisfy your lederhosen request. Saxony just can't quite pull off the classic German guy wearing Lederhosen and drinking a beer style. That would probably be the ultimate dirty devil challenge though, going through the whole thing in Lederhosen. Well Andy, I'm not really sure how graduating is going to help you with the ladies, but I hope it does. I'm not sure about Skype Heidi, though it would probably be around 5 or 6ish in the evening here. It's also more likely that I'd contact y'all through Skype, since our mission cell phones can't make international calls. Cool to hear about #LightTheWorld things from your side of the world, we're working hard over here to do stuff for that as well. No Joey, sadly I haven't seen any Donnerstag reindeer. Frankly I didn't know they existed. You'll have to send me some of those family pictures, Dad.

Sorry for the lack of emails last week, on Monday we spent a chunk of the day in Leipzig so that Elder Anderson could de-register himself from Germany, which with travel time included took up a few hours of our pday, leaving us with pretty much no time for emails.

On Saturday we got transfer calls; I'll be staying at least another 7 weeks in Werdau, woohooo! My new companion's name is Elder Hunt, I've never met him before but he was in the same MTC group as my last companion, Elder Earl. Also on Saturday we went caroling in Zwickau with a group of other missionaries and members, and I'm starting to notice a somewhat disturbing change in my life...namely that I actually like singing now. Quite strange.

Aside from that nothing too exciting happened this week, just getting lots of random things taken care of, mostly in preparation for Elder Anderson going home. One thing in particular that I noticed this week is the tendency some missionaries, myself included sometimes have to see the concept of enduring more of a pain than a pleasure. Enduring a day of going door to door, enduring the strict schedule of missionary life, enduring the mission rules, etc. In reality that isn't really at all what enduring in a Gospel-sense of the word means. Enduring means pressing forward in spite of hardships, full of faith and joy. Obeying the rules or going finding because we "have to" isn't going to give us the power to stay true to the end...or to even want to. Of course that's just the personal opinion of Elder Larsen :).

Well I hope y'all have a marvelous week, love you!

Elder Larsen