We're Not Aliens

Well Mom you may be happy to hear that I got the Christmas package! I'm quite impressed, yall included everything necessary for an adventure. Beef jerky, pringles and of course cosmic brownies. Awesomeness. Heidi if things ever get too busy with the kids you're welcome to send one of them my way. Too bad Allie isn't really a vampire, I'm not sure if I ever did end up seeing her Halloween picture. Yeah Lisa, it's certainly interesting. Somehow a mission is all about you and nothing about you at the same time. Recently I read the talk you sent me again, the fourth missionary. Seems to be a similar concept. I appreciate the weekly pictures and videos :). Andy maybe you need to take a more 'missionary' perspective. It's not good enough that your boss "appreciates" you, you gotta get those referrals. Does he have a daughter, a niece, a sister? Glad to hear you're seeing the blessings Joey. Just the idea of being able to go to the temple twice in one day seems pretty crazy 'round these parts. Yeah Dad, in the last couple months we've also been talking about believing Christ. There was a general authority who talked about the difference between just believing in Christ, and believing Him and His promises and His power to help you. Cool stuff.

So this week was pretty solid. On Tuesday we had a conference in Freiberg with 70 or so missionaries. Most of it was in English, including most of what President Fingerle said, which made our goal of speaking 24/7 German somewhat difficult. But for the most part the meeting was super good. We talked a lot about ideas for finding people to teach, aside from the typical street contacting and dooring. There's a huge focus on finding college-age people, which isn't too easy since there's no university in our area. But we've started to put a lot of effort into thinking up new ideas of how we can reach the people and show them that we're not aliens.

Anywho, our investigators are finally starting to emerge from their sick beds! Woohoo! With one we've been having a bit of a stand-still. He was born and raised atheist and new concepts such as the pre-earth life, fall and atonement are causing something of an inner conflict with him. He reads the Book of Mormon every day, prays and comes to church but he still feels like his faith is too weak and refuses to talk about baptism. Patience is a virtue, but we are trying to do whatever we can to help him make the right decision. We're also working right now with a part member family, they're still a little bit sick but we were able to make out an appointment for this evening. They're super cool but some negative experiences with the ward have scared them off a little bit. It's not too simple but it's great as a missionary to have to rely on inspiration from God to help people overcome their concerns and follow Jesus Christ.

Well my time is pretty much up, but it's great to hear from you guys. I love you and hope you have a great week!