Berlin is a Blast

Fortunately Mom, we also teach in German. I was surprised to find that
we're the only missionaries in the area; back when I was here at the
start of my mission there were 6 in Tiergarten. Wenn du willst Lisa,
kann ich meine Briefe auch auf Deutsch schreiben. Yeah it's hard to
say what the reason is that peoples be after us. I guess in their
defense, their membership is going down and we aren't necessarily
supporting their cause. Machu Pichu, I'm looking forward to it bro.
Boy I won't be seeing Jacob in ages...cray cray. Heidi don't pretend
that Savannah is going to be old enough to be baptized when I get
home. Gracias Jose, espero que no muertes beim Skifahren. Thanks for
the prayers Dad, I know they aren't going unanswered.

Life back in Berlin is a blast. The whole atmosphere is just so much
different than in the smaller cities. I love it, but it does have some
disadvantages. For example on transfer day when I got into Berlin we
were with the zone leaders waiting for the last missionary to come in
to the train station, when a guy came up to us and was asking us for
directions. He was from some other country and we couldn't understand
him, but eventually we were able to help him get to where he wanted to
go. A minute or so later Elder Ausobsky, one of the zone leaders
noticed that his backback, that he had put by the rest of our luggage,
was missing. Right then a guy came up to us and said that the guy who
came to ask for directions was just a distraction so that a second guy
could come and snag the backpack. Luckily he had his wallet in his
jacket pocket...unluckily his iPad was in the bag. And even when we
saw the guy and tried to chase after him, the Berlin trainstation is
too massive, with too many trains going every direction to possibly
catch someone who has a minute lead on you. So yeah...you don't really
get that kind of excitement in quaint little villages.

But overall life in Berlin is pretty great. There's so much to do and
seemingly no time to do it, so we've stayed pretty busy the last few
days. And when we have a couple hours to do finding, all we have to do
is walk out of our apartment and Bam! People! Not something that I saw
often in my last few areas.

We had stake conference this week, so I got to see a lot of the
members from Neukölln, where I served at the start of my mission. It
was especially weird to see a couple of the kids who had grown like a
foot since the last time I saw them. The theme at the conference was
about family history, and the member of the Seventy who talked
compared doing work for our ancestors to the ghost army in Lord of the
Rings. Not bad.

Yeah, that's pretty much all I've got for this week. Hasta la vista baby.

Elder Larsen