Level 2 Christians

You were right, Mom. Wow Joey is an old man...34? Is his hair still brown or has it turned white yet? Tehee. Well Lisa, if it makes you feel any better that seems like more of an awkward question than an awkward answer, but how should I know. I also happened to play ultimate frisbee for the first time this year, just barely today. We played 3 on 3 as a district which was pretty fun. I'm pretty jealous, Andy. Didn't the third book in the series come out a while ago? I saw Way of Kings and Words of Radiance in a bookstore a few months ago, it would be interesting to read them in German. Yeah Joey, it's definitely a unique time. Facebook is about to be introduced to our mission, all our area book records and stuff are digital, we walk around showing people videos on our ipads...every day there's more potential to do good and more potential to do evil. I agree with you, Dad. Even with President Monson's talks being a bit shorter than they used to be, they're powerful and hit right where they're needed. Charity and the Book of Mormon seem to both have their role as cornerstones; without charity we are nothing and without the Book of Mormon a testimony falls apart.

Another crazy week in Berlin. The Easter Initiative for this year started a couple days ago and we gotta get going in sharing it with the members. The last couple weeks we've had General Conference and Stake Conference, so I still don't really know many members in the ward, so visiting them and sharing the video will be a win.

We had an appointment with one of our investigators this week, a German college-age dude who has like the most abstract mind in the world. He brought his girlfriend and even though at first she hadn't wanted to come, in the end she came with him and ended up being really interested. We taught the restoration and she was excited to get a Book of Mormon. Hopefully we'll be meeting again this week. I've discovered in the last few months that some of the best missionaries are actually people investigating the church...who knew.

Spring has arrived in Berlin, and with it, sadly, hay fever. I already had a bit of a cold and it suddenly joined forces with allergies to literally destroy my face. It hit particularly hard during a lesson with a spanish speaking lady, so I was just kind of sneezing and blowing my nose the whole time, not really knowing what was going on. I sadly haven't been able to learn spanish overnight, which is kind of what I was hoping for :).

Anywho, General Conference was the bomb. In response to Elder Rasband's story about putting his foot in a lady's door to ask for a referral, President Fingerle sent us a letter saying that doing that in Germany is illegal and we should never do it, haha. One statement that really caught me though was from Ulisses Soares, when he said that faith is manifested in a positive attitude. I had never really made that connection. It's sometimes easy to feel justified in hanging your head down after a difficult day but if we really understand the nature of God's plan and Jesus Christ's Atonement, there's nothing that can keep us down.

Oh and last thing, we met with a couple African dudes this week and at the end one of them was saying that he was really impressed with the things we believe in, and the other one was like "yeah man, these guys are like advanced Christians." Hence the subject of this letter.

Adios, amigos!

Elder Larsen