6-11-12

Hello everyone! I hope you can all honestly tell me you are doing well. :)

Things are going well this week. We got Jenifer and Elson commited to baptizm! Very cool. They are actually living together, and are not married, so they will be making the choice soon as to whether to get married or have one of them move out. Worst case scenario is that they drop the baptizmal date because they don't want to commit to a big, relationship changing decision like that. But I don't think that will happen. :)

We are teaching quite a few people, but to go down the list would be long and boring. :P

My new companion is great. We are getting along very well. There are always differences that one runs into, but there hasn't been anything of note. He's a fun guy from Middletown, Pennslyvania. Likes music a lot and has a guitar here in the field. Cool guy.

The weather here has been rather up and down. Some days warm enough for short sleeved shirts, other days cold enough for a coat. Rather intense. Not too bad though. I'm not really complaining. :)

I will now be including a couple sections from my correspondence with my uncle Walter again. He asks quite good questions. :)

He asked what we do for food on the run, I told him that there are bakeries everywhere, and we normally would just drop by one of those. Pastries, really nice bread, snack stuff like little sandwiches or even little pizza-looking things.

He asked about whether little kids said stuff to us a lot, he having gotten that a lot on his mission. - - There was actually one kid that came up and talked to us once. He said 'Was arbeiten Sie?' Which kinda translates into what work are you guys doing, or what are you up to kind of a thing. We told him we were missionaries, and he just kinda said 'Oh.' And pretty much walked away after that. Funny little moment. We also have had a couple different instances where teenagers hear us speaking English, and speak a couple phrases to each other loud enough for us to hear, and then laugh with each other about it. None of them ever actually try to really talk to us or anything. Funny people.

He asked whether I have been doing any splits or exchanges - - We do do exchanges actually. My last companion was district leader, and he is asked to do a lot of exchanges. We usually did them once a week. Did one with each of the other elders in our district, one with one of our zone leaders, and one other time with the elders in Neuköln. Was pretty intense. Weird to sleep somewhere other than my appartment, and be with someone other than my companion. Makes for some good adventures though.

In any case, I hope you all are doing well. I challenge you all to kick your Book of Mormon reading up a notch. If you don't read, try reading one verse a night. Not bad at all. It could be random, or it could be in order. If you already read each night, try moving it up a notch. Read more. Start using colored pencils to mark. Come up with a creative color coding that makes sense to you. You could try studying a topic instead of just reading at random or in order. I have heard that studying a topic can make for much more wonderful study time. Maybe try expanding what you are studying in. Jesus the Christ is wonderful. The Bible is always there. Conference talks are a great resource of modern day scripture. :) Try to keep the Book of Mormon in there every day though. :) Just do what you can! Challenge yourself! Go start enjoying the Gospel! It's such a glorious thing. :)

Have a wonderful week everyone. Go spread the Light you have. And if you don't have any, I have got to recommend finding some. :) Talk to you next week!

- Elder Michael Miles