Hey guys!

I’m not going to write much today, because we will talk in a few days, but we had a great week. I got to go on exchanges to Flensburg with Elder Bretzing, and it is a gorgeous city. We had lots of success too, which was cool. They are super focused on finding people, so we did some of that and found 3 new people. While we were doing that, Elder Allen found an entire African family at the train station. The wife and son are already baptized, and the husband isn’t yet, as well as the 8 year old daughter, but they came to church and the kids especially loooooved it. They are super cool, and we are excited to meet with them in the future.

We met with Herr G, that man that asks the super hard questions. We just went LeGrand Richards style and started with baptism by immersion, gift of the Holy Ghost, etc. He had a big problem, because he thought that apostasy not only didn’t happen, but couldn’t happen. He showed us the scripture where Christ was talking to Peter and told him he was the rock, and gave him the keys, and then told him that the church would never be prevailed against. That stumped us for a second – I’ve never thought of it that way – but then we talked about Christ dying. We asked him if Christ being killed was in any way a failure. He said, of course, no. And of course, we know that in a way, Christ died to be resurrected. We compared that with the church, and said that it was no failure that the church collapsed. It needed to happen, to prove the power of God. He LOVED that. He finally agreed to read in the Book of Mormon (He has only read in D&C in the past) so he’s starting to make progress.

We had a couple other cool things happen to us, like the man that called us and told us he wanted to be Christian, but that story is better saved for face to face! 🙂

Speaking of which. We will have to remain flexible, because we don’t really know what is happening. Because of the time difference, and the fact that we are skyping at the church, we can’t do it on Christmas itself. We were going to do it on the day after Chirstmas, if that’s alright. It would be about 6 am for you. Does that sound alright? Let me know – like I said, it can be changed.

Everything is going great here. The ward is starting to pick up, Christmas in Germany is beautiful, and I’m loving it.

To answer your question, Mom, yeah, just email the applications to me. I should get them. Attached are the pictures of my first serious souvenir, something called a Pyramide (pronounced Pyrameedeh). It is from this part of Germany called the Erzgeberge (Ore mountains) where Christmas was basically invented. They do handmade wood work. For example, they made the original nutcracker. That’s them. This pyramide is from the 1950’s, and also plays music. This is probably my favorite thing in Germany. The blades spin when you light the candles, and then the little figures spin too. I think it is so beautiful. How I’m getting that home is an entirely different story.

I love you guys! See ya Friday!

Elder Greaves