Arrived 2/15/10

Hi!

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh thank the Maker! I was worrying about those SD cards like none other...so it all worked out then. Haha, yeah, that district in Halle where Elder R mooned the cameras was just crazy. Lot of dead missionaries, lot of good memories...

I do like landscapes. And clouds, especially dark storm clouds...there's not THAT many pictures of sandwiches, c'mon...and certainly none with sauerkraut in them. For all my hatred of sauerkraut, I have only eaten it like maybe 5 times on my mission, and it's good here in the Fatherland. Germans eat a ton more rotkohl than sauerkraut, i think i can safely say...

Well, Taylor is getting her license....congrats, sis! Elder D and I should be getting our German licenses here at the end of Feb. or so. That only costed 55€... :P But it'll be good for life. Woot!

So THIS coming Saturday is the conference with Dieter. I'll be sure not to call him that when he's here :) We're driving up on Friday morning, and the Ms will drop us in Brandenburg cuz we are not allowed into Berlin itself until Saturday morning. So we'll spend the night there in my old city and have a nice evening with the good Elders there, and then on Saturday morning we'll ride up to Berlin! It will be exciting, man...I'll get some good pictures, don't you worry...

So you went through 'a few' of my pics? What does that mean? 9 GBs a little too much to handle in one go? :)

Oh man, I miss the old gang from back home. Was Brandon doing well? He is a good kid. I hope nothing happens to him in the Army. Was he starting to fill out? :) Be sure to let him know, though I don't even know how that 'week' before school will even work out...

Next transfer call is the 6th of March or so, that Saturday...and there is almost no chance that Elder D will stick around. It was unlikely this last time, and this next time, well, we are having our fun now cuz it is 95% likely he'll be gone. This one right now is his 4th here and our 3rd together overall...lot of time together. I'll prolly have one or two more here after this one ends, and then get bumped off someplace else for my last 2 or 3...and thereby ditch getting shipped off to Frankfurt mission.

Did you guys catch that part of my last letter? About the mission boundary changes? Big news, right? Any comments....? Hehe...

Well, yesterday D S blessed the sacrament and S L pased it, and they both did a great job and are really makin' good progress. I am way proud of them. They will be running the branch here one day...

Other than that, this past week we had a lot of appointments fall out, and that is always a bummer. we heard so much about German dependability and all that jazz and man maybe 1 in 25 appointments you make out actually goes through. It's quite a funnel...but this week we have some great stuff lined up and some neat people who will hopefully come to their appointments! ;) So it should be good. And then to cap it off with Präs Uchtdorf, my, what a week it will be...

The Lord truly does bless us though. Zum Beispiel: a man just showed up to church yesterday, and we had no idea who he was. turns out he used to come to church sometimes back like 5 years ago, but then the church moved location recently (like last September or so) and he couldn't find the building anymore. Well we talked to his son on the street at some point the past few weeks and gave his son a card, and the son gave the card to his father, and then the father was able to come again cuz he then had the new address. So he came and we talked to him a bit a made out an appt. for Wed! Good stuff. The Lord will always prepare a way :)

I know the Church is true. Thought you ought to know :D You all have a great week, don't wreck the new car, I'll do my best out here.

Just a few requests: could I get the application info to the school of fine art at BYU, parents? I'd like to know what is involved in that before it gets to much closer to registration.

Also, Emma, Elder C has a website from his past where he has some of his old stories up, and if you'd like to check them out, he said it's fair game. Reading, I mean, not stealing his story ideas :P :) I'll get you the link in a seperate mail. He has some very cool stuff. He also requests the next part of that little bit you did about Emmanuel visiting that angel on the beach as the baby turtles come out...I told him it was prolly just a one-off there but if there's more to that stroy feel free to mail that out here, we'd love to see it. Or anything else too. So yeah :)

Well. I think that is all. Love you all, pray for you, thank you for your support. Please don't lose my SD cards! Hee hee! Thanks for everything! Tschüß!

Elder Sterling Mason, Nordhausen