10-16-11

Hello Everyone.

Well my week has been pretty good. Man the work here is so much different than my last area but its work none the less and it needs to be done. Its so sad to see the effect of the DDR here and how run down things are. Like I think I said last week we havent been working in the city of Prenzlau because everybody already knows us and so its kinda crappy but we have just been going to little dorfs cause our area is so big and working there. The time just keeps going by so fast I cant believe 2 weeks of the transfer are already over. Than before I know it I will hit my year mark. Its crazy to think that I am as old in the mission as my trainer was when he trained me haha what the heck!! My german is getting so much better. I gave a talk in church yesterday and this time it was 10 minutes which was the longest talk I have had to give. I wrote my talk and everything but I only used what I wrote like 2 times in my whole ten minutes most of it was just me talking so thats good I am getting more comfortable with it. I got a lot of compliments on my german too. It kinda sucks cause the elder here before me was 1 transfer older than me and his german is terrible so the members kinda think that mine is too so they dont really talk to me but hopefully now they will start because my german is ok! Yesterday was pretty crazy I gave my talk than I sat down in the front and I couldnt believe it the spirit hit me so strong it was the craziest feeling I have ever had like butterflies times like 1000 maybe that was just a confirmation that I did a good job? Hopefully haha. I spoke about baptism and the importance of baptism I was also able to tell Peters story so that was good too. Other than that we have been doing a lot of finding here. Our teaching pool is like nothing so that kinda sucks most of my time here has been spent knocking on doors mostly or talking to people on the street. This week wasnt quite as good as last week we only made out 4 appointments so that was too bad. But man there are some crazy people here. I really think that some of them think that the wall is still up or something. The other day we were doing doors and we came to this pretty big house and not many people in east germany have big houses so we knocked and this guy came out and initially he was pretty friendly but he started saying how capitalism is crap and he is all about Karl Marx and all this stuff and he said I dont believe in God but if you want to talk about Karl Marx than that will be good. We were sitting there thinking what the heck he is rich and living in a large house and he is a Karl Marx fan? That doesnt make any sense but than we just left him alone! I have kinda been wanting to record some of the reactions of people it would be so funny. Sometimes when we talk to people they act like we have a sickness or something and start freaking out and say oh no oh no and close their doors haha its pretty funny. Yesterday we went to this small dorf and we parked in fron of this apartment building which is most of east germany big one room apartment buildings. So we started ringing and they didnt have a speaker box like most so we just rang and hoped they would stick their heads out the window or something or come down and talk to us. So we rang about 4 people and nobody came out but there was this old guy walking on the street and he was talkin to us so we went and started talkin to him and in the middle of our conversation this guy about 40 or so storms out the door and just starts yelling at us saying that we cant klingle here and all this garbage and my comp is like we have permission from the country to be here and to klingle and he was probably a couple of centimeters from my comps face! And I thought they were going to get in a fight. Because my comp kinda sorta likes to argue with people. Which is one thing I am thankful for that I dont know the german language perfectly is I cant argue with people. Hahah and than this guy who was freaking out saw our license plate and our license plate is from Frankfurt and he started calling us wessies which is like a bad thing for people from the west. Oh man it was crazy but than we found some pretty cool people too. On Friday we were doin street contacting and it was cold and late and time to go home and we couldnt find anyone everyone was unfriendly but on the was back to our car I talked to this younger girl probably 17 or 18 and she was the last person on the street and she was way open and telling us she didnt have a faith or anything but she had read the bible and we talked to her about eternal families and she said thats great cause her dad died when she was 12 or something and we had a really good conversation on the street than we made out another appointment man it was awesome! So ya there is still cool people here hahah. Its really like living in a different country coming from far west Germany to far east Germany its nuts!! Hahah It will all be good though. Man how I am missing football!! One of my zone leaders loves football too he is a huge kid and he played for dixie before he came on his mission he is from pleasent grove. But its good he calls sometimes and we chat about football so thats nice hahah. Thats great that BYU is finally starting to look pretty good! Well not really anything too new this week.... Hahah thanks for everything and I hope you all have a great week!! Love you all!!

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Elder Christian J. Voran