I´m not lying. Keep your apartment clean!

Hey mom! So, this week was good! We started off with a great P day, where we cleaned! I don´t know if you knew this, but I´m not the neatest person in the world, and, even though I worked housekeeping for 3 years, I don´t enjoy cleaning. But it had to be done, so now our apartment is Spick and Span! So nice :) Having a clean apartment is such a great help. I´m not lying. Keep your apartment clean!

So, right now is probably the hardest time for missionary work here in Germany because of two things. One, normal school is out now, and everyone is trying to squeeze in their vacations (they only have 6 weeks for summer in this poor, deprived country) and the college students all have their exams right now. There´s no "finals week" here. It´s more like "finals 3 months." But, inspite of this, we still get work done! Yea yea! 

We have good number of part member families here in our ward, and now we´re starting to try and do more with these families. It´s really nice to work with these families, because the investigator already knows a lot about the church, has probably been to a few meetings, and already has a good support structure and friends in the church. We were working this week with one family, family Szymczak (don´t even try to pronounce it right) and the i"friend of the church" in the family had a ton of questions and problems about certain things in the gospel that are really simple, they just don´t understand completely, and they get scared. For example, they thought that a patriachal blessing was something big and special that only men could receive in the church, and they didn´t think that was fair to the women, but we helped them understand what they really are, and why we have them. Whole experience has really shown me that if we disagree with some part of the gospel, it´s probably because we don´t understand it.

We also did a service project this week for some awesome members who moved. They now live right across the street from us, and can spy on us through the giant windows in our apartment. The move was good, it´s just... well... They moved to the 5th floor of a really old building. And they had a lot of boxes and furniture. And no elevator. It was hard. We were with this family and other members, constantly going up and down stairs for a good 4 hours... Let´s just say, we got really fit that night... And I´m still sore.

Well, I´m running out of time for this email. I have some other stuff to do, but I wanted to end with a quick spiritual thought.

John 17:3 And this is ^alife ^beternal, that they might ^cknow thee the only true ^dGod, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast ^esent.

Receiving eternal life is getting to know God and Jesus Christ. Deeply, and fully. We do that when we read his words, and pray to him. We can´t get to know him, unless we talk to him, and we hear what he says back to us. In Sunday school yesterday we had a lesson about listening to the spirit. To demonstrate it, the teacher took someone, blind folded them, and then had someone else tell them how to get back to their seat, while only whispering through a tube. After they did that, the teacher had everyone write down something that blocks the spirit on a piece of paper. She took the paper, crumpled it up, and puit in the tube. After doing this, they repeated the activity, but the blindfolded member couldn´t understand what the other one was saying, because it was all muffled and blocked. 

If we want to receive life eternal, then we need to be willing to give up certain things that will block the holy ghost, and block us from getting to know our heavenly father, and Jesus Christ.

I love you, have a great week!