Feb 7 A treasured normal week

Liebe Familie,

Sister Carroll is still alive and working hard in München. Last week seems forever ago and just a moment ago at the same time, so things are more back to normal. We had some amazing lessons this week and a lot of love from Heaven. Towards the beginning of the week I was not feeling very well, but with a good fight, I won and was able to run back to full speed at the end of the week. We ate dinner at President and Sister Condie's home Wednesday night. We had three new Sisters arrive during mid-transfers. One was called to our mission and is from the area of Leipzig, Deutschland. The two others were called to serve in USA and have not yet received their Visas to live there. They had the option to put of the mission longer or serve in our mission until the Visa arrives. Both had waited a long time already and our mission is absolutely wonderful, so we welcomed them! We started dinner a little after 8pm, so Sister Quist and I ran out after dinner and before the Testimony meeting to get home by 10pm. No idea in which area each of the Sisters are serving right now.

We had another amazing lesson with Sutha and we brought Anna Lena this time. The Spirit was strong and I was reminded how applicable the doctrine is in our every day worries. In Sri Lanca, the Cast system rules nearly everything socially. It sounds frustrating, but the beauty of it is that this life is the time we have to prepare ourselves to prepare to meet God who will judge us perfectly--in perfect justice. We will have peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come if we just accept the gospel and strive to do our best. This plan is truly a Plan of Happiness and will bring each individual happiness and bring families closer together. As Elder Ellis always said in the MTC "just accept it!!" The gospel is true and it will make your life happier! Of course I don't want anyone to blindly follow what we teach, but we want them to just TRY an experiment upon these words and see for themselves if it works and I promise it does.

Herr Yari made a lot of progress this week. Chrissi is still amazing and I love meeting with her twice a week. We very rarely had member appointments before this week and we met with the Habermanns for lunch (which was really delicious) and learned from their experience. We have several eating appointments next week and are excited to better know the members. I think eating appointments are very different in the USA. The secret to make your local missionaries happy: when you want to feed your missionaries, first get on your knees and ask God to help you evaluate who you know that might be ready for the gospel. Invite them to the appointment. That invitation would sound like heaven to a missionary.

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Sister Carla June Carroll