11/3/14 Halloween? And new guy missionary arrival

There wasn't really much of a Halloween for me this year. I called up one of our friends we're teaching and asked him if he was going to celebrate Halloween. He said "No, Halloween is of the devil." I'd say that's the general thought about it here, but there are still some neighborhoods were kids can go trick-or-treating, and last year when I was in Darmstadt there was still a ward Trunk-or-Treat (car tailgate-style) party.

The new missionary got to Germany safe and sound. I down went to Frankfurt Wednesday on a three-hour bus ride and then we both came back to Dortmund (Just to remind everyone--I am in DORTMUND. Haha, similar to Darmstadt, even in the feel of the city and ward, but different) together on Thursday morning. His name is Elder Awerkamp. Pretty German sounding, but he's American. He's also a twin, so that's exciting. We're really similar kinds of people, so we got along really well. He's already got really good German too!

A lot of our appointments with people fell out this week, but that's just Pech. (Pech is a German word that basically means you were unlucky or you got hosed). We did get really lucky in another way though. When we went to the city office to get him registered, the worker was nice enough to get his Visa setup so we didn't have to come back for another appointment! I didn't even know they could do that because I thought it would be a different office! Anyway, I'm super happy about that because that will make things a lot easier for us later on!

~Elder Mark Standring

(p.s. The second picture is of my missionary "family", or all the missionaries I have trained and those who they have trained. A couple are not pictured because they didn't get transferred.)