1932-11-21: "A Pleasant Evening with 6 Bible Sharks"

Dear Mother and Dad,

Didn't get a letter from you this week.  Must be something wrong.  Or is it a sore thumb?? Anyways those "briefs" are quite a weekly event to me, you know.

However, I did receive an epistle from Phil and also one from my Girl.  Phil seems to be enjoying himself even though he can't pay his rent on time.  He says that Clyde Ijams is becoming one of the prominent Gigolos of their fraternity, the Alpha Alpha (alfalfa).  They even make him wait for the permission of the house before going to see his girl.  They will probably make a collegiate Rowdy-dow out of him, what??...What is Druce doing now??  Phil says that her job has fallen through.  From all that I can gather from the papers, the depression seems to be getting worse over there.  These people over here are even beginning to be thankful that they live in Germany and not America.  And believe me they are bad off enough.  But you know what the Lord says in the twenty fourth chapter of Matthew:  "In the last days when the people are fallen from God there will be famines, wars and all sorts of afflictions."  So I guess the world had better start repenting or else take the consequences.  "Nas denken sie darüber?"  I have never seen a more Godless people than these over here.  You couldn't get into their house with a crow bar.

The weather is getting cold, and we awaken in the mornings to find about an inch of frost on the window-sills.  I don't know what that says to you but it tells me that winter is here and that Christmas can't be far off.  Thanksgiving is also about here.  Here is hoping my cake reaches me pretty soon. Haven't had any for quite awhile now.  As "Thanksgiving is the only legal holiday we missionaries have at this time of the year,  I think we are going to get together and make it a good one.  I think they have planned to visit a factory of something else in the educational line, aside from having a big dinner.  In the evening we will probably go to an Opera or a picture show.  That is, if we aren't all too broke.  Undoubtedly we will be in Hamburg the whole weekend.  We have a new District President and he''ll want to hold a missionary conference while we are all together.  I went into Hamburg last week and gave them a vocal and violin solo in the program which was given for our District President who is on his way home now.  We also lost another missionary who had to return on account of no finance.  It seem as though all the missionaries are scratching the bottoms of their pockets nowadays.

Well, last night was an interesting epoch in the life  of my mission.  My companion and I spent a pleasant evening with six Bible Sharks.  While tracting the other day my "Mit" and I had a little conversation with a lady who was a member of the "Free Branch of Christ" church.  It is quite a strong organization here in our District.  We couldn't get much satisfaction out of talking with her so we went on about our tracting.  But about an hour later as we were passing her house on our return home,  she stopped us and asked us to come and visit she and her husband some night so that they could hear the rest of our Gospel.. So we made a date with her for last night, entirely unaware of the fact that she had a bug up her sleeve; that she was having her minister and some more preachers from their church over to listen to us. Well, when we arrived on the scene they were all there to have it out with us.  I said, "Oh, oh, what a pleasant evening this is going to be."  everyone of them had their Bibles open and were ready to take us for a cleaning.  They thought sure they had us with out pants down but we fooled them.  My "Mit" did all the talking and he had 'em licked form start to finish.  He had run into these sort of affairs before and, consequently, knew his bible from A to Z.  They started the "quatch" by asking,"Well, what have you got that's new?"  Then he lit into them by telling them that we didn't have anything new but something that they would naturally rebuke as new.  The argument got pretty hot for awhile;  they wouldn't agree with us at all.  but we finally wound them up to where they didn't have much to say.  where they would bring up one passage of scripture on a point, my "Mit" would bring up seven to show them that they were wrong.  After about an hour of this the minister began to keep quiet.  He didn't have anything to say.  But the rest of them who didn't know so much about the bible kept the argument goin for another hour and a half.  The party finally broke up with them arguing against themselves.  As a matter of fact they couldn't tell us where their church started so we had to tell them for them.  I have gotten to where I know where half of these churches started myself.  Do you know that there is over seven hundred different sects or beliefs in Berlin alone?// and everyone of them claim that they are right.  This bunch that we ran aground last night, we traced down to be a fourth splitting from "Aimee McPherson's" organization. 

Hoping you are all well and that you are attending church every Sunday (????), I'll call it quits.

Love,
Clarence