God Is Love

Well Mom, it sounds like maybe I need to pay more attention to my thoughts during those difficult morning prayers, where I seem to be half asleep. I'm afraid that it'll take a more traumatic experience to make me a clean freak than some member's apartment, but I suppose anything is possible. Yikes, can't believe Ho Young already got his mission call...pretty sure he's still 16. Boy Andy, I'm surprised you're even allowed to be home alone. You'd think mom and dad would recognize that you'll be partying all night with "all your babes." Bro I hope you don't plan on telling me that you blew your chances with a certain _____ girl. You may be interested to know, Lisa, that here in Germany people say "beautiful to see you." Though in German it doesn't sound quite so ridiculous. I hope you have a good time in this "pond." I think what you said is pretty much missionary work in a nut-shell. Lots of ups and downs, success and blessings don't always come how we want them, and it's often difficult to tell if any of our efforts are making a difference. But the way we see things is a lot different from how God sees them. Not gonna lie Wouard, that collage thing is totes my goats adorbs. Are you sure that when Allison "practically smiled" at you, that it wasn't just gas? Surely she won't truly be able to smile until she meets her favorite uncle. Your rap seems pretty accurate Joey. And where be Isaac headed off to? Yeah Dad, that talk from Elder Holland last conference was pretty awesome. Nice to know that God blesses us just for having the desire to be better.

Zone Leader's Drawing of Elder Larsen

So...quite the rollercoaster this week. Tuesday we met with Frau Heumann and discovered that she works on the 2nd and 3rd of July. She said she hasn't gotten her entire work plan for July and that she'd call us when she did so we could make out a new date. Well, that evening President Fingerle called us, and we told him how things went. After a somewhat long and stressful phone call, he advised us to try to see if it would be possible that she got baptized THIS weekend, a.k.a. the 25th of June. Well we kind of panicked after that; for one thing neither I nor Elder Barboza have any experience with baptisms, which take more preparation than one might expect, and also the ward probably wouldn't be super thrilled about us spontanteously baptizing someone. But the next day we called Frau Heumann and it turns out she also had to work on those days, so that also didn't work. Well after much drama and conversations with our district leader, zone leaders, Assistants to the President, Sister training leaders and of course President Fingerle himself, we ended up with the 9th of July as the new date. Still a bit of churning in my stomach, but we're hoping that everything works out alright :).

In other news, our investigator Martin finally made it to church this Sunday. Elder Barboza had an awesome singing solo in Sacrament meeting, during which Martin teared up a little. He's such an awesome guy. One of the members, Esther Graf, also brought a friend to church (go members!), who also really enjoyed the church meetings and told us that he'd give us a call, once he gets back from vacation in a couple weeks. So we should have some pretty exciting stuff going on in the near future.

This week I finished reading the Book of Mormon, and the topic I was focused on throughout was how much God loves us. Well after going through my notes and reviewing what I marked, I think I can say that love is the #1 thing that makes God who He is. Everything he does is influenced by his love for us, and it's through love that we become more like Him (Moroni 7:48). I thought I was pretty clever when I came up with the phrase "Love is the defining characteristic of Godliness," but John the Apostle beat me by about 2000 years when he said "God is love." But in all seriousness, God loves us with all his heart, might, mind and strength. His joy comes from our success, and the steps that we take to follow Him and to work our way toward eternal life. The Book of Mormon is true.

Love you all, have an awesome week!

Elder Larsen

An Email From a Kind Member in Stadthagen

Dear Elders, dear parents from your wonderful sons,

today we had the privilage to have your sons with us for dinner. We ouerselves had four sons; all of them served in different english missions in the past. We know the feelings from missionarie parents. Therefore this pictures for you.
Elder Larsen is a very humbling missionar. Both of them are working well together.
Thanks for sending your sons. They will come back as good prepared men finding her own way.
So it was with our 4 sons & so will it be with yours.

kindly regards from Stadthagen, Germany

"The Moth Shall Eat Them Up"

If you think that that's prideful or sinful mom, you should read Alma 26. That's pretty cray cray that Jonathan is about to head out on his mission, I'm starting to feel old (in terms of mission age, not necessarily literal age, tehee). Uh oh Andy, at this rate you're gonna start running out of excuses for not being constantly surrounded by babes. I look forward to the day that we can dominate frisbee together once again. Yeah Dad, I think that's the way the Old Testament has to be read, sadly. The temple bug seems like a good bug to have, hopefully it doesn't go away. That's funny, this week at zone training meeting President Fingerle said something pretty similar, he talked about the similarities between the characteristics of a successful missionary and a successful parent.

It Looks Like Matt Shrunk for This Picture

So this week was pretty solid. We met with Frau Heumann again, and are starting to teach her the 5th lesson. I think it's the 2nd time I've ever taught anything from the 5th, unfortunately we don't seem to always make it that far with our investigators, haha. It's interesting, the other lessons are more about preparing for baptism, whereas the 5th is more preparing for what will happen after baptism. We have another appointment with her tomorrow, which is when she gets her work schedule for July. As a nurse she typically has to work every other weekend (including Sundays), so we'll see if she'll be able to make it on July 2nd. We're hoping and praying, and after talking to President Fingerle about her, we feel even more confident that she is ready. All that's left to do is wait.

On Wednesday we rode the train up to Nienburg, a city on the north end of our area to help a less active member fix up his apartment. Gotta say...I'm not really the clean-freak kind of person, but if I were to live in such a dirty apartment I'd be pretty miserable. First he wanted us to replace a few smaller rugs in his living room with a bigger one in the dungeon, err...basement. So we carried it outside and laid it out in the church parking lot (he lives right next to the now-closed church building. Nienburg used to be it's own area). What had once supposedly been a very nice rug (the member insisted that it was) was now the all-you-can-eat buffet of a few dozen moths. Apparently it had been chilling in the basement of his apartment for 2 years or so. So remember kids, "lay up yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." Or maybe this one is better: "For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool. But my righteousness shall be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation." Those scriptures make a lot more sense to me now. Anywho, though that didn't work out too well, we were at least able to clean things up a little bit in his apartment.

Aside from that, we also had zone training meeting this week, which consists of the zone meeting together to receive training (crazy, I know). The Zone Leaders talked about a new idea for working with members, "100 names in 30 minutes." They brought a member with them and pretty much did a live demonstration for us. Pretty much the goal is to have a short 30 minute power visit with a member, share a quick spiritual thought, and then try to help them write down a list of 100 names, asking questions like "who knows you're a member" or "what are the names of your neighbors," anything that can help them think of names. Afterwards at another appointment you meet with the same member again and discuss different things that can be done to help these 100 people: send a book of mormon, send the missionaries, invite to an activity, etc. The demonstration ended up being a little awkward, as the member kept getting distracted, but he still got a solid 41 names written down. So we decided we'd give it a shot this week and got an appointment for next Friday. Yikes, felt like I was kind of ranting there.

But yeah, don't get eaten by any moths this week. Have a good one!

Elder Larsen

Dingo Babies (for lack of a better title)

Yes Mom, and before you start getting the wrong ideas I'm fairly certain that Brother Wolfert meant that I was a humble, as opposed to humbling, missionary. Though I think both are fairly accurate. I'm happy to say that I've yet to have a fellow member be flat-out rude to me and while I can't say the same for non-members, I imagine such remarks would be a lot more stinging when coming from those who are supposed to be your greatest teammates as a missionary. Also, any news on the letter mix-up? I'm glad you're managing to survive, Wouard. Sounds like quite the dangerous life having three little girls around. Gotta admit I'm pretty jealous. Germans don't typically believe in such delicous desserts like peanut butter bars. They're more into the boring stuff, life fruit-based desserts. Quite the tough life. What Lisa, you didn't even take a selfie with your German food? On Friday we're giving a 20 minute lesson about baptism. I'll let you know if that also feels like 5 minutes, tehee. Don't worry Andy, there are more precious sorts of gems out there for you to find. Good luck with the Old Testament, my half-hearted attempts to read it haven't gotten me too far. Joey, there are so many myths about missionary work, I'm glad to put this one to rest. I think if we were to not spend half our day knocking doors and stopping people on the street, we wouldn't have much to do other than scratch our bum bums and get fat off of eating appointments with members. Yeah Dad, bike areas definitely help with keeping in shape. I'm afraid I've started to go back down in terms of weight, I never quite made it to 150 pounds. Quite the shame.

 Another solid week in the happening world of Stadthagen. Of course for the most exciting part I just happened to be on exchanges in Bielefeld. Elders Barboza and Fritz had an appointment with our investigator Frau Heumann, and at last she accepted a baptismal date! And aside from the fact that she needs to work on her church attendance, she's pretty well prepared for it. Coffee had been a problem, but as it turns out (I was also quite shocked, but it came to us from the mouth of the Mission President himself) you're allowed to be baptized if you drink de-caffeinated coffee. Or maybe that isn't all that weird...no clue. In terms of church attendance she always has "good" excuses when she doesn't make it, but excuses are still excuses. But either way, it's been awesome to see her make progress. At first she didn't understand the Book of Mormon all that well, but now when we meet with her she explains stuff (for example the fall) better than I could have explained it after 10 years of being baptized.

We also had a pretty cool appointment with another investigator, Martin. He had come to our showing of Meet the Mormons and had talked for a good 15 or so minutes with the Bishop. They both live in Hameln (southern city in our area) and so arranged a little dinner appointment with each other to be had at the Bishop's house. So on Friday we met Martin and his wife Anja at their apartment and rode with them to Bishop Schwing's. It was the first time we had been able to really talk to Anja; at the beginning she had been totally against Martin meeting with us. Her friends had told her the classic "mormons have more than one wife" line, and naturally the concept of her husband having more than one wife wasn't terribly appealing to her. But after being able to actually meet not only missionaries, but also normal members, she opened up a lot and seems to have just as much interest as Martin. Unfortunately we didn't have much time (it takes like an hour and a half to get to Stadthagen from Hameln) and were only able to give a condensed version of the restoration. Short, but also sweet. I'm excited with the direction things are going with them.

This week I felt like I was (for probably the 102nd time) reminded of the importance of hope. "If you have not faith, hope, and charity, you can do nothing." That being the case it only makes sense that those are the things that Satan would focus his attacks on. And if he can diminish hope, then by definition faith will also decrease. And without faith on Jesus Christ, I imagine it's somewhat harder to be filled with His love. In other words, we gotta have hope. Hope for the world, hope for others, and perhaps most importantly, hope for ourselves. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, based on my experience, there will be times that Satan will attack our hope. He will tell us that things will not and can not get better. He will smother us with lies and temptations in order to blind us from the fact that we are beloved children of God with infinite potential, who have every reason to hope for improvement.

So don't let that old liar get to you :). Have an awesome week!

Elder Larsen

Meet the Mormon

Boy, I can't believe you'd be given the most difficult job on Memorial Day Mom. Well, I hope that that service project was a lesson to you not to underestimate the power of those who look like weirdos :). Round these parts it's typically only the "weirdos" who are willing to give us the time of day. Also on a random note, I forgot to mention last week that I got a letter from the ward that, although it was addressed to me, was actually a letter for Elder Andrus, which leads me to assume that he got one addressed to a certain Elder Larsen. Not sure if anything could/should be done, but at the least I could send him a picture of the letter or something. You bought high heels, Lisa? I'm turribly disappointed in you. Sounds like some pretty solid ultimate frisbee playing, can't say that I'm not jealous. I'm afraid that even after 2 years, soccer will never be able to compete with frisbee. Andy, you just gotta pull out phrases like what Chance said and the ladies won't be able to resist you. Good luck finding that Red Beryl thing, though I'll bet the chances of you finding a Tiamat in the first level of Ogre Battle would be greater than you finding one of those babies. Sounds like you've got a fun week ahead of you, Joey. It also sounds like Z is already at about the same point in swimming skills as I'm at. Matt was bad. Now Matt...good. Thanks for the prayers, Pops, we can certainly use them. I may not have been there to trim with you, but based on the blast of hay fever I got this week it feels as though I must have been there in spirit or something.

This week was one of those weeks that at the time felt really eventful but now that I think about it it doesn't really seem like all that much happened. The main event of the week was definitely watching the Film, Meet the Mormons, in the church building on Friday. We had a solid 75ish people who came, about 60 members and 15 nonmembers. Unfortunately, of the over 300 people who accepted invitations to the movie, and the thousands who were talked to about it, saw it in the newspaper or were otherwise made aware of it, only one of those people came (all the others who came were friends of members, who they got rides from). But I suppose that's just another testimony of just how much more is possible when working closely with members, as opposed to trying to do it alone. But in the end, we were able to give out some Books of Mormon, get a few phone numbers, all that good stuff.

Yikes, time flies when you get caught in a conversation with a member for 2 hours. Last Monday I managed to somehow mess up my bike, no idea how...so we asked around the ward to see if someone could fix it up. And today he came and was able to fix it up...and chat with us for a really long time. Anywho, we'll be using the bikes this evening, so we'll get to see if it decides to die again.

In other news, ELDER FRITZ IS BACK, wooooo! My old mtc comp has come back to life, and just happens to be in the same district as me. Awesomeness. Oh, and also, you probably thought that the subject of this email was a typo, meant to be "Meet the Mormons." Well you're wrong, because on Tuesday this random kid came up to us and be like "do you speak english?" and we be like "yes." Turns out he was part of a school group from Iowa, and he was the only one that was a member. So we met a mormon. Aren't I clever.

On that note I'm basically out of time. The Gospel is so true and so awesome. God loves and knows us personally. We are his children. Know it, love it, live it :). Have a great week!

Elder Larsen