Transferred to Bremerhaven

Mom, you're welcome to come over and help us organize everything, I wouldn't be opposed. Haha, I'm sure there wouldn't be nearly as much drama over a potential baptism in most missions, but in good old stubborn Germany, baptisms aren't terribly commonplace. Well Lisa, it appears as though you've fallen into the evil trap of google translate. Schön dich zu sehen, wäre richtig gewesen. You aren't allowed to use formal "Sie" when talking to your own brother =P. We're playing volleyball and grilling some meat as a zone today to celebrate the 4th, and I'm also wearing my Captain America shirt, though I doubt I'll go so far as to sing The Star Spangled Banner. I'm impressed by that picture Heidi, her nose is surprisingly booger-free. That sounds boring that you slept in Steve's mom's house. Wouldn't it have been more exciting to sleep in a tent? Sounds like it was a fun reunion. Andy I think you need to start looking at things in a missionary perspective. Is it an effective use of time to go camping when you don't bring any babes along? I think you've gotta dedicate more time to good old fashioned finding. Thanks for your prayers Dad, we're really hoping everything works out with Frau Heumann's baptism this weekend.

In my email last week I compared the week to a rollercoaster. Well this week said rollercoaster pretty much exploded (I may be exaggerating just a little). So there we are on Saturday evening, working on making invitations to Frau Heumann's baptism. Earlier in the day we had met with her, taught her the rest of the last lesson (during which she asked me if I would baptize her) and afterwards she had an interview with our district leader, who found her ready to be baptized. Well this Saturday evening just happened to also be the day that we would be receiving our transfer call, to see who would go and who would stay. But we didn't really put a lot of thought into it: Elder Barboza is going home which would typically mean that I would stay in Stadthagen and get a new companion, since it's pretty rare that both missionaries get taken out of an area at the same time. And having it happen the week before a baptism is pretty much unheard of. So we get the call, and the Assistant to the President says "Elder Larsen, you're being transferred to Bremerhaven." Elder Barboza and I chuckled a bit and asked him, "so what's happening, really?" Well it was no joke. It was pretty hard to swallow, mostly because I had been 100% sure that I'd be staying at least 6 more weeks in Stadthagen and was looking forward to it. Stadthagen has such an awesome ward and the future here is looking pretty positive, so it wasn't terribly easy to accept. But after the initial shock and surprise and after finding out the reasons behind it things started to settle down. Elder Barboza's group is quite large; 23 Elders are going home and only a fraction of that number are coming in. But (no idea how), there are 18 Sisters coming in this transfer. So our area and a few others are being shut down and replaced by sisters. Crazy stuff. But I've heard a lot of good things about Bremerhaven, and I'll still be able to come back to Stadthagen this weekend for Frau Heumann's baptism. So life is good :).

Aside from that this week I attended my first and quite possibly last German wedding. President Fingerle's daughter got married, and because the groom has a lot of relatives in Stadthagen, and since President Fingerle can't leave mission boundaries (otherwise it would have been in southern Germany), they got married in Stadthagen. In Germany the government doesn't recognize marriage in the Temple as official, so members have to get married first in the City Hall--that's the part President Fingerle invited us to--and then in the Temple. Couldn't compare at all to the feelings of the Temple, but it was a pretty cool experience. The main weird thing about it was a somewhat scantily-clad statue of some viking woman hanging from the ceiling. Wasn't really sure what that had to do with marriage.

Anywho, I'm excited to see how things go in the new area. It was sad having to say goodbye to people here, but there are always new people to meet and new things to experience. The Lord wants me in Bremerhaven. It's funny, the city there is 10x as big as Stadthagen, but the ward is about 5x smaller. It'll be fun to be in a bigger city again, where we don't talk to the same people every day :).

I know the Gospel is true and I know Christ is my Savior. I know that He loves us and gave his own life so that we could return to our Father in Heaven. I know that through his Atonement we can overcome all the obstacles of this life and be forgiven for our sins, as well as learn from them. The Gospel is true and it is wonderful. Love you all and hope you have a jolly good week.

Elder Larsen