Week 4 in Bremerhaven....Psych!

Yeah Mom, missionary work is certainly a roller coaster. You're so flippin awesome Mom, keep it up! Lisa, I gotta say I'm confused with these pictures. You seem to have sent me an old picture of Jake and a picture of some boy wearing Jake's superhero suit. Where's Zeke? Boy...I haven't even been out a year and I don't recognize my own nieces and nephews anymore. Hmm, you'll have to ask Joseph what inspired him to give that strange looking creature the name Jax. Andy I do hope you still remember your promise that if I get home and you have no wife or even a girlfriend that you'll split the cost with me to buy a 4 wheeler. I as well had a few Brats for din din this weekend. Unfortunately they don't seem to have them good ol' breakfast sausages here in Germany. Heidi, you mean you blew your opportunity at having a pet mouse? Wouard, you need to have Savvy and Abby send messages to ol' Jacob Zundel like "you're stinky" for me. Well Joey, I'd probably be mocking you too if I saw you talking to your phone. Good to hear that Marty Jake NZ are great. Al Vida zein!

So...funny story. Monday afternoon I get a random phone call from President Fingerle, who says he wants to see me in the Mission home in Berlin Wednesday morning with all my suitcases packed. As I start thinking of what I could possibly have done that would lead me to being sent home, he reassured me that I had done nothing wrong and that I would be receiving a "special assignment." When I asked for more information, he said that I'd learn more Wednesday morning. Well to make a long story short, over the course of Tuesday I had to pack everything up, say goodbye to members, investigators and good ol' Elder Rogers, then take a train to Berlin to overnight there...still having no idea who my new companion would be, where I'd be going or what the reason for this craziness was. Well Wednesday morning in the mission home, everything was finally revealed to me. So apparently a coup took place in Turkey, which after failing put the Country into a state of emergency. In order to escape potential danger and persecution and under the direction of the First Presidency, the 15 "volunteers" (they weren't allowed to call themselves missionaries in Turkey) left the country and came to the Berlin, Germany mission, as it has the largest concentration of Turkish people outside of Turkey. So I was assigned a new companion, Elder Johnson, who had served in Turkey for about 4 months and were then sent off to the Hildesheim area, which is in the same stake as Stadthagen, where I was just a month ago. Lots of crazy stuff.

Before leaving the mission home in Berlin, President Finglerle gave us some instructions and told us that the Turkish missionaries should focus on maintaining and improving their Turkish, and that our focus in our new areas was to find and teach Turkish people. Well, unfortunately a couple days after arriving in Hildesheim we ran into a couple obstacles. We had a meeting with the Bishop here, Bishop Jensen, who expressed quite clearly his disappointment and frustration at having a companionship that would be focused on the Turkish population, rather than Germans. His frustration was shared, in some degree, with the rest of the ward, including our ward mission leader. It's not like the ward is bad or mean or anything, but they've had a rough history with missionaries and just want things to go back to normal. Another obstacle we ran into was sickness. On Friday I started feeling a bit weird and on Saturday it developed into a fever which took me out for most of the day. Sunday it started getting better and today I'm shaking off what will hopefully be the last of it. This week we'll be able to put those things behind us and put our trust fully in the Lord. There's a reason he sent us here and there are people being prepared here to accept the Gospel, even, or perhaps especially, Turkish people.

Life is pretty crazy right now, but pretty great as well. I know that God's hand is in everything that happens, and that he has amazing things in store for each of us. I'm excited to see what miracles we'll experience; a German-speaking missionary together with a Turkish-speaking missionary, walking through the streets of a city in Germany looking for Turkish people...funny stuff. Hope you guys have a week as exciting as this one will be for me!

Love,
Elder Larsen