Good Week

Yeah Mom, since we're the only missionaries in Tiergarten we just talk to everyone. Since there used to be a set of elders here that only focused on Spanish people there's a lot of potential in that department and it's obviously a bonus if we run into Spanish speaking people, but we talk to everyone. Right now of our 5 investigators right now, one is German, one is Latino, one is Chinese, one is Irish and one is Arabic. That would be pretty creepy Andy, dating a girl in my grade. But hey, I'm sure there are plenty of marriage hungry womanjis in that age group. I'm definitely looking forward to your dating stories, I'm pretty sure the last gem you've given me was that encounter with a certain returned missionary who knocked on your door. Fortunately Joey I've been lucky enough to not get pickpocketed. I've been somewhat wary in the last few days after last week's experience. I have however managed to lose a pair of gloves and a hat in public transportation back when I was in Berlin at the start of my mission. Nice to see that Marty's artistic skills are already better than mine.

I don't have a lot of time and am kind of lacking the desire to write much, but it was a good week :). Things are going well and we've got a pretty good amount of potential to work with. Good to hear from yall, keep being awesome.

Elder 'Teo Larsen

Berlin is a Blast

Fortunately Mom, we also teach in German. I was surprised to find that
we're the only missionaries in the area; back when I was here at the
start of my mission there were 6 in Tiergarten. Wenn du willst Lisa,
kann ich meine Briefe auch auf Deutsch schreiben. Yeah it's hard to
say what the reason is that peoples be after us. I guess in their
defense, their membership is going down and we aren't necessarily
supporting their cause. Machu Pichu, I'm looking forward to it bro.
Boy I won't be seeing Jacob in ages...cray cray. Heidi don't pretend
that Savannah is going to be old enough to be baptized when I get
home. Gracias Jose, espero que no muertes beim Skifahren. Thanks for
the prayers Dad, I know they aren't going unanswered.

Life back in Berlin is a blast. The whole atmosphere is just so much
different than in the smaller cities. I love it, but it does have some
disadvantages. For example on transfer day when I got into Berlin we
were with the zone leaders waiting for the last missionary to come in
to the train station, when a guy came up to us and was asking us for
directions. He was from some other country and we couldn't understand
him, but eventually we were able to help him get to where he wanted to
go. A minute or so later Elder Ausobsky, one of the zone leaders
noticed that his backback, that he had put by the rest of our luggage,
was missing. Right then a guy came up to us and said that the guy who
came to ask for directions was just a distraction so that a second guy
could come and snag the backpack. Luckily he had his wallet in his
jacket pocket...unluckily his iPad was in the bag. And even when we
saw the guy and tried to chase after him, the Berlin trainstation is
too massive, with too many trains going every direction to possibly
catch someone who has a minute lead on you. So yeah...you don't really
get that kind of excitement in quaint little villages.

But overall life in Berlin is pretty great. There's so much to do and
seemingly no time to do it, so we've stayed pretty busy the last few
days. And when we have a couple hours to do finding, all we have to do
is walk out of our apartment and Bam! People! Not something that I saw
often in my last few areas.

We had stake conference this week, so I got to see a lot of the
members from Neukölln, where I served at the start of my mission. It
was especially weird to see a couple of the kids who had grown like a
foot since the last time I saw them. The theme at the conference was
about family history, and the member of the Seventy who talked
compared doing work for our ancestors to the ghost army in Lord of the
Rings. Not bad.

Yeah, that's pretty much all I've got for this week. Hasta la vista baby.

Elder Larsen

Spanisch...jetzt geht's los (here we go)

Yeah Mom, it kind of just depends on where you are. In Schwarzenberg there's no university in our entire area, so most of the people we talk to aren't really in that age-group of wandering around engrossed in their phones. The thing here is that just randomly talking to people you don't know is kind of against the culture, which makes it pretty hard to open people up to the idea of letting us teach them in their homes. I've never really tried it, Lisa, but supposedly gargling water is supposed to help you roll your r's. Looks like Savvvyanuh is turning into a little Heidi Junior. The weather here is also getting pretty decent Andy. Just make sure you don't get all adventured out before I get home bro, save some place cool for me. Well Joey, I don't seem to be intelligent enough to decipher your analogy about faith being like a little nut, or what makes you want to have a hamburger at ripples. I do understand the feeling though, Germany hasn't quite figured out hamburgers yet. Yeah Dad, I can't say I'm in agreement with your weather preference, I've had enough of cold weather for a while.

Leipzig and Temple Zones

Saturday evening I got the bittersweet news that I'm being transferred. Bitter because 6 weeks in an area is pretty much nothing and I'll miss Elder Christoffersen (he be da bomb) but sweet because it's time for round 2 in Berlin, woohoooo! I'll be serving in Tiergarten, which is the middle part of the Berlin Stake. If I remember right there are several Spanish speaking members in the ward, also my new companion Elder Castillo is from Mexico, so now I have no excuse to not learn Spanish. It'll probably be a bit of an adjustment going back to trainee status in terms of the language, but I should be able to learn a ton. And it'll be nice to be back in a big city 😎.

Anywho, it was a pretty good week. The missionary work is funny sometimes in that one day this week we rang doors for hours and no one had interest and then the next day after 5 minutes we found two potential investigators. Aside from that we've been taking the youth of the ward out to visit the old single members in the ward, which has been pretty radical. Since missionaries aren't allowed to visit single women alone there are some members that haven't been visited for a few years, so they were happy to see us. There was one lady who had to ride a bike 8 or 9 miles through the freezing cold every week to get to church when she was younger...I just had to walk like 300 feet or ride in a car...

We've noticed sadly that the preachers of other churches in our area aren't particularly fond of Mormons. Every day we run into some new prejudice or half truth. "Your Book of Mormon can't save you!"  "Mormons don't let people of other faiths into their church buildings."  "We believe on Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ. Not on Mormon."  It's sad and frustrating sometimes when people just aren't open to discovering the truth. But there's a nice scripture I read this week in the New Testament, Matthew 10, where Jesus calls the 12 Apostles. "And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved." Since the beginning of the earth there have always been people who mock and ridicule the disciples of God and I'm flattered to be worthy of being mocked for being a member of the Lord's church.

Yeah, it'll definitely be an adventure going back to good ol' Berlin. Have a good week, homies.

Elder Larsen

Attack the Day

Yeah Mom, you were accurate about me having a bit of indecision, but I think that's passed. My new return date is October 6th and I'll be starting studies in January. As for what happens in between, we'll see. Yes it most certainly is frustrating at times when people don't accept what we know 100% will help them. On Monday we knocked on doors and talked to people on the street for 5 or 6 hours...not one person was interested. It's hard and it hurts but I know that I tried and I know that God appreciates my efforts. Obviously there are things I can do better but Elder Sabin of the Seventy who visited the mission this week said that if we've tried, we've succeeded, and I think that's definitely true. Boy Lisa, I sure am jealous. Nothing more exciting than meeting the fairy king. I'm with you on looking forward to warm weather Andy, we're hoping to start up a sport evening thing sometime in the near future here. The youth in this city aren't typically immediately interested in being talked to about God, but pretty much everyone likes playing soccer. Wow Joey, sounds like you've got Marty going on the right path. At this rate he's going to beat me, Andy and Lisa. That's a good attitude, Joey. I should be grateful that we had enough appointments for three to be able to fall out in the first place. Good to hear you guys are still rocking the temple work Dad. I'll have to put the pedal to the metal if I'm going to keep up on my side of the work over here.

So we changed our pday to Wednesday this week in order to go to the Temple, since the Freiberg Temple is closed on Mondays. It was pretty dang awesome. When we came in the temple staff was low on manpower, so we acted as witnesses for baptisms. The temple worker there said we must have been help sent from heaven, because they had had no idea what to do with their shortage of workers. Then we were able to go through the whole set of ordinances for family names; if I'm not mistaken this was actually my first time having my own names for the temple. During our time there I happened to run into members from three of my previous areas, Stadthagen, Hildesheim and Werdau. The Freiberg Temple makes Germany seem a whole lot smaller. All in all it was pretty much the bomb.

Earlier this week, or I guess last week we went to Berlin for a conference with Elder Sabin of the seventy. He's a master when it comes to scriptures and one-liners, one being "attack the day!" It's pretty easy to just drift through each day and get caught in the rut of doing the same things every day. But it has been helpful in the last few days to really pray for the desire to do missionary work and to remind myself of why I'm here. Hopefully I can keep it up; after these kinds of meetings I always feel pumped for a few days but there's always the danger of going back to where I was before if I don't do something about it.

Speaking of ruts...we're still trying to get Schwarzenberg out of one. We found a guy last week who we were able to teach the restoration to and there was some definite interest, we're just working on getting around his busy schedule to set up another appointment. Though we aren't yet having a ton of obvious success, I'm happy. We're working hard, trying to be better and God is happy with our efforts. There are always little miracles that happen day by day.

I think that's all I've got for this week...have a good one!

Elder Larsen