Letter from the Parents of Matt's Trainer

Dear Larsen family:

We were visiting the Tiergarten Ward on Sunday.  We have always loved receiving pictures of our sons while serving from others.  We decided to do the same for the missionaries here.  Our son is serving in the Germany Berlin mission as well. He will be released on June 1st so we are here to pick him up and do some of our own sight seeing beforehand.  After talking to your son we learned that our son was your son's trainer.  Small world.  We sent a picture of us with your son to him.  He had this to say in response in today's email:  

"Elder Larsen was my first trainee, I trained him in Neukölln at the
beginning of my mission, he was a really good self starter, worked
really hard on the language and stuff, really funny guy. His German
got good enough that he has begun learning spanish now, which is why
he is in Tiergarten. He will be done in two transfers. One of my
favorite companions I had."

Matt with Elder Castillo

We thought you would appreciate it.

Sincerely,
Glen and Sonja Anderson

Tiergarten Transfer 3

Wow Mom, 90 adults? That would be a hard number to achieve even with the whole stake of Berlin. I'm curious to see what it will be like being in giant Provo wards again. I'm embarrassed to say that it took me a good few seconds to figure out who the "one very special person" is that won't be going to Bryce Canyon with the rest of the family. That quote about joy is pretty awesome.
Yeah Andy, Scott wrote back and said anything more than 250cc is good and that he "highly recommends" Honda. I hope the dating rant won't inspire you to action too quickly, I'm looking forward to my 4 wheeler.
Boy Heidi, it feels like just a few months ago that you moved into that one house. If you were in Germany people would think you're crazy for moving again so fast. That's cool that the missionaries were there to help, we were also helping someone move on Saturday.
I hear you Joey, planning ahead is killer. The mission has certainly helped a little bit with that though. Way to do that missionary work Bro.
It appears I've underestimated your sarcasm skills, Dad, yikes. Looks like I'll have to repent.

The biggest news of the week is that we got our transfer calls yesterday, and I'll be staying for a third in Tiergarten. Sadly Elder Castillo is getting shipped off to Hamburg, which puts the weight of the Berlin Spanish program on my very weak and feeble shoulders. My new companion will be Elder Mehr, who despite the German name is from South Jordan, Utah and he also started learning Spanish a few weeks ago. So we'll definitely have to work hard together to learn Spanish...our first Spanish appointment together will be on Thursday with a new investigator...scary stuff.

Our friend Dimitri, who wants to get baptized is doing pretty well. Sadly we'll have to push his baptismal date a couple weeks back because of some problems we need to work on together, but he's making progress. Understandably sometimes it takes more than a couple weeks for someone to change their entire life around.

We also had a couple skype lessons this week for our friends who don't speak German as their mother tongue, Karim and Nezhdet. Karim speaks good German but doesn't understand a lot of the gospel lingo vocab stuff. We had a really good lesson with him and were able to get a bit more input from his side; he told us about the warm, good feelings he gets when he reads in the Book of Mormon. He's a really solid guy, we just need to move forward a little slowly because he's from a country that's dangerous for Christians. For Nezhdet we had missionaries from Bulgaria teach him, that also went well, religion in general is still just a little bit foreign to him. But he's been loyally coming to church for the last 5 weeks and even sang in the ward choir...he's awesome.

One of the coolest parts of serving in Berlin is just that there's so much diversity. We've talked to people here from so many different countries and everyone that we teach has a totally different background from the others. It's awesome being able to experience so many different perspectives and see how the Gospel can be applied to each individual no matter what their circumstances are.

Life is da bomb! Love y'all, have a great week!

Elder Larsen

Taufgarten

Sounds like I missed out on a lot of partying, Mom. You may be
interested to know, in a talk I gave yesterday in church I mentioned
you as one of the greatest examples I know of selfless service. You da
bomb (I'm not sure if that's an appropriate thing to call one's
mother, but yeah).
I'm not convinced of the German accent thing, Lisa, though I will
admit my English skills have definitely gone down in the last several
months. Thanks for the pictures, crazy how Marty has turned into a
miniature Joey.
I hope you're on the search for a nice 4-wheeler Andy. Too bad that
didn't work with skype, but I suppose it won't be too long before I'm
back in town, ready to do some ultimate frisbee domination. Ben Dahl
from the ward wrote me and told me Timpview frisbee got 1st place in
the regionals tournament, taking down Lone Peak A twice...in case that
means anything to anyone other than me, tehee.
Ah, that's too bad, Michelle. I suppose I won't take too much offense
that you missed my skype call for Isaac's. Them be some nice
pictures...Marty looks super old in that first one...isn't he like 2
years old?
Boy Dad, that sounds like a pretty intense dirt biking trip. Way to be
prepared! It was awesome being able to skype you guys...weird to think
that the next time we see each other will be when I get home...yikes.

The highlight of this week is probably our friend Dimitri, who wants
to be baptized on the third of June. He's the guy that called us after
seeing the massive #PrinceOfPeace poster on the wall of the stake
center in Berlin. He has lots of questions and a great desire to learn
and do what's right. The main thing right now is helping him to come
to church. He's pretty dang cool.

Nezhdet and Karim, who we found (well, Karim kind of found us) and who
have been coming to church the last couple weeks are also doing really
well. Communication is hard with both of them, but a member in
Bulgaria has helped us to teach Nezhdet and tomorrow we'll be able to
have a farcy translator for Karim with skype. Both of them have stayed
for 3 hours of church each time they've come even though they don't
understand everything. Both of them are awesome.

That's most of what our teaching pool consists of at the moment, but
there's still lots of numbers, addresses and even facebook information
of people who may be interested. Busy busy busy. I think that's all
I've got for this week so...love you, Ciao!

Elder Larsen

Teaching the Humble

Yeah Mom, I was scared because last week the day after I wrote emails someone told me Mother's day was this week (as in yesterday), but fortunately I discovered that it's actually this upcoming week. For us 5:00 P.M. (I think 9:00 A.M. for you guys) would work best. I'm thinking I'll probably just wait on Winter Semester, Mom. Though to be honest I'm not really sure. I have this weird back and forth idea of studying in Germany...but at the moment I think that probably won't happen. I guess my time for thinking about it is starting to run out.

Have fun in Belize Brosky. I'm feeling a hunger for ultimate frisbee as well. If you or someone else gets the opportunity, ask Brandon if he remembers an Elder Jeremy Lindstrom. He's a new member in Tiergarten who apparently served in the same city as Brandon in Ukraine. Small world.

Well Joey if Marty is better at soccer than you, he's gotta be better than me. Thanks for the prayers bro, I'll be sure to send them your way as well.

Yeah Dad, not sure if we'll be having a warm week, the weather has been pretty unpredictable the last few weeks. It should rain the next few days. I'm enjoying the cold weather while it lasts though, it might be the last cold season I experience in Germany before coming home.

The weeks here in Berlin go by so fast. One highlight though of this week was on Sunday a man just randomly walked in for sacrament meeting, saying he wanted to learn more about the church. He said his brother who lives in Sweden got baptized 5 years ago and invited him to also learn about the Gospel. He's a super humble guy and is excited to continue meeting with us. It's been cool the last two weeks to see how much more susceptible humble people are to the Gospel. Both this guy who came this week and the man from Bulgaria that we met last week (who also came yesterday to church) have so little in terms of money, possessions and for our friend from Bulgaria he even lacks the capability of speaking the German language...and yet they recognize something good and they embrace it. Sometimes for us, who for the most part have everything that we need, sometimes get so caught up in information, facts and uncertainty that our skepticism keeps us from moving forward. It's interesting to have read so many times the story of Alma teaching the humble Zoramites and now to live basically the same story happening over 2000 thousands later in Berlin, Germany.

In other news, Elder Castillo just reminded me that a few days ago we had a sport night with the Spanish speakers of the ward, during which he cruelly hit a girl in the face with a volleyball (ok, ok, it was just an accident). Anywho, not sure if there's anything else too exciting from this week. Life is gooooood.

Much Love,

Elder Larsen

Prince of Peace

Withdrawal confirmed, Dad. But now that I have a new debit card for mission funds I should be good. Boy Dad, sounds like all it took for you and Mom to gear up with family history was for me to get out of the house. I guess going on a mission didn't just have an effect on my own personal participation in the work of salvation.
 I thought it was funny that you mentioned the ward's ability to show up for things, Mom, because that's one of the major problems we have in our ward here haha. I wasn't here at the time, but my companion Elder Castillo and his former companion had a baptism and a total of 2 members showed up for it. Sad, but it does give us something to work on.
Yeah Lisa, Facebook is definitely interesting. Keeping in contact with people from former areas is just one aspect of it, still kind of figuring out what other potential there is in it. It's interesting and I'm sure there are a ton of things we can try out that will be helpful, but I don't think it will ever be an effective replacement for good ol' street contacting and dooring.
Don't die on us, Andy. You better send me some good pictures of your trip to Belize. By the way if you feel you're running out of time for you-know-what, you could move to Berlin and I could hook you up with some YSAs here...since there isn't as much variety some of 'em are quite desperate.
Yeah Joey, I'm sorry. Most embarrassing was accidentally posting a massive smiley face...my facebook skills are pretty weak. Way to take care of them deacons.

I'm writing today because yesterday was a German holiday and all the stores were closed. Which for me wouldn't have been a problem but sadly (or fortunately) I'm not the only human being who dislikes shopping. I admit though it's probably a necessary evil, half of my possessions right now are things I've inherited from past companions (not all of which are of the highest quality) and I suppose it's good to have my own stuff.

We had a pretty cool experience this last week. A guy called us up and explained that he had met with missionaries a few years ago and would like to start meeting with us again. We were able to make an appointment and at the appointment he told us the reason he had wanted to meet with missionaries again. Here at the church in Tiergarten we had a huge poster for #PrinceofPeace hanging on the front of the building. He saw it and noticed that the picture of Jesus Christ happened to be the same picture of Jesus Christ that the missionaries had given to him a few years ago. He took that as more than just a coincidence and decided to give it a chance again (he had stopped the first time due to some anti-mormon junk). But he has some real interest and though he's a little bit hard to get a hold of, hopefully we'll be able to meet with him again in a couple days.

Another cool experience from the week started on Wednesday. We talked to a man on the street who couldn't speak German, English or Spanish (not super uncommon around here) and since he couldn't understand a word we were saying we gave him a card and tried to invite him to church. We still weren't sure if he understood us at all, so we wished him a good day and kept going. I didn't think much of it and had forgotten all about it when Sunday rolled around...and there he was! It might not seem like a big deal but after 18 months in Germany it has not once happened that someone we just gave a card to, even after them committing to come to church, has actually come. It turns out he speaks Bulgarish and we just happen to have a member in the ward that can speak it as well. He's a nice guy and he's excited to come to church again next week. We're trying to see if we can work with the missionaries in Bulgaria, since the member that speaks Bulgarish is almost always out of town and there are no other members in the stake that can speak it.  

Life is pretty great and the potential in this area just keeps on building up. Ich habe euch lieb, have a good week!

Elder Larsen