Smart Phone

Ach Nöööööö,

So life in Jena is pretty legit. Great members, cool people to teach and a solid companion. Also one of the big advantages of the technology we have is being able to stay in contact with people we've
taught in other areas, so even now that I'm not in Berlin I can still help people there and if everything works out I should also be able to Skype in for Marcos' baptism this Saturday.

Maybe the one downside of Jena so far is that since it's a university city, a lot of our members and the people we teach are currently on vacation and out of town. Fall semester starts about when I leave, so there are a lot of people I'm not even going to really meet in my time here. However the people I've met so far are amazing. The members (and also some of those currently learning about the church) are dedicated in their efforts to do missionary work and willing to help us out whenever we need anything. We've got lots of activities and lots to do, so it's looking like it'll be a good last 6 weeks.

We had a couple cool experiences is last week. Thursday we had an appointment fall through with a new investigator named Rob and thought we wouldn't be able to meet until next week. Then on Friday we were doing our studies and he just randomly walked in, ready to be taught. He said he saw the door was open and wanted to see if we happened to be there. So that was quite the nice coincidence. And then on Saturday we were on the way to the nearby city of Erfurt for our district
meeting and in the train we sat across from a man and his daughter. They were speaking Chinese and Elder Openshaw, who is learning Chinese (his companion before me was Elder Hsu, a missionary from Taiwan) leaped into a conversation with the man. It turns out he's just in Germany every Summer but lives in Taiwan and is actually already investigating the church there. So that was pretty cool.

Another random thing about Jena, we're one of a 10 companionship pilot group with a smart phone, so it's been weird walking around with a smart phone in my pocket again. The biggest advantage with it is the WhatsApp app, which I don't know if it's big in America but here in Germany basically everyone has it, and it's been great for keeping in daily contact with the people we're working with. Funny how fast changes are being made in how missionary work is done, sadly I won't stay long enough to make it past this kind of awkward transition phase of not really knowing what to do with all this new stuff, but it's been cool to see the changes that have happened since the beginning of my mission.

Anywho, things are going well, I'm excited to see what we're able to accomplish this transfer. Love you guys, have a great week!

Elder Larsen

Transfer to Jena

No Mom, I wouldn't say the birthday gifts were underwhelming. I will say when I pulled out a bag and saw the word heads I was hoping it would be warheads, but airheads are definitely a close second. Maybe I need to start working harder so you guys stop getting sick.

That's too bad, Lisa. I was hoping to come back and hear you speak fluent German. I'll admit I have a fear of having no one to talk to in German and then just slowly losing the ability to speak it. Wow Zeke is like 0 years old and is already more into motorcycles than I am.

Andy you better go call Pete to repentance. Smooching it up with some Texas heathen. I'm pretty jealous about Oathbringer. Have there been any other Brandon Sanderson books coming out since I've been gone?

I had a moment of panic Heidi, when I read what you said about the hard switch from Summer to School. I thought school must be starting up for me in a couple weeks, and then I remembered that I'm a missionary, where all that means is that people are finally going to start coming back from vacation.

Glad to hear Marty is already taking you down at board games, Joey. Looks like he's doing it at an even younger age than I did. Are all the expansions for Cthulhu Wars already out? The secret to Spaniards might be catching them while they're young, Marcos is super chill. Once they hit older teenage years though it seems to start getting dangerous. Granted that isn't just applicable to Spaniards though.

Cool that you guys were able to check out the new MTC stuff, Dad. We had the same lesson about the Book of Mormon in Priesthood, there's another story I read about a lady who was going to gift a Book of Mormon to a friend but got mugged. The guy who mugged her read the book, was baptized and of course gave the lady her stuff back. Pretty awesome.

We had a great week. Sadly I had to say goodbye to my teenage years for forever. I got to celebrate my birthday with a service project helping a family move, which is undeniably one of the top things to do as a missionary. Nothing more refreshing than simple service.

I also got transferred! I'll be spending my last 6 weeks in Jena, a city I visited a few times back when I served in Werdau. It's a university city which is always a plus and hopefully there will be
some Spanish speakers there. It'll be sad though missing Marcos's baptism and leaving Berlin after 10 months of being there. I'll be serving with Elder Openshaw, a fellow Provo boy, so that's exciting.

I know that's not too much information but we've gotta run and it be pouring rain outside. Have a great weeeeek!

Elder Larsen

Berlin-Freiberg Road Trip

Well Mom we haven't seen a whole lot of feedback from the article, but some members have mentioned how their friends read it and they were able to talk about it with them. Hopefully it will lead to something; it may not be the greatest article nor was it written with 100% good intentions, but it may arouse some curiosity. Also I got the birthday package a couple weeks ago, I was able to resist the urge to just tear it all open and it's currently all in a drawer in my desk.

I like the random German slang, Lisa. Sounds like Zeke has reached the phase where Jake was when I left, grabbing your hand, taking you places and kind of talking.

You're bumming me out Andy. You mean I'm going to get home from my mission, study and then just work for the next 50 years? We'll have to put our heads together, get rich and then retire at 30 and build our super cabin.

I think you unintentionally made a German pun, Heidi. The word brief in German means letter. I think I'll have to start looking through all my emails and see how many weeks go by without someone getting sick. Too bad that Allie's the latest victim.

I'm glad your law of chastity lesson wasn't awkward Joey, I hope it will be the same when we teach it to Marcos...in Spanish. Good thing we've got for the strength of youth pamphlets and what not. Sounds like you had a solid campout, having the faith to call rain down on that forest fire.

Yeah Dad, "ok" is probably a good adjective for the article. I was kind of disappointed in what he quoted me on, he basically took the start of a conversation I had with a guy, cut out the middle and then inserted a random sentence I said toward the end. All well. Glad to hear the colonoscopy results are good. I'm also very grateful for the thoughts and prayers of Grandma Larsen, that she's thinking about me even in such a hard time. I love and pray for her as well.

So the highlights of this week are as follows.

We had a couple street displays this week with the other missionaries of our district. The first was in our area and I had the fortune of running into a decent amount of Spanish speakers. Sadly the one with the most potential had to run to catch a bus while we were talking and I wasn't able to do more than give him a card. He was a really nice guy from Spain (and based off my limited experience with Spaniards in Germany not all Spaniards are really nice) who is at the point in his life of deciding whether or not there's a God. Hopefully he calls us...not something that happens too often but there's always a chance. The next day we had a really good street display in front of the Spandau church, there was a pretty decent number of people who went in to take a tour of the church.

On Thursday we had a conference in Freiberg at the temple. For whatever reason we were set on making road trip t-shirts as a district...so we did (see picture below). Though it was mostly the Neukölln Elders' idea in the first place, they "forgot" to bring their shirts with them. Anyway, the highlight of the meeting was definitely being able to go in the temple at the beginning; I probably took more out of that than the 5 hours afterwards of talks, discussions and presentations 🙂.

I was able to see the members of my old MTC group who are going home next week: Elder Green, Elder Racine and Elder Bennett. Lots of mixed feelings there, lots of reminiscing. I can't believe it was almost 2 years ago that we walked into the MTC as a bunch of clueless kids who couldn't speak hardly a word of German. Now here we are, a bunch of clueless kids who speak at least a few words of German. It was interesting to see the changes we've all gone through and it'll be exciting to talk after the Mission and exchange stories. And don't you worry, Elder Fritz, you're time will come soon enough!

On Sunday President Fingerle came to church here in Tiergarten and helped us during the Sunday School hour in our lesson with Huseyin, our friend from Turkey. He's been making pretty good progress and seems to be taking things more seriously. There are still some things he finds hard to believe (coming from a Muslim background) but he's open and willing to learn and talk.

Today for pday we played some ultimate frisbee and "ultimate football" (playing ultimate frisbee rules with a football), which was a party. Ultimate frisbee here is always a rare but treasured experience.

Anywho, that's this week. Love you guys, have a great week!

Life is Bueno!

The reunion sounds like it was a blast, I'm pretty jealous. Ive never played spike ball but I've seen it played before. I like the different ways the building scheduler was described, "she was a little confused" and "she hates us." Mom if you think that Spain is the greatest country in Europe I'm afraid your are quite mistaken. Germany can beat it any day.


So there's some good news and bad news from this week, I'll start with the bad news. We messed up pretty bad yesterday. A few weeks ago we got a referral from the US for a girl that spent about a year over there on an exchange program, part of which was with a host family who were members of the church. We had tried a few times to contact her to no avail, but yesterday we decided we'd try visiting her that evening. That morning at church a girl we didn't know walked in. The thought crossed my mind this could possibly be the girl we were wanting to contact, but then I heard a member say something to her husband about her and I assumed it was a relative or friend of those members. In the meantime we had already had a couple other investigators there who we wanted to talk to and the typical army of American tourists who come in and talk to us. So I forgot about the girl and didn't think about it again until that night when we visit the referral. A man let us in and said his daughter was home but busy talking to her host family from America. So we talked to the dad for a bit and after a while the daughter came in. And of course it was the girl who came to church. We could tell she wasn't happy about us being there and when she saw us she muttered something and went back to her room. The dad was really friendly and said we could come back, but that they're going on vacation for 3 weeks. At any rate because of me ignoring a spiritual prompting this girl who had the courage and initiative to go to the church on her own now has bitter feelings against the church in Germany and the missionaries...ouch.


On the bright side of things our 12 year old pal Marcos from Madrid has a baptismal date for the 2nd of September. He's an awesome kid and we're really excited for him. It's been quite the challenge teaching the lessons to a a 12 year old in a language that I don't speak terribly well, but I like a good challenge and Marcos is fun to teach.


Other interesting news is that we got a newspaper article written about us a couple weeks ago. It came about from a referral we got from Los Angeles. A German journalist came and visited the temple there and talked to the sisters and gave them his card, the information from which was then sent to us when he returned to Berlin. We visited the address, expecting to be led to an apartment and that we'd teach him about the restoration. Instead the address brought us to a massive office building where we had to make an appointment with our guy, Til Biermann. He told us he was interested in writing an article about the church and asked us some questions and later came to one of our street displays. Sadly there are things in the article that aren't totally correct and taken out of context, but I'd say overall it's positive.


I'd not think there's anything else too exciting from this week. Life is bueno!


Elder Larsen