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!