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

The Age of Facebook

Hola amigos,

'Twas a pretty good week. The biggest and weirdest development is that
as of recently we're allowed to use Facebook in this mission. I'm
still not sure what all the possibilities and benefits of the new
change are, but for starters it makes for a pretty good support system
throughout the mission; we're encouraged to get in contact with old
contacts from previous areas, and I've been able to start working with
an investigator and a new convert from old cities I served in. That
being said there's also a lot of time-wasting potential and
opportunities to get in trouble now that we have Facebook. Antimormons
are also pretty busy on social media and we have to watch our step to
avoid getting distracted. But all in all it's a good development and
it's cool to see the Lord's hastening of His work.

Prince of Peace

We're kind of hitting against a brick wall at the moment in terms of
the work here. We're making some progress with less active members but
we've been having problems getting our investigators to commit
themselves. A couple of them know that the church is good and have
felt the Holy Ghost but let a few little concerns get in the way of
them committing themselves to baptism. Also one is pretty busy with
school right now and the other is in the army and isn't in Berlin all
that often. Hopefully we'll be able to have a breakthrough this week.

Aside from that, we had a service project on Saturday in a city a
little ways outside of Berlin, Eisenhüttenstadt #MormonHelpingHands
😊 Funny how as a missionary there's nothing more exciting than a
Saturday morning service project 😊

That's all I've got for you this week...keep on keeping on!

Elder Larsen

The Refrigerator

Yeah Mom, I'll let you know about the card as soon as I get it. We're going to the office today so I should be able to start the process of getting that taken care of. President Fingerle will get me a new temple recommend the next time I see him and other than that there wasn't anything too important that I lost. That's pretty sad about the person you know, Mom. This last week I had a similarish experience of visiting a less active member. He was the first person I had an actual appointment with in Germany and in my time in Neuköln we had made a lot of progress with him. He had moved to Tiergarten (my current area) toward the end of my time there and as I got transferred here over a year later I was excited to see him again. I was sad to not see him at church but after a couple of times of going by his house we were finally able to find him at home. He didn't look so good. He told us about some of his problems and it was sad to see that he had fallen into the old habits that we had conquered together over a year ago. He feels distant from God to the point that he doubts God's existence. Hopefully we'll be able to help him get back on his feet, but it just shows me how important support from the members is; he said that after moving from Neuköln to Tiergarten he never felt welcome in the new ward and on his own he wasn't able to win out against temptation. I think there are few people who can make it through the challenges of life alone. We'll definitely need to get members involved and bring him back into the fold. That took more time to explain than expected.

Well Lisa, sadly I'm not yet fat, short and blonde. I've been working on the fat part for a while and the blonde hair shouldn't be too hard. I think getting shorter will be pretty hard though. Wow, Gracie is totes adorbs.

 Yeah Andy, I'm sure it was your "daunting figure." I'm not sure that there are too many Germans devastated about Nowitski not making the playoffs. As far as I know there are few Germans that know anything about the NBA, aside from that Nowitski is in it.

Go for the house in Provo, Heidi. Only then can your kids be the future stars of the Timpview ultimate frisbee team.

Es verdad, Jose. Tal vez tenia demasiado orgullo. Pero por fortuna como misionero no necesito mucho dinero."Dinero no peude comprarme amor" o investigadores, o un testimonio, o exito.
Thanks for your testimony Dad, and your fine usage of #PrinceOfPeace :).

I can't think of anything else terribly exciting from this week. We got our transfer call this week and me and Elder Castillo be staying in Tiergarten, woohooooo! Nothing better than being able to stay in an area for longer than a measly 6 weeks. Elder Castillo is also super awesome. One of the most chill missionaries out there. We also transported a fridge using a trolley roughly 3 kilometers to a member's house, which was pretty fun. Other than that we're just searching for investigators that are really ready to progress. We have tons of potential investigators and people willing to meet, but time is just so limited. Anywho, love you, have a good week!

Elder Larsen

Without Purse or Scrip

Hehehe, so an interesting development of this week...my wallet got stolen. You'd think I would have learned after the one Elder got his bag stolen, but apparently not. Fortunately nothing got taken that isn't replaceable, and as a bonus I get to feel like the missionaries back in the olden days who went off with little money and few possessions. We were off to a zone conference and for whatever reason the tram was particularly packed full of people, and without me feeling or noticing anything someone was able to snag that baby right out of my pocket. I was able to hold on to the hope that I had maybe just left it at home until that night when we got back and it was nowhere to be found. Que pena. Schade. But the nice thing about being a missionary is that I don't have a ton of monthly expenses, just food and transportation, which the other missionaries should be able to help me with till I get a new card for mission funds.

I was able to deactivate the cards, but I don't know any of my login info for the bank, so if yall have a way of accessing that somehow and/or sending me the info asap that would be awesome. Hopefully there's still something left in my account.

Anywho, getting haircuts today took a bit longer than expected, so I don't got much tiempo. Gracias por el espanol Jose, comprende casi todas las cosas que me escribiste; you'll have to excuse the lack of the accents, in Deutschland brauchen wir so etwas nicht. Have a great week!

Elder Larsen

Level 2 Christians

You were right, Mom. Wow Joey is an old man...34? Is his hair still brown or has it turned white yet? Tehee. Well Lisa, if it makes you feel any better that seems like more of an awkward question than an awkward answer, but how should I know. I also happened to play ultimate frisbee for the first time this year, just barely today. We played 3 on 3 as a district which was pretty fun. I'm pretty jealous, Andy. Didn't the third book in the series come out a while ago? I saw Way of Kings and Words of Radiance in a bookstore a few months ago, it would be interesting to read them in German. Yeah Joey, it's definitely a unique time. Facebook is about to be introduced to our mission, all our area book records and stuff are digital, we walk around showing people videos on our ipads...every day there's more potential to do good and more potential to do evil. I agree with you, Dad. Even with President Monson's talks being a bit shorter than they used to be, they're powerful and hit right where they're needed. Charity and the Book of Mormon seem to both have their role as cornerstones; without charity we are nothing and without the Book of Mormon a testimony falls apart.

Another crazy week in Berlin. The Easter Initiative for this year started a couple days ago and we gotta get going in sharing it with the members. The last couple weeks we've had General Conference and Stake Conference, so I still don't really know many members in the ward, so visiting them and sharing the video will be a win.

We had an appointment with one of our investigators this week, a German college-age dude who has like the most abstract mind in the world. He brought his girlfriend and even though at first she hadn't wanted to come, in the end she came with him and ended up being really interested. We taught the restoration and she was excited to get a Book of Mormon. Hopefully we'll be meeting again this week. I've discovered in the last few months that some of the best missionaries are actually people investigating the church...who knew.

Spring has arrived in Berlin, and with it, sadly, hay fever. I already had a bit of a cold and it suddenly joined forces with allergies to literally destroy my face. It hit particularly hard during a lesson with a spanish speaking lady, so I was just kind of sneezing and blowing my nose the whole time, not really knowing what was going on. I sadly haven't been able to learn spanish overnight, which is kind of what I was hoping for :).

Anywho, General Conference was the bomb. In response to Elder Rasband's story about putting his foot in a lady's door to ask for a referral, President Fingerle sent us a letter saying that doing that in Germany is illegal and we should never do it, haha. One statement that really caught me though was from Ulisses Soares, when he said that faith is manifested in a positive attitude. I had never really made that connection. It's sometimes easy to feel justified in hanging your head down after a difficult day but if we really understand the nature of God's plan and Jesus Christ's Atonement, there's nothing that can keep us down.

Oh and last thing, we met with a couple African dudes this week and at the end one of them was saying that he was really impressed with the things we believe in, and the other one was like "yeah man, these guys are like advanced Christians." Hence the subject of this letter.

Adios, amigos!

Elder Larsen

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