God Is Love

Well Mom, it sounds like maybe I need to pay more attention to my thoughts during those difficult morning prayers, where I seem to be half asleep. I'm afraid that it'll take a more traumatic experience to make me a clean freak than some member's apartment, but I suppose anything is possible. Yikes, can't believe Ho Young already got his mission call...pretty sure he's still 16. Boy Andy, I'm surprised you're even allowed to be home alone. You'd think mom and dad would recognize that you'll be partying all night with "all your babes." Bro I hope you don't plan on telling me that you blew your chances with a certain _____ girl. You may be interested to know, Lisa, that here in Germany people say "beautiful to see you." Though in German it doesn't sound quite so ridiculous. I hope you have a good time in this "pond." I think what you said is pretty much missionary work in a nut-shell. Lots of ups and downs, success and blessings don't always come how we want them, and it's often difficult to tell if any of our efforts are making a difference. But the way we see things is a lot different from how God sees them. Not gonna lie Wouard, that collage thing is totes my goats adorbs. Are you sure that when Allison "practically smiled" at you, that it wasn't just gas? Surely she won't truly be able to smile until she meets her favorite uncle. Your rap seems pretty accurate Joey. And where be Isaac headed off to? Yeah Dad, that talk from Elder Holland last conference was pretty awesome. Nice to know that God blesses us just for having the desire to be better.

Zone Leader's Drawing of Elder Larsen

So...quite the rollercoaster this week. Tuesday we met with Frau Heumann and discovered that she works on the 2nd and 3rd of July. She said she hasn't gotten her entire work plan for July and that she'd call us when she did so we could make out a new date. Well, that evening President Fingerle called us, and we told him how things went. After a somewhat long and stressful phone call, he advised us to try to see if it would be possible that she got baptized THIS weekend, a.k.a. the 25th of June. Well we kind of panicked after that; for one thing neither I nor Elder Barboza have any experience with baptisms, which take more preparation than one might expect, and also the ward probably wouldn't be super thrilled about us spontanteously baptizing someone. But the next day we called Frau Heumann and it turns out she also had to work on those days, so that also didn't work. Well after much drama and conversations with our district leader, zone leaders, Assistants to the President, Sister training leaders and of course President Fingerle himself, we ended up with the 9th of July as the new date. Still a bit of churning in my stomach, but we're hoping that everything works out alright :).

In other news, our investigator Martin finally made it to church this Sunday. Elder Barboza had an awesome singing solo in Sacrament meeting, during which Martin teared up a little. He's such an awesome guy. One of the members, Esther Graf, also brought a friend to church (go members!), who also really enjoyed the church meetings and told us that he'd give us a call, once he gets back from vacation in a couple weeks. So we should have some pretty exciting stuff going on in the near future.

This week I finished reading the Book of Mormon, and the topic I was focused on throughout was how much God loves us. Well after going through my notes and reviewing what I marked, I think I can say that love is the #1 thing that makes God who He is. Everything he does is influenced by his love for us, and it's through love that we become more like Him (Moroni 7:48). I thought I was pretty clever when I came up with the phrase "Love is the defining characteristic of Godliness," but John the Apostle beat me by about 2000 years when he said "God is love." But in all seriousness, God loves us with all his heart, might, mind and strength. His joy comes from our success, and the steps that we take to follow Him and to work our way toward eternal life. The Book of Mormon is true.

Love you all, have an awesome week!

Elder Larsen

An Email From a Kind Member in Stadthagen

Dear Elders, dear parents from your wonderful sons,

today we had the privilage to have your sons with us for dinner. We ouerselves had four sons; all of them served in different english missions in the past. We know the feelings from missionarie parents. Therefore this pictures for you.
Elder Larsen is a very humbling missionar. Both of them are working well together.
Thanks for sending your sons. They will come back as good prepared men finding her own way.
So it was with our 4 sons & so will it be with yours.

kindly regards from Stadthagen, Germany

"The Moth Shall Eat Them Up"

If you think that that's prideful or sinful mom, you should read Alma 26. That's pretty cray cray that Jonathan is about to head out on his mission, I'm starting to feel old (in terms of mission age, not necessarily literal age, tehee). Uh oh Andy, at this rate you're gonna start running out of excuses for not being constantly surrounded by babes. I look forward to the day that we can dominate frisbee together once again. Yeah Dad, I think that's the way the Old Testament has to be read, sadly. The temple bug seems like a good bug to have, hopefully it doesn't go away. That's funny, this week at zone training meeting President Fingerle said something pretty similar, he talked about the similarities between the characteristics of a successful missionary and a successful parent.

It Looks Like Matt Shrunk for This Picture

So this week was pretty solid. We met with Frau Heumann again, and are starting to teach her the 5th lesson. I think it's the 2nd time I've ever taught anything from the 5th, unfortunately we don't seem to always make it that far with our investigators, haha. It's interesting, the other lessons are more about preparing for baptism, whereas the 5th is more preparing for what will happen after baptism. We have another appointment with her tomorrow, which is when she gets her work schedule for July. As a nurse she typically has to work every other weekend (including Sundays), so we'll see if she'll be able to make it on July 2nd. We're hoping and praying, and after talking to President Fingerle about her, we feel even more confident that she is ready. All that's left to do is wait.

On Wednesday we rode the train up to Nienburg, a city on the north end of our area to help a less active member fix up his apartment. Gotta say...I'm not really the clean-freak kind of person, but if I were to live in such a dirty apartment I'd be pretty miserable. First he wanted us to replace a few smaller rugs in his living room with a bigger one in the dungeon, err...basement. So we carried it outside and laid it out in the church parking lot (he lives right next to the now-closed church building. Nienburg used to be it's own area). What had once supposedly been a very nice rug (the member insisted that it was) was now the all-you-can-eat buffet of a few dozen moths. Apparently it had been chilling in the basement of his apartment for 2 years or so. So remember kids, "lay up yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." Or maybe this one is better: "For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool. But my righteousness shall be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation." Those scriptures make a lot more sense to me now. Anywho, though that didn't work out too well, we were at least able to clean things up a little bit in his apartment.

Aside from that, we also had zone training meeting this week, which consists of the zone meeting together to receive training (crazy, I know). The Zone Leaders talked about a new idea for working with members, "100 names in 30 minutes." They brought a member with them and pretty much did a live demonstration for us. Pretty much the goal is to have a short 30 minute power visit with a member, share a quick spiritual thought, and then try to help them write down a list of 100 names, asking questions like "who knows you're a member" or "what are the names of your neighbors," anything that can help them think of names. Afterwards at another appointment you meet with the same member again and discuss different things that can be done to help these 100 people: send a book of mormon, send the missionaries, invite to an activity, etc. The demonstration ended up being a little awkward, as the member kept getting distracted, but he still got a solid 41 names written down. So we decided we'd give it a shot this week and got an appointment for next Friday. Yikes, felt like I was kind of ranting there.

But yeah, don't get eaten by any moths this week. Have a good one!

Elder Larsen

Dingo Babies (for lack of a better title)

Yes Mom, and before you start getting the wrong ideas I'm fairly certain that Brother Wolfert meant that I was a humble, as opposed to humbling, missionary. Though I think both are fairly accurate. I'm happy to say that I've yet to have a fellow member be flat-out rude to me and while I can't say the same for non-members, I imagine such remarks would be a lot more stinging when coming from those who are supposed to be your greatest teammates as a missionary. Also, any news on the letter mix-up? I'm glad you're managing to survive, Wouard. Sounds like quite the dangerous life having three little girls around. Gotta admit I'm pretty jealous. Germans don't typically believe in such delicous desserts like peanut butter bars. They're more into the boring stuff, life fruit-based desserts. Quite the tough life. What Lisa, you didn't even take a selfie with your German food? On Friday we're giving a 20 minute lesson about baptism. I'll let you know if that also feels like 5 minutes, tehee. Don't worry Andy, there are more precious sorts of gems out there for you to find. Good luck with the Old Testament, my half-hearted attempts to read it haven't gotten me too far. Joey, there are so many myths about missionary work, I'm glad to put this one to rest. I think if we were to not spend half our day knocking doors and stopping people on the street, we wouldn't have much to do other than scratch our bum bums and get fat off of eating appointments with members. Yeah Dad, bike areas definitely help with keeping in shape. I'm afraid I've started to go back down in terms of weight, I never quite made it to 150 pounds. Quite the shame.

 Another solid week in the happening world of Stadthagen. Of course for the most exciting part I just happened to be on exchanges in Bielefeld. Elders Barboza and Fritz had an appointment with our investigator Frau Heumann, and at last she accepted a baptismal date! And aside from the fact that she needs to work on her church attendance, she's pretty well prepared for it. Coffee had been a problem, but as it turns out (I was also quite shocked, but it came to us from the mouth of the Mission President himself) you're allowed to be baptized if you drink de-caffeinated coffee. Or maybe that isn't all that weird...no clue. In terms of church attendance she always has "good" excuses when she doesn't make it, but excuses are still excuses. But either way, it's been awesome to see her make progress. At first she didn't understand the Book of Mormon all that well, but now when we meet with her she explains stuff (for example the fall) better than I could have explained it after 10 years of being baptized.

We also had a pretty cool appointment with another investigator, Martin. He had come to our showing of Meet the Mormons and had talked for a good 15 or so minutes with the Bishop. They both live in Hameln (southern city in our area) and so arranged a little dinner appointment with each other to be had at the Bishop's house. So on Friday we met Martin and his wife Anja at their apartment and rode with them to Bishop Schwing's. It was the first time we had been able to really talk to Anja; at the beginning she had been totally against Martin meeting with us. Her friends had told her the classic "mormons have more than one wife" line, and naturally the concept of her husband having more than one wife wasn't terribly appealing to her. But after being able to actually meet not only missionaries, but also normal members, she opened up a lot and seems to have just as much interest as Martin. Unfortunately we didn't have much time (it takes like an hour and a half to get to Stadthagen from Hameln) and were only able to give a condensed version of the restoration. Short, but also sweet. I'm excited with the direction things are going with them.

This week I felt like I was (for probably the 102nd time) reminded of the importance of hope. "If you have not faith, hope, and charity, you can do nothing." That being the case it only makes sense that those are the things that Satan would focus his attacks on. And if he can diminish hope, then by definition faith will also decrease. And without faith on Jesus Christ, I imagine it's somewhat harder to be filled with His love. In other words, we gotta have hope. Hope for the world, hope for others, and perhaps most importantly, hope for ourselves. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, based on my experience, there will be times that Satan will attack our hope. He will tell us that things will not and can not get better. He will smother us with lies and temptations in order to blind us from the fact that we are beloved children of God with infinite potential, who have every reason to hope for improvement.

So don't let that old liar get to you :). Have an awesome week!

Elder Larsen

Meet the Mormon

Boy, I can't believe you'd be given the most difficult job on Memorial Day Mom. Well, I hope that that service project was a lesson to you not to underestimate the power of those who look like weirdos :). Round these parts it's typically only the "weirdos" who are willing to give us the time of day. Also on a random note, I forgot to mention last week that I got a letter from the ward that, although it was addressed to me, was actually a letter for Elder Andrus, which leads me to assume that he got one addressed to a certain Elder Larsen. Not sure if anything could/should be done, but at the least I could send him a picture of the letter or something. You bought high heels, Lisa? I'm turribly disappointed in you. Sounds like some pretty solid ultimate frisbee playing, can't say that I'm not jealous. I'm afraid that even after 2 years, soccer will never be able to compete with frisbee. Andy, you just gotta pull out phrases like what Chance said and the ladies won't be able to resist you. Good luck finding that Red Beryl thing, though I'll bet the chances of you finding a Tiamat in the first level of Ogre Battle would be greater than you finding one of those babies. Sounds like you've got a fun week ahead of you, Joey. It also sounds like Z is already at about the same point in swimming skills as I'm at. Matt was bad. Now Matt...good. Thanks for the prayers, Pops, we can certainly use them. I may not have been there to trim with you, but based on the blast of hay fever I got this week it feels as though I must have been there in spirit or something.

This week was one of those weeks that at the time felt really eventful but now that I think about it it doesn't really seem like all that much happened. The main event of the week was definitely watching the Film, Meet the Mormons, in the church building on Friday. We had a solid 75ish people who came, about 60 members and 15 nonmembers. Unfortunately, of the over 300 people who accepted invitations to the movie, and the thousands who were talked to about it, saw it in the newspaper or were otherwise made aware of it, only one of those people came (all the others who came were friends of members, who they got rides from). But I suppose that's just another testimony of just how much more is possible when working closely with members, as opposed to trying to do it alone. But in the end, we were able to give out some Books of Mormon, get a few phone numbers, all that good stuff.

Yikes, time flies when you get caught in a conversation with a member for 2 hours. Last Monday I managed to somehow mess up my bike, no idea how...so we asked around the ward to see if someone could fix it up. And today he came and was able to fix it up...and chat with us for a really long time. Anywho, we'll be using the bikes this evening, so we'll get to see if it decides to die again.

In other news, ELDER FRITZ IS BACK, wooooo! My old mtc comp has come back to life, and just happens to be in the same district as me. Awesomeness. Oh, and also, you probably thought that the subject of this email was a typo, meant to be "Meet the Mormons." Well you're wrong, because on Tuesday this random kid came up to us and be like "do you speak english?" and we be like "yes." Turns out he was part of a school group from Iowa, and he was the only one that was a member. So we met a mormon. Aren't I clever.

On that note I'm basically out of time. The Gospel is so true and so awesome. God loves and knows us personally. We are his children. Know it, love it, live it :). Have a great week!

Elder Larsen

Stadthagen: Transfer 3

Nein Mutti, leide habe ich einen Anzug noch nicht "geboughten." But a few weeks ago we went on a scouting mission to find out which kind of suit I should get and where to buy it. We're making progress :). Not bad Mom, I hadn't thought to draw a Gospel parallel out of our adventure with our bird friend. I'll certainly be expecting a picture of this "awesome play set." Well Andy, I'm glad to hear that your old frisbee-dominating self is returning. The talk to text thing went great up to the second to last sentence Lisa, haha. Yeah, that would be awkward if ol Aaron was already back, seeing as he just got made zone leader in the zone next to mine, which hopefully means I'll get to see him sometime. Wouard, you mean Savannah is already done with kindergarten? Isn't she still like 2 years old? And don't worry, you get a couple months of a break before you have to have another baby, as long as there's a new one by the time I get back :). Sounds like a good commitment Joey. Elder Herbertson of the Seventy, who talked to us during Stake Conference last week, told us how we need to focus more on giving our families bread, rather than stones. But Joey, do you think it's possible to do a sit-up without being able to see or hear? Seems like a pretty legit playground Dad. I'll definitely take the advice in Mosiah 4:27; one step at a time.

So the first half of this week was pretty normal: finding, some service, a couple appointments, the usual. But as soon as Thursday rolled around things got pretty cray cray. From 8:00 to about 6:00 we were in Hannover for Zone Conference, which was pretty great. The last couple weeks I had thought a lot about testimonies: giving testimony more often, giving it powerfully and with the Holy Ghost, etc. And what happens to be one of the big themes of the Zone Conference? Giving testimony. My takeaway from it was pretty much that I need to be ready in EVERY situation to give testimony, and that testimony should be given from the heart, not from the head. Also, a week before the conference we were asked to prepare a 5 minute lesson for the law of chastity; a few hours into the meeting one of the Zone Leaders pulled out a container with the names of each companionship in the 2 participating zones and informed us that the companionship whose name was pulled out would have the opportunity to do a roleplay in front of everyone. Before he even pulled one of the slips of paper out, I knew exactly which Elders would be doing it. "Elder Barboza and Elder Larsen!" Fortunately we were prepared and did a pretty solid job teaching a "family" (consisting of 5 other missionaries). It just so happened that we also had it planned to teach one of our investigators the law of chastity the very next day, and the tips/feedback we got from our roleplay helped us out with that as well. The conference was just full of awesome little "coincidences."

Another exciting event of the week was a street display we did on Saturday, to invite people to the movie Meet the Mormons, which we'll be showing on Friday evening. After 15 minutes of consistent rejection I was afraid that we'd be in for a very long 3 hours, and that the awesome members who had volunteered to help out would end up having a somewhat disappointing experience. But after about half an hour things started to pick up, and our original goal of handing out 120 fliers jumped up to over 300 (our ward mission leader had to leave twice to print out more of them). The members there had a great time and in the end we could all say with confidence that a lot of people would be coming. It was definitely a testimony-boost for all of us, lots of miracles there.

Finally on Saturday evening we got our transfer calls; the reign of Elder Barboza and Larsen continues for a third! Which means that I'll be escorting the Captain to his grave, as he comes to the end of his mission. We've got some exciting weeks ahead of us: we're hoping to see lots of success with Meet the Mormons on Friday, and we've got a couple investigators that are making good progress (Frau Heumann has overcome her difficulties with the Word of Wisdom) :).

Anywho, that's everything for this week, keep being awesome!

Like a Bird in the Sky...

Yeah Mom, I'm trying to imagine what would happen if you came to Lower Saxony in order to do "Genealogical research," while I just happened to be in Stadthagen, haha. Though I'm afraid I unfortunately won't have the opportunity to "snuggle" with any nieces or nephews in the near future, I'm happy to report that children in Germany also recognize immediately that it's ok to attack Elder Larsen. Yesterday during Stake Conference the Bishop's little son's arsenal consisted of fists, pigs and books; however as soon as pencils entered the picture the Bishop decided to put a stop to it. Not too many experiences can compete with having fun with little kiddies. Is that really how the conversation went, Lisa? I'm trying to picture Ho Young saying "you creeper." Too bad by the time I get back Allison will have (hopefully) lost her constant scowl face. That means you've got less than a year and a half before you have to have another one Heidi. Hey Joey, I'd sure B Flat-tered if you'd give it a shot. I'd reckon you're right about faith. That's been a very prominent topic for us the last few weeks, helping our investigators to exercise faith. I suppose another big part of it is us having the faith to say whatever the Lord wants us to say, even at the risk of investigators feeling "uncomfortable." Sometimes having a life changed for the better isn't entirely comfortable, but it is entirely worth it. We'll just have to have more faith ourselves and keep moving forward. That's awesome that you got to baptize/be baptized for some of those old relatives Dad.

 Well, this week we had a lot of random little "firsts." For the first time we visited the northern third of our area. For the first time I sealed the anointing of a blessing in German. For the first time I ate pancakes in Germany. For the first time (you may want to skip this one) I saw maggots eating moldy bananas which we perhaps should have thrown away a week or 2 ago..."cough cough." and for the first time a bird flew into our apartment and proceeded to dance on Elder Barboza's lunch, which was one of the few parts I unfortunately was not able to catch on film. Yep. Quite the exciting adventures.

On a more serious and perhaps even more stomach-wrenching note, the younger couple that we had been visiting with every week for a month or so "no longer have the time" to meet with us, which is a bit disappointing. But I think eventually, whether in a couple months or a few years, they'll start to realize how much they need God in their lives. On the bright side we now have even more time we can use to find those that God is preparing. This Saturday we'll be doing a street display in order to invite people to a showing of Meet the Mormons, which we'll be showing in the church building on June 3rd. We've been covering all the bases we can think of in order to get people there, and we're hoping and praying for a miracle.

This week we once again went on exchange with the Bielefeld Elders, and I once again went to Bielefeld, this time with our District Leader Elder Casperson. Unfortunately due to institute, ward council and a few other things we had to get taken care of, we didn't have a ton of time to go finding or teach anyone, though there were still a few good tips I got from Elder Casperson. He introduced me to this "purification process" thing, which basically consists of fasting for a day and writing down things that prevent the Spirit from being with you: disobedience, pride, distractions, etc., and then for the next 40 days you try to overcome whatever things you wrote down. And being the above-averagely-imperfect person that I am, there are many things that, with the Lord's help, I will hopefully be able to change.

At the end of the week we were able to enjoy Stake Conference, which was presided over by a certain Scottish Seventy by the name of Elder Herbertson. Not gonna lie, there are few people who can talk for a solid hour straight and not lose the attention of an audience of people that don't even speak the same language. He's certainly one of them. He had the audience laughing or in tears for pretty much the entire hour. The main points I got out of it are that first: God loves us and knows all the details of our lives and second: we should look to the future with hope, rather than looking to the past with regret. It was pretty much the bomb.

Anywho, have an awesome week! "I am with you...I love you!"

Elder Larsen