Quotes from Colter's last email:

Here is a photo we found on the Internet of Erlangen, Germany.   

Colter is now in his first area: Erlangen, Germany!

VERY IMPORTANT - here is his address for writing letters (he loves letters!)

HLT - Mission Elder Anderson

Gerhardt-Hauptmann Str. 15
91058 Erlangen
Germany

Here are emails from his first couple of weeks there:

Well, this is my first email from Germany! german keyboards are weird. The z and the y are switched and it is kinda annoying.ummm... yeah! I am in Erlangen, which is a little north and west of Nurnberg. I am pretty sure it is actually closer to frankfurt than Munich. but yeah! this week was awesome! the people in erlangen speak frankish, or what thez speak in frankfurt (i gave up trzing to switch. z=y and y=z ok). which is closer to high german than most of mz mission which is good. cause high german is what i learned. it is still prettz hard to understand people though. The work is slow and the people arent reallz receptive, but thats ok, its still fun. we´ve taught a few people and talked to a bunch, and it´s reallz cool. My companion is Elder Achtman. He is from Germanz, but his english is reallz good, so that´s good. He is into video games and has been on his mission for a little over 18 months. He also is a convert and is the onlz member of his familz that is a member. He was baptiyed at age 18. But zeah! i´m doing well, and i hope everzone back home is too! good luck with school or whatever.

The church in Erlangen is pretty good! it´s a modestly sized ward, but it has a ton of kids and is very strong. The GML (Gemindemissionsleiter or Ward mission leader) just became the 2nd councilor in the bishopric, which is too bad, because he´s known throughout the mission as being the best GML. There are 2 sets of missionaries just for this ward. Us and the rest of our district, Elders Andersen and Jensen. They are awesome. And no, i don´t think the military base is too nearby. We don´t really feel affects of it. The members are awesome and we sometimes see people. And we have had a couple of ward parties where we were fed. And yes it was really good :)
Haha, you´d probably disappointed, but we eat cold cereal most mornings. haha. most of our meals are on the go or quick things at the apartment. the best thing is a Döner, which is a Turkish invented thing that kinda tastes like a Gyro. It´s awesome. My companion is 21, named Elder Daniel Achtman, and is a german. he´s really cool and we get along fine. He´s into videogames and role playing games (like DnD). So we see eye to eye on a lot of things. He is from a town quite a bit north of us. probably a couple hours drive north of Frankfurt. I don´t exactly remember where though. Ok, cool story this week. We were in Höchstadt, which is a bit north and west of Erlangen, and we saw this guy washing his car. So we went up to talk to him and quickly shared the restoration. Then he shared his experience. He´s a christian, that firmly believes in searching for God, cause he had and experience a couple years ago dealing with that, but he hasn´t found a denomination that he feels is right. haha, could there be a more perfect cantidate?! unfortunately he lives in Mäinz, which is in the Frankfurt mission. But we called the mission office and they sent the referal to the Frankfurt mission. So hopefully something good comes out of it.
The mission President and his wife are awesome, they both play the piano and organ, and President Condie is really good at it. They are both really nice. We had Zone Conference this week, so we got to see them then as well, which was really cool. haha. all i really remember of our first stay was there were a lot of meetings and we were all exhausted.haha. We get around by bike, unless we go to Höchstadt or something. Our area is really large. There´s kind of a river, and our area is the West side and the other elders is the east side. our area also extend really far, which is cool cause it´s rural farms. There are also these GIANT windmills, that i actually would like you to see if you could figure out how big they are. They seem like they must be almost 100 ft tall! But the furthest i´ve been in our area is Neustadt, but our area is amost twice as big as the distance from erlangen to neustadt. The other elder´s area isn´t as large. but they live really close, so we pretty much see them every day we have cell phones, so we meet for lunch a lot. we don´t really have any ongoing service project right now, but we are looking for stuff to do. Ok, so that´s it, i should go soon. I have to write my letter to the president. also, if you want you could add as much or as little to the big letter/the blog as you want. But yeah. I´m doing good! miss you lots and can´t wait for your letters! Love, Colter

Final MTC Photos

This post is out of order because we received these MTC photos after we got the email of Colter's arrival in Germany.

Elder Anderson has arrived!

We received an email from Sister Condie (mission President's wife) with these photos from Colter's first day in Germany at the mission home. He has been assigned to the area of Erlangen, Germany - which is 10 miles north of Nurnberg. Since he was worried about the southern and Austrian dialects, it is probably a good place to begin with his MTC German. It is a university town of about 100,000 people. He will email us his address next Monday and we will post that. Here is a nice quote from Sister Condie:

We are thrilled that he is here and are very impressed with his preparation and enthusiasm. He will be a great missionary. Thank you for all you have done to help him become the fine young man he is today. We will do all we can to help him grow as a missionary and have a successful mission. If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. May the Lord bless you and your family at this wonderful time of missionary service.