Monday, December 26, 2016

MORE FAMILIES!!!!

What's up fam??

This week was crazy!! Of course because it was the week before Christmas, nobody wanted to talk to us or see us. But don't worry that can't effect the power of God in bringing forth His work!!! It's fun to be on his team!!

To start it out, on Monday night we were wandering around in Baltimore and we stopped by this less active family that hasn't had all their kids baptized yet and they were super cool! They said that they want to start coming back to church and they want to get their kids baptized and blessed so we're gonna start working with them now! The rest of the week we had to deal with a bunch of stuff so we didn't have a lot of time to find new investigators and by Thursday we were worried that we wouldn't be able to find 2 new ones this week (because Friday we had a mission Christmas conference, Saturday was only a part day of working and Christmas we didn't work all day). On Thursday we were praying super hard to find 2 new investigators that day in the little time remaining that we had to work. Sure enough, Heavenly Father came through (He always does) but not just with 2 new investigators! We stopped by the family of one of our investigators (Salomon from Congo) and they let us in immediately and we started teaching their whole family! If you didn't know, African families are HUGE and super in tune with the Spirit! That day we picked up 5 new investigators there and by the time the lesson was over, at least 5 more people came in that said they would meet with us next time. Dang!!!!! So sick!!!! Teaching families is the best!!

I had the opportunity this week to play the guitar with Elder Chamberlain (who went to Viewmont too) at the mission Christmas conference and in sacrament meeting yesterday it was awesome! It turned out a lot better than I'd expected, we only had 3 days to practice for it.

Missionary work on Christmas Eve is usually really slow so we decided to speed it up a little bit and we went on a blitz with our district to pass out Light the World cards and whoever won got a blizzard from DQ. My companion and I knocked at least 500 doors and handed out 129 Light the World cards, all on Christmas Eve before 4 PM. Of course we won the contest!!!

I hope y'all had a good Christmas!!

-Elder Larson


Elder Singleton's posterity

Skype with the fam!!
Elder Larson <3


Monday, December 19, 2016

4 NEW GATORS!

What's good?

This week was pretty wild! To start things off, Monday night we were on our way to an appointment with Cheryl (who ended up being really solid) and our tire popped #MoreAdversity so we spent the rest of the night changing that and trying to get it to the shop but they were all closed... Luckily the next morning we were able to get it taken care of and we got to district meeting up in Harford County on time, miracle! After that we drove all the way back down to Essex and I gave a baptism interview to the other Chesapeake elders' investigator Christopher. It was a very spiritual interview and he ended up getting baptized on Saturday it was awesome! He is from Nigeria! After that I went on exchanges with Elder Gardner and he came into our area with me. We had an awesome lesson with Renee, she and her family will be getting baptized in January hopefully! She is facing a lot of opposition though, so please pray for them!! And then after that we went to our lesson with Cheryl and she was so solid! We taught her the Restoration and as we taught her about Joseph Smith and the First Vision the Spirit was so strong! After we told her about that she explained to us how when we were telling her about that story, she felt so close to God and that her heart was so warm! It was amazing how strong the Spirit was in that lesson. She told us after that earlier this year she was in a coma for 8 days and probably shouldn't have survived but that she knows God is keeping her here for a reason. I know that the reason she is still here is so she could hear about the Restoration of Christ's church! Such a powerful experience!

On Saturday we left our apartment at 6 AM to go help out at the bishop's storehouse in inner city Baltimore, a member was going to drive us there. Because of the temperature and the fact that it rained, all the roads were frozen over. Don't worry, we didn't get in an accident! But took the 95 down there which was a really bad idea! Long story short, we sat in traffic for 6 hours to move a mile because there were some crazy car accidents down the road! We saw at least 15 cars crashed on the sides of the roads that weren't even a part of the big crash. Around an hour before we drove through there, a big tanker lost control and hit the barrier on the bridge and barrel rolled over it and off the bridge into the Chesapeake Bay... In the midst of that the tanker exploded and caught the bridge on fire where all the rest of the semis and cars that couldn't stop slid through it into a gigantic pile-up, there is even a video of it somewhere! Crazy!! But we found 4 new investigators this week!! Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson



Fixing the flat

Exchanges with my trainer!!!  Elder Singleton!!!

Monday, December 12, 2016

HEAVENLY FATHER HAS OUR BACKS

What's good???

This week was crazy and I'm gonna be honest this email will be short because not a lot happened!! To start the week off we had zone training on Tuesday and as part of our instruction we brought in our recent convert Tihiseen who was baptized in October to talk about the adversity he has faced since he started meeting with missionaries and how he has overcome that. He talked about his conversion story and bore one of the most fiery testimonies I have ever heard. The Spirit was so strong in the meeting! After that we went on exchanges and I went up to Susquehanna for the day with Elder Ainsworth (who is from Farmington too). The exchange went well, we saw a lot of success! The week took a sharp turn that night when I woke up at 12 and spent the rest of the night in the bathroom sick. The next morning my companion and the Elder that he was with drove up here so we could exchange back and so I could go back to be in my own bed but as soon as they got there, my companion started throwing up too!!! Hahahaha!!! So we spent most of the rest of that day up in Susquehanna, both sick as a dog (2 dogs) and then when we finally had the strength we made it back home. But we were still out of commission for a couple days. Dang!!!

Because of this said sickness, it was Thursday and we hadn't done like any missionary work in our area! But Heavenly Father had our backs and hooked us up with some sweet referrals and we still found 2 new investigators and taught a bunch of lessons with ease. Money!!!! Other than that the only exciting thing that happened was during sacrament meeting when some dude with a big Rick Ross jacket and headphones started running laps in the chapel (yes during sacrament meeting) and nobody even blinked haha!!! Welcome to Baltimore!!!

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson



Throwback to when the other elders got jumped and we had to pick them up from the police station at midnight!!!

Monday, December 5, 2016

TROY, MIRACLE CALLS AND I ALMOST KILLED MYSELF AND MY COMP!!!!

What's good????

This week was outrageous!!! We had MLC and a bunch of other stuff that we had to take care of so we didn't get to do as much proselyting as we wished we could have this week.. Our goal this week was to find 2 new investigators and by Friday we hadn't found any and didn't really have any potential to find anything the rest of the week so we were stressing out pretty bad about finding someone.... We had a bunch of plans for the whole day but every one of them was falling through, nobody would answer their doors! It was like 7:15 and we had 45 minutes until we had a lesson with some recently baptized members and we felt like we were supposed to find somebody that night. So my companion and I said a prayer right there on the side of the road and asked Heavenly Father to guide us to a new investigator before our appointment. Within 10 minutes we knocked on this guys door and he let us right in and we taught him and picked him up as an investigator! So sick!! Also we got a call from somebody this week that is a less active family and they told us that they want to get their 12 year old daughter baptized, we can definitely help with that!!! Also one of Renee's sons just moved into their house with them (he moved here from Jamaica(he's 19)) and we picked him up as an investigator and he seems way solid! Now all 5 of them want to get baptized!!!! His name is Troy BTW.

For the #LightTheWorld initiative this week we were doing a service project with the missionaries in our ward and we went to a river to clear out fallen trees and garbage that was there. Long story short I was sawing one side of a HUGE tree and my companion was sawing the other side of it 40 feet away and as I pushed the log so that it would break somehow the tree ended up on top of me and at the same time it landed on my companion!!! Haha luckily we were both alright, I'm sure it looked hilarious though!!!! Have a good week!!
-Elder Larson



Tihiseen (our recent convert) is such a stud!!!




Monday, November 28, 2016

DANG!!!!!!!!!!!

We are idiots!!!!!!

This week was decent haha.... To start things off we had district meetings on Tuesday and afterwards I slammed a guitar on my companion's back (I'll try to send a video below). Then transfers was the next day, we both stayed. I don't know what it is but transfer weeks and holiday weeks are really slow and when you combine the two it (or we) gets stupid.

A while back I told y'all about how an elder in our zone got jumped, in the mix of all that he lost his Charm Card (basically a bus debit card) so we lent him one of ours and he ended up losing that one too... So our task this week was to get that one replaced so we could use the bus and save some miles for the end of the month. After 2 trips to the heart of Baltimore, we finally got it replaced and reactivated. As we returned to the 7/11 that we parked at down the street from where we got the card (the parking in Baltimore is horrible), it then became known to us that our car wasn't there. Flip!!!!!! Turns out that someone towed our car (within 5 minutes of us parking there) and it cost $350 in cash to get it back. In case you aren't aware, missionaries definitely do not have $350 cash on them in inner city Baltimore, or ever because we are poor!! After being stranded in Baltimore for several hours our vehicle coordinator picked us up and luckily his wife had $350 in cash that she lent to us to pay for it. They saved the day!!! Super grateful for Elder and Sister Sturgeon! Now my companion and I are super broke!!!

Now for the missionary part that y'all are actually here to read about: we were in a lesson with our investigator Renee and we took a member that lives nearby to fellowship with her. (BTW Renee and her kids are on date to be baptized on December 17) We taught her about tithing and her member friend did an awesome job testifying of it, the Spirit was very strong in the lesson. We committed Renee to pay tithing after she gets baptized but essentially she said no.... She said she is gonna start paying tithing right now because she doesn't want to wait until she gets baptized to do that! She's a stud!!!

Have a good week!!


-Elder Larson​


Guitar smash on Elder Carlson




Monday, November 21, 2016

CRAMPING IN SACRAMENT

What's good??

This week was awesome! It is starting to get super cold here! It is 45 degrees but with the wind and the humidity it feels like it is -20!!! It's gonna be a long winter, last winter I had 20 lbs more of insulation (fat (Antietam ward members fed really good)) to keep me warm! I'm hosed!!

Anyways, yesterday the Jeghedes were confirmed in sacrament meeting and that took up half of the meeting haha! All 5 of them were confirmed and while I was standing in the circle to confirm them my calf started cramping because we had been standing there for so long!! Dang that hurt!!!! It's okay though, the Spirit in the meeting comforted me. ;) The Jeghedes are way pumped to have the Holy Ghost now and to be members, they were glowing yesterday!!

We had MLC this week out in Walkersville and after the meeting, Brother and Sister Pederson from the Walkersville ward took us out to dinner, super grateful!! I miss the Walkersville ward!! Also we picked up 3 new investigators this week who all seem pretty solid! Shirell was a headquarters referral and the first thing she started talking about when we got there was how she noticed that the world was in an apostasy! Those aren't the words that she used but that's pretty much what she said! Salomon moved here to the United States 3 months ago from Congo, and he is super pumped about the gospel! Then we picked up Larry and it was pretty cool how we found him. We felt really strongly a couple weeks ago that we needed to knock this street so we started knocking doors and literally every single door was either slammed in our face mid-door approach or it was slammed in our face after they swore at us haha it was awesome!! But we kept knocking and at the end of the street we talked to a guy named Steve who said we could come back. So we came back and he wasn't interested anymore... But his dad Larry was there and we taught him!! He said that what we shared with him is what he needed in his life. Super cool!! Also on Sunday we fasted with Renee to help her quit smoking, she's a stud!!

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson


The squad

Natty-Bo fam

Monday, November 14, 2016

3 MORE ON DATE + CHURCH WITH NFL PLAYERS

What's up guys?

This week was crazy!!! It started off pretty slow not gonna lie... Usually after 1 baptism the missionary work seems to get really slow and we had 5 last week which was like half of our teaching pool... Elder Carlson and I really didn't want the work to die so we were doing everything we could to keep things rolling but things weren't going how we necessarily wanted them to. We had a lesson with the Silvers and we were planning on teaching them the Word of Wisdom but we really didn't know what member we could get to go over to teach them with us that would be a good friend to them. After thinking a lot about it we felt like we should ask a less active lady that lived really close to them to come teaching with us, but it was really risky because she hadn't been to church in a long time! So we went and talked to her about it and she was surprisingly super excited to help out in the teaching and even said that this might be what gets her back into church! Sure enough we taught them the Word of Wisdom (even though I was on exchanges) and committed them all to live it (all 3 of them drank coffee and tea and Renae, the mom, smokes cigarettes) and then committed them to be baptized on December 10. Super sick! The less active lady (Stephanie) came in clutch and gave them all a ride to church yesterday! Super cool!!

I went on exchanges to Jones Falls with Elder Tucker on Saturday and Sunday and I had the opportunity to attend their ward yesterday. This ward isn't like most other wards though... In the Jones Falls ward there are 3 active NFL players that attend when possible, and I got to meet 2 of them yesterday!!! I got to talk to Dennis Pitta and Bronson Kafusi who both play for the Ravens, it was super sick!! Unfortunately Eric Weddle (who also plays for the Ravens) wasn't at church yesterday so I didn't get to meet him but it was still super cool!! This week was crazy!! Also, while we were knocking doors we got some free fried chicken from one of the ladies we knocked into haha!! #BlessingsOfBaltimore

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson


Service with Elder Carlson at the Wood's

Baltimore from afar!!  It's a lot better looking from far away!!

Monday, November 7, 2016

THE JEGHEDES!!!!

What's up guys??

This week was crazy but amazing!!! To start the week off, I went on exchanges with Elder Tharp (who served in the Glen Burnie ward with me when I was there) and we had a ton of fun! (That was our 3rd time on exchanges together haha). Then we had zone conference and because our car was so clean we won the cleanest car award and got some free Chic-Fil-A gift cards, super stoked about that haha! Then from there I went on exchanges with Elder Head into his area (down in Dundalk and Essex). We had a good exchange! Even though it was a short one we managed to contact a guy named Isaiah and picked him up as an investigator the next day, pretty cool!

Finally, after many crazy situations and madness that I am not authorized to talk about, the Jeghedes got baptized on Sunday!!! All 5 of them!!! It was amazing!!! We had been working pretty closely with our mission president through some things and he told us that he thinks it would be alright for us to get in the water and baptize a few of them which is crazy because he never lets missionaries baptize people!!! And we didn't even ask him either!! So I got to baptize Favour, the youngest daughter. The baptism went really smooth and there was a lot of support from the ward and even the stake! After the baptism Favour came up to me and gave me the biggest hug that a 9 year old can give and she wouldn't let go, it was adorable!! It is always amazing to see the joy that the gospel brings into the lives of those that choose to live it, and the Jeghedes are a prime example of that! 

Other than that we found 3 new investigators this week which was good! One of them, Charles, was actually drafted into the MLB a few years ago but gave it up so he could be with his family. Super cool! A lot of good stuff is happening out here!!

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson



The Jeghedes and us!!

Monday, October 31, 2016

TIHISEEN'S BAPTISM

What's up squad??

This week was money!!! Also happy Halloween!!! To start things off, we had a baptism on Friday!!! Tihiseen (Brother Tarty) (he is from Liberia) was baptized and confirmed this weekend, it was sick! After he was baptized he bore his testimony about the restored gospel, it was so sick! Right now he's working on some family history so he can take some names into the temple and do baptisms for the dead for them, and hopefully we'll be able to go with him to do that! I can't even describe how happy he was after he was confirmed and given the gift of the Holy Ghost yesterday. The Gospel is true and works for everyone who strives to live it!!

We had zone training on Tuesday which went well. Our teaching pool is doing really well, the Jeghedes should be getting baptized either this week or the next, they are literally begging us to be baptized! Unfortunately there has been a ton of things that have been trying to keep them from getting baptized. We are teaching another family of 4, their names are Renae, Marvin, Tyon and Rebecca, they are super solid! We put them on date to be baptized on November 26 and they're way stoked about it! Rebecca said the closing prayer in our last lesson with them and she said in it that she hopes that her and her family will get baptized so that they can have the Holy Ghost, super legit! We picked up a couple new investigators last week as well, one of them's name is Joseph (who is from Ghana (people from Africa are the best)) and we taught him in the garage that he works at because he is a mechanic.

We had a sick miracle happen today as we were driving to the church to email: we got a text from this guy who is a former investigator (his name is Michael) and in the text he said that he is ready to turn his life over to God repent fully and that he has reached the point in his life where he needs to change. So we are going to go meet with him on Wednesday, super sick!!

Have a good week!!


-Elder Larson



Tihiseen's baptism!


Monday, October 24, 2016

MISSIONARIES OR VIGILANTES??

What's good?

This week was insane!!! So much stuff happened this week it was unreal! First off, the missionary work here is going really well right now! Our investigator, Tihesen (he's from Liberia), will be getting baptized this Friday at 7 and he's super pumped for that! The Jeghades (family of 7 that we are working with that is from Nigeria) are planning on getting baptized in a couple weeks, they are so solid!! They immigrated here to the states just a year ago and are planning on staying here but they have had a tough time with visa issues. They were going to get baptized last week but in the baptism interview with Collins our district leader found out that Collins was planning on divorcing his wife Gladys, marrying a US citizen to get a green card, divorcing the US citizen and then marrying Gladys again, all so that he and his family can stay here in America. We talked to him and told him that we are probably gonna have to push back their baptisms and he is going to have to be interviewed by our mission president so we can work through that... President interviewed him and told us that he is good to get baptized, he just needs to come to church one more time first! Collins had been praying a ton about what he should do about the visa situation and he told President that he is going to put faith in God and trust that He will take care of his visa situation if they follow Him and get baptized. So much faith!! Please keep them in your prayers this week!!!

**Don't read this part Mom** After our district leader got done interviewing the Jeghades, he and his companion called us and told us that they were probably gonna get home a little late because they were riding the bus home and it was already past 9 so we told them to get home as soon as possible and to be safe. 10 minutes later we get a call from them saying that they are gonna get home really late, and also that they had both just been held at gun point and robbed.... It turns out that they stole one of the elder's wallet, name tag, planner and missionary handbook and then pistol whipped him on the face (hit him with the butt of the pistol)!! So we drove down to the police station to pick them up after they got interviewed by the detectives and didn't get back home until almost midnight. Don't worry they were both alright! Thug life!!!

Miracle of the week: We didn't get to work very much at all last week because we had to deal with all sorts of crazy things and we had a bunch of meetings, but we really wanted to pick up a new investigator yesterday (that would have made 2 new for the week) and appointments were falling through and time was running out but we kept working super hard and we picked up a new investigator last night at 7:30 and she seems pretty solid!! The work is hastening!!

Have a good week!

The Jeghade's girls!

The Hood?



Monday, October 17, 2016

LEAVING WALKERSVILLE:(

What's up guys?

This week was super good! The Chesapeake area is awesome! My new companion is Elder Carlson and he is from Denver, CO. He's been out a little over 4 months longer than me, he's a stud!! The area that we work in is awesome! We cover a part of Baltimore (which is where we do all of our missionary work) and we live up a little further north in a really nice area where we won't get jumped or robbed at night, it's a good deal! Also the work is going crazy here!! We have 6 people that are going to get baptized in the next couple of weeks, dang!! Hopefully a lot more after that too! This is gonna be a sweet area!!

This last week I had to say goodbye to a bunch of the members and investigators in the Walkersville ward which was pretty sad, it was super weird to finally leave that area! The ward there was way awesome but I'm not gonna lie it got a little old doing missionary work in the same 2 areas all the time (the Walkersville area is tiny). But the area I'm in now is massive and there are 500x more people to talk to so I'm really excited! Baltimore is crazy though!!! While we were talking to a potential investigator about setting up an appointment with her (btw she had like 10 kids) some guy drove his car down the street blasting some ghetto hood rap music (my jams;) all of her daughters (younger than 10) started "dropping it low" right in front of us haha! Just to give you a glimpse into what we see every day! I'm sure there will be plenty of stories to follow!

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson



 
Josh and Jer

Gilly the Kid!!

Brian and Angie!!

Monday, October 10, 2016

CHESAPEAKE!!

Howdy!!

This week was one of the tougher weeks on my mission not gonna lie.. But the good thing about weeks like this is that you learn a lot more than you would any other week! To start things off, the day before Mariah was supposed to get interviewed by our zone leaders for baptism, one of her friends showed her some stuff on the internet that was against the Book of Mormon and she texted us saying that she doesn't want to meet with us anymore.. That was tough but the adversary ALWAYS works really hard on investigators the week before their baptism so hopefully she will come back around. We called her step-brother (Brother Temple) to tell him about how she didn't want to meet with us anymore and he said that made him pretty depressed but that he would get over it and there isn't much you can do about that. (A little bit of a background on Brother Temple, in the past 6 months he started coming back to church from being less active for a long time. His parents were alcoholics and literally raised him to drink alcohol, (since he was 5 they gave him alcohol) and recently from meeting with us he has been overcoming a bunch of addictions) On Friday we found out that he passed away and they believe that it had to do with alcohol and his pain pills that the doctors gave him for his elbow surgery. It was so sad! He is an amazing guy and helped me learn a lot about what the Gospel is actually about and how real the power of the Atonement is. Keep his family in your prayers please!!

On the bright side of things, this last week we picked up 3 new investigators! We picked up Keon who just graduated from Walkersville High School and played ball, Teri who we think is his sister or something like that, and then Harley who loves Harley Davidson motorcycles and eating food. Good week for finding! Also I got a call from President last night and found out that I'm going to be going to the Chesapeake ward (East Baltimore) to be a zone leader! Crazy! I'm gonna miss the Frederick area not gonna lie!

All is well here, the Gospel is true and it can make any trial, no matter how hard, easy. Jesus has promised us that if we follow him his yoke is easy and his burden is light. I know that is true and that the Atonement can and will work for every one of us. Have a good week squad!!

-Elder Larson

Lee Reed!!


Monday, October 3, 2016

CONFERENCE, RAIN & CLOWNS?

Hey squad!

Fun week this week! First of all conference was this weekend and I'm sure that most of you already knew that... But conference is the best as a missionary!! It is our Super Bowl! There were some fantastic talks and the Spirit was so strong the whole time! One of my favorite talks (who I can't remember gave it right now) was about how whenever we have a question or a doubt or with any big decision that we are going to make in life, don't trust anyone but God for the answer! No matter how smart or how experienced someone might be, it is only fair to ourselves if we listen and follow the counsel given by our Heavenly Father. After all, he is all knowing and created us all!

This week we picked up a new investigator, his name is Dan. Dan is not really your typical investigator... The reason I say that is because he is 70 years old (usually older people are very set in their ways and already know everything) and he lives in a really nice neighborhood (that's not where most of the missionary work gets done). But he is awesome! We contacted him a few weeks ago and he was really intrigued about what we do as missionaries and actually asked us for literature, so we gave him a Restoration pamphlet and set a return appointment with him. Last week we dropped by and he had read the entire pamphlet and was very eager to learn more about it, as he has been Catholic his entire life. Surprisingly he is very open to change and really wants to follow God. Right now he is reading the Book of Mormon and we're going back next week to teach him! Also Mariah is getting ready for her baptism this Saturday which we are really excited about. She is going to have her baptism interview tomorrow and hopefully all will go smooth with her baptism! All the other investigators are doing great too!

Mom, don't read this paragraph!!!! Last night while we were walking around talking to people we ran into a guy walking his dog who informed us that apparently there is a group of people in Frederick that go around at night dressed as clowns and rob and even kill people.... And the scary part is that's not the first time we have heard about that either... Yikes! Good thing we're on God's side!

Have a good week!

-Elder Larson


More 5K pics

Elder Larsen vs. Elder Larson

Ready for biking in the rain c:



Monday, September 26, 2016

5K

Hey fam!

This week was super good! On Saturday all the missionaries in the Frederick stake ran a 5K in our proselyting clothes for the Religious Coalition group out here, I thought I was gonna die!! But I didn't and it was a ton of fun! Elder Wadsworth and I were wearing Superman shirts under our white shirts and ties and at the finish line we ripped our shirts and we looked like fools!

We had a really good week of missionary work! We picked up 2 new investigators which was money. Jason was a referral from the Frederick elders and when they contacted him he had downloaded the Book of Mormon app a few days before and started reading it, super cool! He kinda looks like Adam Sandler too! Agusta was the other one that we picked up. While we were biking to an appointment with Tim and Felicia, the member that was planning on coming to teach with us texted us last minute and said he couldn't make it, dang! But it kinda worked out because the appointment fell through anyways! So we went to go try by our investigators Tina and Illiassou but instead Agusta answered the door. Neither Tina or Illiassou were there but we taught Agusta right there on the porch and picked her up as an investigator! Also we got back in with Troy this week and we found out that he is super pumped about family history work!!! At the end of our lesson he out of the blue asked us if we can help him with his family history, we can definitely do that! Also we got back in with Chris (Jimmer's cousin) and Megan and they are doing well! Megan has read all the way to 1 Nephi 14 and so far likes it, Chris is slacking though and only read the Introduction! They are awesome though, they should be coming to church in 2 weeks! Also Mariah is still pumped for baptism on October 8th and she's already talking about who she wants to baptize her, stoked!!

Have a good week!


-Elder Larson




Monday, September 19, 2016

ELDER OAKS LOOKED INTO MY EYES & THE GIFT OF TONGUES



What's up??

Sick week!!! Tons of cool things happened this week, I'll probably neglect to put a lot of them into this though!

First and foremost, Elder Oaks, Elder Robbins and Elder Calderwood came and spoke to our mission on Saturday it was so inspiring!! At the beginning of the meeting we had the chance to shake all of their hands. There is no doubt in my mind that Elder Oaks is an Apostle and witness of the Savior, it was inspiring to even just shake his hand and to make eye contact with him. The Spirit was so strong in that meeting, definitely something I will remember for the rest of my life! 

We had 3 of our investigators come to church this week which was awesome! Tim (his GF Felicia worked until 1 am so she couldn't come), Ashley (her BF Regime couldn't come because he was sick) and Brian all came, stuff is happening here! We had a good and kind of humorous lesson with Carlos this week again haha.. We stopped by and he was drunk but that turned out to be a good thing (I'll explain haha)! It worked out good because he was drunk enough to be completely open and spill his concern to us but he wasn't too drunk to where it would have gotten sketchy haha! So we decided to take advantage of it and figure out what his concern is! Not really to our surprise, we found out that he hasn't prayed about the Book of Mormon because he knows he will get an answer that will change his life. He is afraid, and I don't really blame him! He is married to a guy and if he finds out that the Book of Mormon is true he knows that he will have to get baptized and change his life style, please keep him in your prayers!! Also we contacted some guy the other night who seems super solid, he just got out of jail and every time he gets out of jail he always gets a bunch of signs from God saying that he needs to get his life back on the path. I asked him for an example and he shared with us that when he was taking out the trash he found a pamphlet about God that said "Restoration" on it, and I showed him a Restoration pamphlet and he said that was the same one and that this is a sign from God, super legit!!

This week Elder Nelson and I were out on the bikes pretty far away from our apartment and his tire popped (dang) so we had to walk to a bunch of appointments and it took longer than we thought and we had an appointment at 5:00 that there was no way we were gonna make it on time on foot to! As we were walking our bikes as quickly as possible (with faith) a brother in the Spanish speaking ward pulled over in his tiny pick up truck and told us to get in! The problem was, he literally didn't speak any English so I had to communicate with him completely in Spanish and it actually worked out good! We got to the place we needed to be on time and we got to jam to some sweet Hispanic tunes! Miracle!

Have a good week!

-Elder Larson
 
Hiking High Rock Mountain




Tuesday, September 13, 2016

GOOD TIMES

What's up guys??

This week was awesome! Highlight of the week (no offense BYU fans) was when I heard in stake conference on Sunday that Utah won!! Just kidding the highlight of my week was teaching repentance;) Also we are emailing today instead of Monday (yesterday) because yesterday we had a mission conference with Elder Robert C. Gay of the Quorum of the 70, it was awesome! It is amazing to hear from general authorities, they are all so inspired! It's also amazing to see how much they have to give up to be general authorities (I'm not even gonna tell you how many huge companies Elder Gay owned before he was called to be a mission president) it is inspiring! And on top of that, this Saturday we get to hear from 3 general authorities!! Elder Oaks (yes the apostle), Elder Robbins, and Elder Calderwood are all coming here to Frederick (woah) for a special mission tour on Saturday!! Super pumped!!

We saw some pretty sweet miracles this week! We got a referral from the Frederick elders of this family that literally just showed up to their ward on Sunday looking for a new church and it turns out they live in our area so we went over and started teaching them! Their names are Ashley and Regime and they have 3 boys, they're super cool! The best part about it is that they asked their neighbor (the Walkersville sister's investigator) which church they should go to and she told them to go here! They came to stake conference on Sunday which was cool too.

Friday was one of those days... We had a bunch of appointments and they all fell through and they were all super far away from each other so we bike like 700 miles (not really that much) and we were both super tired and almost bummed out (still optimistic). Towards the end of the day we had dinner all the way up in Walkersville and an appointment all the way down in Frederick and we got to our dinner appointment and they weren't there but they called us and said they were coming, long story short we were late for our next appointment and we were biking super hard to get there to tell them we were sorry for being late and we'll reschedule because it's already super late. Then out of nowhere, Brian, our investigator pulled over and picked us up (conveniently he has a bike rack on his car) took us to our appointment and then took us to McDonalds afterwards, such a homie!! Miracle!!

Funny story of the week: on Sunday I got to give a baptism interview to a lady and her 2 girls (ages 9 and 10) and they were hilarious! With the 9 year old the topic of marriage got brought up and she said she was never gonna get married "Why don't you wanna get married?" "Because my mom almost got married but she didn't because her boyfriend cheated on her. I don't even know what that means??? What does that mean?? Did he cheat in a game?? Why was she so sad????" The whole time I was biting my lip trying so hard not to start laughing! Then later she asked "When I get baptized will my skin turn from brown to white?" "No" "I want to look like Jesus and Jesus has white skin, why can't I have white skin like Jesus?" "Yikes".

Have a good week!

-Elder Larson
Maryland Baltimore Mission at Conference


Tuesday, September 6, 2016

NO HOMO...

What's up guys!!

This week was strange so it was a good week! It is finally showing signs of cooling down which is a huge blessing, I rode my bike to an appointment without showing up to their house completely drenched in sweat for the first time since like April, sick! Fall is the worst season as a missionary though because it's football season:/:/ </3 Just kidding serving the Lord is better than watching football!

This week we picked up 3 new investigators!! Tim and Felicia are a younger couple that we originally met a couple months ago while helping a member move, they are awesome! We went over to their place and taught them the Restoration with Landry and it answered a ton of questions they had! I'm super pumped to teach them the Plan of Salvation too because Felicia has a ton of answers about religion that the Plan of Salvation will answer! The Plan of Salvation is legit! The other investigator we picked up is Tina and she lives with Iliassou, she is from Sierra-Leon. Also we got in with Howard again and we had a sweet lesson with him! We taught him about Lehi's vision of the tree of life and it related really well to him in his life. He told us all the things in his life that are like the people in the "great and spacious building" that are trying to draw him away from God and he made a game plan on how he can hold on to the iron rod. We had a bunch of investigators that were out of town all week too, people go on vacation so much out here it's crazy!

It's time for the funny moment of the week that would only happen on the mission... So we saw Carlos (he's our gay investigator) again for the first time in a while and he invited us in while he was cleaning his house (at 8 oclock at night) so we asked him what he was cleaning his house for so late at night.. He told us that he was throwing a birthday party for one of his friends and that they were going to have a cookout the next day, and he invited us to come. Of course we went because missionaries love cookouts! First thing we saw when we walked into his house was a table completely full of vodka, tequila and just about any kind of alcohol you can think of! A few steps into his house later we discovered that everyone there was gay and it turns out that his friend that he was throwing this party for happened to be his husband... So we politely got some food and hung out with a bunch of wasted gay dudes and then bounced out A$AP haha!! They didn't say anything about this when I signed up for this mission thing!!

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson


The District (aka Relief Society)

Goodbye Elder Meyer:/

Brother Pederson and Elder Larson

Monday, August 29, 2016

13 MONTHS AND DINGERS!!

Howdy!

This week was outrageously normal!!! But it was still a good week! Last night we got call outs and found out that both me and Elder Nelson are staying here in Walkersville which I'm super excited about! I was definitely not ready to leave this area because we got a lot of work to do!

The investigators have been doing pretty good, we put our investigator Mariah on date for baptism on October 1st and she is pumped for that! Elder Nelson put her on date too which was awesome to see, such a stud! Other than that, half of our investigators were out of town this week and the other half were super busy so we had a lot of time to tract and talk to a ton of people which was good! We found a ton of potential and the ward members are getting pretty stoked about missionary work so hopefully we get hooked up with some sweet referrals soon!

While we were walking around talking to people in a park on Saturday we saw this brotha out on the baseball field tossing baseballs up to himself and hitting them so of course I offered to toss to him and he let me so I hooked him up with some super good batting practice so he can hit some dingers in church softball. After that he let me take a couple of swings and of course I hit some dingers! We lost one of the balls that I hit (over the fence heh;)(the fence was like 200 ft lol)) in somebody's yard so in turn he tried to bash us!

Have a good week!

-Elder Larson



Pic just so mom won't harass me for not sending pics!!

Monday, August 22, 2016

ILIASSOU!!

This week was a lot of fun!! At the beginning of the week there were some more crazy rain storms that we got caught in but that just made things a little bit more fun! And if you are from Utah you wouldn't understand what I mean by crazy rainstorms.. Literally in seconds there was a couple of inches of rain that we had to run through to find some sort of cover haha, I bet everyone laughs at us when it rains out here! Also I went on exchanges with Elder Wilson to Braddock Heights again (he is from Farmington and went to Viewmont, small Mormon world) and that was a ton of fun!

The work has been going really well lately, we had an awesome day on Sunday! First of all, the Frederick elders texted us saying that some guy who lives in our area just showed up to their ward because he wants a new church and decided to come to ours so hopefully we will start teaching him soon! The past couple weeks a recently re-activated member (Bro. Temple) brought his sister who just moved in with him to church and last night we went over and taught her the Restoration and accepted baptism so that went well! Right after that we went and taught the Restoration to Iliassou, who is from Niger. The problem was that Iliassou hardly speaks any English because he very recently moved here to the states and speaks French. So we brought a recent convert in our ward (Landry, he was baptized in May) who is from Gabon and speaks French as well. It was the sickest lesson! Landry translated the entire lesson and bore his testimony on everything that we taught, it was amazing how strong the Spirit was there even though you couldn't understand half of what was being said! Landry is a stud though, we have been doing a lot of work with him because he is so fired up about sharing the gospel, it's amazing what the gospel can do in peoples lives in such a short amount of time!

Funny story for the week, we were walking around talking to people and a group of hood rats (like 8 yrs old) came up to us and were asking us if we had any Gatorade that we could give them (last time they saw us I hooked them up with Gatorade) but unfortunately I didn't. But they wanted something so they asked if I had any soda, water or anything, but the only thing I had were copies of the Book of Mormon. So the hood rat leader asked for a Book of Mormon. I gave him it but I made him promise me that he would take it to his house right then so he wouldn't destroy it while riding his bike, and that's what he did. Right after I gave him the book he caught a glimpse of Elder Nelson's shoes and shouted "WHAT ARE THOSE???" hahaha then all of the hood rat kids started making fun of Elder Nelson's shoes it was hilarious! Have a good week!!!

-Elder Larson

V HOUSE with Elder Wilson

Monday, August 15, 2016

SAMUEL THE LAMANITE!!

What's good?
This week was awesome! First of all we had our mini missionary with us all week and he is a stud! His name is Justin and he's from Martinsburg, WV. But of course the week went by super fast and we already said goodbye to him on Saturday dang:/
Our investigators are coming along though, we taught Brian the Word of Wisdom and at the end of it he bore testimony of it because he has already seen blessings from it since he and his wife have stopped drinking. The Word of Wisdom is legit! He has actually been reading the Book of Mormon too which is good, he'll get there! Troy is doing good, he read the Intro of the BoM, the testimonies of the witnesses and through to 1 Nephi 3, what a stud! Also this week we picked up Jimmer Fredette's cousin (Chris) and his girlfriend (Megan) as investigators! They are super solid! Megan said that she would read the Book of Mormon in 3 days and they both accepted baptism! They are awesome! We saw Carlos this week too and he said he was gonna come to a baptism on Saturday at the stake center but something came up so he couldn't dang! The work is going well though!

Fun story of the week... I am Samuel the Lamanite!! Just kidding that's false doctrine.. But while we were biking on Saturday we heard a bunch of popping sounds but we didn't think too much of it so we continued to meander along to the next pole where we tied up our bikes. I noticed that the popping sounds didn't stop so I looked around and sure enough there was a guy who pulled his truck over onto the grass and he was hiding behind the door shooting at us with a paintball gun haha!! He probably tried to shoot at least 25 paint balls at us, but he didn't hit either of us once! Samuel the Lamanite!!! Have a good week!
-Elder Larson


Justin aka JMoney (mini missionary)

Yummy!

Ricardo my man!

Temple with Elder Nelson


DC Temple

The 3 Amigos (Elder Nelson, Justin, and Elder Larson)

Monday, August 8, 2016

POLICE OR MISSIONARIES??? & flooded basement:/

Hey fam,

This week was bien!!! First of all, yesterday we picked up our mini missionary, Justin, who will be with us until Saturday. I love mini missionaries because the work is always better when they are with us! This week was wild though! It was temple week so we didn't have our preparation day until the day we went to the temple, which in our case was Saturday, so we had almost 2 weeks with no preparation day! In other words we couldn't shop or clean our place for 2 weeks..

The work has been going a lot better thankfully, we knocked a ton of doors and talked to a ton of people and in return the Lord blessed us with new people to teach! We finally were able to get in with this guy named Troy who we had talked to several times but never had the chance to teach him, and he was super stoked about the Book of Mormon! He and his girlfriend just had a baby a little less than a month ago and the gospel is gonna be clutch for them in raising her. Also we contacted his next door neighbor, Mike, and he has talked to missionaries before so he invited us over and we picked him up as an investigator too! He is pumped about the gospel too and is excited to start reading the Book of Mormon. Brian is doing well, we feel that he is getting close to breaking through towards baptism. While we went to the temple as a ward he hung out at the temple visitors center and he said he loved it! Also Carlos has read all the way to 2 Nephi 1, a lot of good stuff is happening out here!

Just to make things spicy this week, our water heater decided to malfunction and flood our basement twice this week which was pretty annoying not gonna lie! The first time we assumed it was from all the crazy rain storms that happened last week that flooded everyone else so we called our land lords and mopped everything up so there wasn't any damage, luckily the basement is unfinished! But they told us to check on it the next day to make sure it wasn't something else. Sure enough, we went down the next day and it was flooded again! Dang! Turns out that the water heater was super old and was leaking water everywhere.

To make things even spicier, we got to do some undercover police work this week😎  We were walking around talking to people and a cop that was chillin in his car yelled for us to come talk to him (uh oh) and I thought he was going to try to get mad at us for proselyting because he was a servant of the devil but it turns out that he just needed help from some fresh Mormon brothas. Apparently the cops were onto some guy that was armed and dangerous and he needed us to walk up through the neighborhood where they thought he was and get the license plate number on his white Mitsubishi, but he made it clear to us not to talk to him because he is dangerous. Dog, we've got the Lord on our side! But we still obeyed him and went up there but he wasn't there so we failed our objective:/

Anyways, I hope y'all have a good week!!

-Elder Larson


(I left my camera at the apartment:/ pics next week (sorry mom))
Elder Nelson, Elder Wrye (mini missionary) and Elder Larson

Monday, August 1, 2016

1 YR

What's good??

This week was super bien! I hit my year mark on Friday which was super weird but I guess they are right when they say time flies! This week was very wet! I was drenched when it wasn't raining #sweat and also when it was raining, how does that work? The Lord has been treating us well though!

To start things off last week we were at zone training and everyone was getting super stoked about going out to work and seeing a bunch of miracles and everyone's faith was super high and right as zone training was about to wrap up we got a text from church headquarters with a referral for somebody in our area that "wants to join the church". SUPER STOKED!!!! We will be going back this week to meet with them, hopefully everything goes well there! We were able to teach the Restoration to a lady that kinda speaks English but mostly speaks Chinese but that still went really well, the Spirit speaks all languages! Brian is coming along still, and same with Howard. Howard got a new job that has been really hard for him because he has to commute almost 2 hours every day down to Virginia, yikes.. So that has been tough on him, we're working on trying to help him find a job somewhere closer that will be a lot more convenient for him. Pedro is doing really well but we found out that he will be moving out of our area this week so we are gonna have to pass him off to the missionaries where he is going, even though he said he would come drive up here to pick us up so that we could teach him haha!

Everyone out here has been freaking out because they think they are in a drought (I don't know what they're talking about #Utahprobs) but finally the "drought" ended and there was a ton of crazy rain storms, for example our bikes were tied up to a pole and we were trying to put them on the sisters car so they could take them to our apartment but we had to basically swim up the river which was trying to take our bikes down with it in order to get to them. Just kidding it wasn't that bad but for real we had to run through 4-6 inches of rain to get somewhere dry, it wasn't a good week for my attire!

On Sunday we got to sing in sacrament meeting which went pretty well! That sacrament meeting a missionary who just got home gave a talk and a missionary that is leaving this Wednesday gave a talk as well so they decided to make the whole meeting about missionaries and made us sing.

I hope y'all have a good week!

-Elder Larson


Where's Noah at??

Burnin the shirt

Get em in Guatemala Ian!