ELDER NELSON AND ABE LINCOLN

What's good!!

This week was good! Last Monday we went to Gettysburg, PA with a member and that was a ton of fun! It is amazing how much history is out here. Thanks to the mission boundaries change we are now able to go up to Gettysburg, but it was a ton of fun! On Tuesday we had the last district meeting of the transfer and had to say goodbye to half of our district but we had a super spiritual instruction on being consecrated missionaries. That transfer went by way fast!

Wednesday we went down to the Columbia Stake Center and I finally got to meet my new companion. His name is Elder Nelson and he's a stud! He's from SLC, UT and it's his first transfer! As soon as we got back into our area we threw his luggage in the apartment and got out to work! He got a good introduction to missionary work this week, it was around 100 degrees all week and everyone was especially unfriendly hahaha! Also we had a ton of appointments fall through so we spent a ton of time walking in the sun talking to people. Welcome to missionary work Elder Nelson haha! For real though we got to talk to a ton of people and a bunch of them seem to be pretty solid, so hopefully this next week is better!

On the bright side of things, we got back in with Carlos for the first time in a couple weeks, he has been super busy lately but it was good to get in contact with him. Hopefully we'll be able to get him to church this week! Pedro is still killing it, it is amazing what the Spirit is teaching him without us even having to say anything. We weren't able to see Howard this week because an hour before our apartment with him his car broke down in Rockville (the adversary) so that was a bummer.

Yesterday we were walking around almost all day after church trying to find people to teach but nobody was home for some reason. It was super hot but on the bright side we got 7 water bottles (each) from random people that saw us and felt bad for us haha #sympathytoconvert All is well here in Walkersville! Have a good week!

-Elder Larson

Happy Pioneer Day!

Elder Nelson & I

The squad aka district

The no flex Zone

Goodbye Elder Chester

JIMMER!!!!!

Howdy!

This was a fun week! It's still hot and humid and I'm feeling for my brothas down in the south because it's probably hotter and more humid there.... Count your blessings! We did a lot of biking this week and I probably lost 5 pounds just this week, btw I officially weigh less than when I came out for the first time my whole mission dang haha! But I'm still not in good shape #missionprobs. Also everyone out here has turned into robots, literally everywhere you go there are groups of people walking around with their faces glued to their phones playing Pokémon Go haha it's hilarious!

All week long we struggled to find people to teach, it seemed like all of our appointments with potentials were falling through and many of our other finding efforts seemed to be fruitless so that was pretty frustrating but on Sunday after church we went to our Mini Zion to go round up all the people that we have been building friendships with in the past couple weeks and we picked up 2 new investigators there from it! Super pumped! Their names are Chucky and Janice and they are both super cool. They both have very strong testimonies about how God exists because they both used to suffer from really bad drug addictions and couldn't give them up no matter what they tried until they both prayed and asked for help, they have both been clean for 25 years! Also we have been teaching a man named Pedro and he is way solid! The Book of Mormon has answered a ton of questions that he has had about religion already so he is way stoked about reading it! Also we put our investigators Josh and Jess on date for baptism on August 27 so we're pretty pumped about that! The work has been picking up for sure lately!

Some members of the ward here volunteered us to help move their neighbors who aren't members so we went and helped them on Saturday and they were way cool! Their names are Chris and Megan and ironically enough, Chris' first cousin is none other than Jimmer Freddette!! Super crazy! For those of you who don't know who that is, he is in the NBA and he played for BYU and got the NCAA player of the year for basketball. But the best part about this all is that they want us to come back and teach them!

Transfer call-outs were this week and we found out that Elder Chester is getting transferred up to Pennsylvania and I am going to be training a new missionary here in Walkersville. Also another set of sister missionaries got moved into our district so now there are 3 sets of sisters and 1 set of elders (us) in my district. #ReliefSociety

Have a good week!!!

-Elder Larson

Biking in 105 got me feelin like:

What's good Elder Burt aka T8!!

Nice tan line bro!

HUMIDITY:')

Howdy!!

This week has been good!! Also super hot!! To start things off this week I went on exchanges with my zone leader Elder Wilson and he is from Farmington, UT and went to Viewmont High School haha.. Only fools are from there!! (oh wait) Haha just kidding he is a stud and we had an awesome exchange! He graduated in 2013 and I didn't know him before the mission but we know a ton of the same people #it'sasmallMormonworld That was a lot of fun!

Our investigators are doing pretty good right now, we put Carlos on date for August 27 and he accepted! He wasn't able to come to church this week though because he didn't get off of work until Sunday morning at 5 AM. Unfortunately, Howard fell off date yesterday because he didn't come to church this week. We had an appointment with him on Friday and he was just sitting in his car crying so we offered to help out and then told him we'd come back at a better time. So keep him in your prayers!! We picked up 2 new investigators this week from Mini Zion, their names are Josh and Jess, they are a married couple that has a 2 year old girl and they are awesome!! We have already had 2 lessons with them and they have been reading the Book of Mormon, we are planning on putting them on date this week so also pray for them! And we have a bunch of solid potentials from Mini Zion that we should be picking up this week! All is well!!

We were biking around in the heat and I was super sweaty (of course) and while we were stopped in the turning lane some female ladies were hollerin at me and my companion! Of course because we are very focused and consecrated missionaries, we deferred their invitation to call them after they told us their phone numbers and invited them to be baptized!! Then they drove off.... :/ They'll be baptized one day!!

Have a good week!

-Elder Larson

Merica!

Lunch with the Jaccards!!!  I miss them!!

Squad

4TH OF JULY

What's good!!!

I hope that y'all had a fantastic week! This week was all over the place, like most weeks are it seems like.. As of last Friday we officially lost the Annapolis zone to the DC North Mission and picked up 2 zones from the Pittsburgh Mission so that was super weird. I lost 2 former companions to DC North:'( #RIP Also my trainer Keatin (Elder) White is getting engaged!!! Super weird!!!!

The 4th of July was super fun!! There is a guy in the stake presidency here in Frederick who has a big farm and every year he puts on a community breakfast potluck and after there is a program for veterans and all those who serve in the military and every year hundreds of people come to it! It is an amazing missionary opportunity because there are a ton of non-members there and all the missionaries in the stake help set up for it and attend so we got to talk to a ton of people about the church there, it was sweet! This year around 400 people attended and the mayor of Frederick and even high ups from the state government were there to speak and stuff so that was a lot of fun! As soon as we took everything down from that it started pouring rain so that was good timing!

Our investigators are doing really well, we put our investigator Brian on date for July 20th which was sick! His wife is a member and through us teaching him she has been coming to church a lot more which is good! Carlos is still doing pretty good, he invited us over to his family's house for dinner on Sunday which was super interesting but fun haha! The whole time everyone was speaking Spanish and we had no idea what was going on but it was still a good time! The food was super bien!! Also Carlos followed me on Instagram and he saw the picture of me and my friend Mitch holding hands at homecoming acting like idiots and he said that we looked "super gay" hahahaha. Our gay investigator called me gay, dang!! Howard is doing good still, he has been reading the Book of Mormon and we're super pumped about that. Lastly, after a long frustrating week of having a ton of appointments fall through and just plain not having really any success, on Sunday evening we finally were able to pick up an investigator. I thought for sure that last week we were gonna pick up like 5 investigators but nothing was working out. We were frantically out working trying to pick up at least 1 investigator and finally we ran into Pedro. We had talked to Pedro earlier on and when we walked up to his apartment he was in the window of the second floor and yelled out "Hey elders!!!" after which he came down and we taught him the Restoration. At first the lesson was mediocre and he wasn't really having it and he "wasn't solid" but I felt really inspired to no matter what get to the First Vision. As soon as we taught him about Joseph Smith and the First Vision everything changed! He went from "I'm Catholic and I'm not gonna change" to "Dang...." and at the end of the lesson he was asking us when we can come back to teach him more about this message. Super sick!!!

Have a good week!!!

-Elder Larson

Ben Franklin!!

'MERICA

Rain