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

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

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

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