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!

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?

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!!

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!!

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: