Elder Larson Serving it up in Maryland: COW SKIN, SEBASTIAN'S BAPTISM & TEACHING ABOUT COMP. INVENTORIES???

My beloved weekly email list,

This week was delicious, or as Lehi would say: "it was desirable above all other fruit." (1 Nephi 8:12). Literally speaking now, I'm not sure if all of us here would have considered my week to have been "delicious", unless you are a big fan of cow skin. In fact, cow skin was on the menu this week and was consumed by myself. Cow skin tastes just about how it sounds like it would taste, so let your imagination go to work and I'll send a picture of it to finalize that thought. That being said, more effort and sacrifice was put into that meal than probably any other meal I've had in a while, perhaps on my mission! It is interesting how the families that have the least tend to give the most and are the most willing to help others out. On top of that, they are always the happiest too! In this case it was the Jeghedes who have only been in the country (from Africa) for a little over a year and are trying to get on their feet here. They are seriously some of the greatest people you will ever meet!

On the topic of Africans, Sebastian got baptized this week! He's such a stud! After he got baptized he bore his testimony and told how grateful he was for us, it was awesome! After the baptism we got ice cream at Cold Stone and the worker lived in Utah for 2 years so we're gonna go back to teach him now! Sick!

We had zone conference this week which was fantastic. Afterwards we went on exchanges with the Susquehanna elders and that went really well! I went with Elder Barney who is fairly new in the mission up to Susquehanna. As soon as we got into the apartment, I told him that we were gonna take some time to clean up their apartment, especially to mop the floors (it was nasty). But in response he told me (with enthusiasm) that we were gonna go out and work instead! #GreenieFire I decided not to extinguish said fire and we went out to work haha! (Don't worry though, we eventually got it cleaned). But we were able to find 2 new investigators for them so that was good!

On Friday we felt like we needed to stop by Justin, so we did and when we got there he was super bummed out! Apparently he was having some hardcore GF problems, they had been in a huge fight right before we came by. He was super pumped that we stopped by though because he needed to talk to the boys! As you might guess (if you guessed this then you are the GOAT) we then taught him about the companionship inventory which is found in Preach My Gospel. (If you are unaware, we hold companionship inventories every week to resolve any problems or conflict in the companionship) and it helped him out a ton! #TeachPeopleNotLessons!!!

This week we found 3 new investigators, Meagan who is a referral from a less active member, Noel who can't read but is a stud, and Aayuba who is straight from Africa and barely speaks English!

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson