Elder Larson Serving it up in Maryland: CRABS, TEMPLE, ELDER JONES (RD. 2) & MENNONITES, , ???

What's good?

This week I said goodbye to a lot of good friends that I was able to make in the last 7 months in Baltimore, unfortunately that is a big part of serving a mission. I am very grateful for the time that I was able to spend there, Baltimore definitely taught me a ton and made me super grateful for everything that I have. It was truly an eye opening experience. I'm not gonna lie though, the trees and hills of the country side in Pennsylvania welcomed me with warm arms. I'm super excited to be here! There is little to no crime here, everyone is white (except for one or two people haha), and the ward is so willing to help out. It is amazing how different some of the areas in our mission are! Being a junior companion is fantastic though, we have been having a ton of fun doing missionary work and we have already seen some awesome miracles!

On Friday they had a Mission Leadership Council, usually just the zone leaders and sister training leaders attend them but this time they invited the district leaders and even the district leader companions. It was a wonderful experience, probably my last opportunity to attend one. When we broke out with all the district leaders in the mission and their companions, I had the chance of instructing them about giving correction to missionaries and that went well. There have been a ton of new district leaders and zone leaders that have been called in the recent transfers, this mission is changing like crazy! The mission is doing really well with missionary work though, there have been a ton of baptisms!

Elder Jones is from Montana and is a recent convert of just a few years now! He has been on his mission about 20 months and we have been having a ton of fun! Just a little over a year ago his father passed away while he was out here on his mission. None of the rest of his family are members (besides his brother) so this last Saturday we had the opportunity to go down to the DC temple and Elder Jones was able to do temple work for his dad and for his grandpa. I was lucky enough to be the one that baptized him for both of them, it was such a cool experience! The Spirit was so strong afterwards, it was unbelievable! Temple work is an amazing thing, I invite each of you to attend the temple more regularly and to bring names of your ancestors to do their work!

We have been hitting the streets super hard this week and we have found some pretty solid people! We were able to pick up 2 new investigators this week, David we street contacted and taught him the Restoration, he is a Jehova's Witness. Last night at 8:15 we were flying around talking to people and knocking doors and we knocked into Josh and he let us right in and we picked him up as an investigator. He was super excited about the Book of Mormon. Also we had a good lesson with our investigator who's name is Stan on Saturday. He is from Haiti and he and his family are Mennonites. It is so much different out here than in Baltimore! I love it though!

Have a good week squad!

-Elder Larson