Week 1 y de nuevo empezamos

Hola Familia!!!

como estan?  con frio creo ... jaja.  how is everyone doing?  i'm doing great for the most part!  Elder Mendez and I are staying together for one more transfer, and we're pretty sure he'll leave after this one is over.  wow, Transfer # 10!!!!  I feel and look older and older every day.  i start my days fine and stuff and then by the time we are done with planning at night time i have these huge black bags under my eyes .... and i know this because elder mendez constantly reminds me and has this fetish for taking or rather trying to take pics of me when i make my nightly phone calls to the members of my district .... so this week was good in some aspects and bad in others, number of lessons took a dive bomb here in santa paula, us and the sisters both weren't able to teach many lessons.  the good news is that Davawn and Victor are still progressing, Davawn came to church and is still reading and we have a FHE with her and Lucy tonight, she is going to teach us about Strength For Youth and we are going to teach a lesson about the Gosple.  Victor is doing well minus the fact that he couldn't come to church yesterday cause he randomly got called to work at like 3 in the morning .... dang adversary ..... so we had to push his date back a week cause he has to come to church 3 times before he can get baptised.  we are making some head way with Candido Garcia and Emiliano Gaxiola, they are both interested and want to learn, but shy away from baptism alot, please pray for them, they need it.  The Presiado family is doing AWESOME!!!! we had a really really cool lesson with them where we watched "Between Heaven and Earth" and talked about the temple and now they are excited to go one day and are going to make a family goal to go to the temple!!! hopefully i am still here so i can go.  on the mission and off, people tell you, OH you'll learn to love the people, well with them and a few other individuals i have realized that statement.  i have grown to love the Presiado Family and it's a weird feeling kinda to worry and care about someone that i haven't known for that long, anywho, they are awesome and progressing and coming back to church even though they don't own a car, they find some way to get to church which is a good 20 mins away by car.  but we are trying to combine the group in fillmore and all the members in Santa Paula and maybe the ones in Ventura and make a branch/ward that meets in Santa Paula, cause that really is and would be much easier for everyone, i dunno, it's a work in progress. 

AHHHH Elder Hawes and Triana are dying this week (leaving to their homes) ..... i'm super sad, both my Parents (from the mission) are going home at the same time and because nothing is happening with us i can't go to transfer meeting and say bye .... i called Elder Triana a few days ago and said bye and Elder Hawes is going to try to stop by on his way to transfer meeting and say bye ..... AND!!! THE QUELS ARE GOING TO TRANSFER MEETING TO SAY BYE AND I CAN'T EVEN GO!!!!  ahhhhh i so want to see them, i told Elder Hawes to  tell them to stop by santa paula cause it's on the way to bakersfield from ventura and say hi to me .... man i miss them alot ..... 

Lets seeee we kinda got into a bash with this Christian guy that was right about alot of stuff but wrong on the simplist things, and he knew his bible super well, like amazingly good. but he also had a little cheat sheet of scripture references that his pastor had given him and he had to look at it a few times.  elder mendez is much more competitive than i am and so he kinda took charge and then got owned by this guy ..... for 3 hours ..... i felt bad.  i dunno, bible bashing is pointless and a big waste of time and this guy just went on and on and on, and when i tried to stop it he kinda just ignored me and kept going.  in the end we gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he'd read it, i think he's just gonna go on the internet and find some Anti-Mormon stuff ..... and he said that he liked us cause we belive that Jehova and Christ are the same person ... but he doesn't like how we don't beleive that the Holy Ghost is the father of Christ .... ANYWHO, it didn't really get heated, but it was a good discussion/ argument, we're gonna go back in a few days and see if he actually read, if he gets converted he'd be a super strong member.  

OK well 2 other things that happened this week both bad ...... the first, not so bad, i got hit on by a cashier at Rite Aid, a CVS type of place, she always says when we buy stuff from there, cause she is our cashier alot, do you guys save people?  or who did you save today?  or what do you save people from?  soooo this time she called me hun and winked at me and gave me like 20 tickets for this monopoly game that Rite Aid is doing when i was only supposed to get 1 .... it was creepy and now i'm scared to go in there ..... second and worse thing .... i got pulled over ..... here in California they have these random cross walks and you push a button on the sidewalk and a bunch of lights built into the road start blinking, it's really quite a smart invention, anywho, so a person pushes the button, the lights light up and the cars stop the person crosses and the cars go again, really quite simple.  now i wasn't speeding, but i guess i didn't see the guy on the sidewalk who was about 5 ft from the button when i was like 15 ft from the lights, and he was walking rather fast, got to the light pushed the button, didn't even wait to see if it was clear and walked, by the time the lights started to flash i was within 10 ft of the lights so i couldn't really stop cause i was going like 25, the speed limit, anywho, so he was like within 5 ft of me when i crossed the crosswalk.  it was a really close call as far as me getting a ticket cause it was the guys fault too cause he didn't look nor wait, but the ideal should have been that i saw him walking on the sidewalk and stopped in anticipation that he would hit the button, but half the people that cross those buttons on the sidewalk just hit them for fun and keep walking ...... so i didn't think, or stop and there was a dumb little bike cop sitting back from the corner perpendicular to the road on which i was driving and he stopped me and gave me a ticket .... California is bankrupt, the economy here is dive bombing and so tickets are super costly here, i asked a member of our branch who is going to college to be a cop about how much she thinks it could turn out and she said anywhere from $100 to $300 probably in the 200's ..... absolutely ridiculous, for that reason alone i will never live here in CA after my mission, this all happened on Wed and it takes a week for them to process stuff, so this member is going to look it up for me and tell me how much it is and i'll let you know, i'll just pay it out of whats on my home card, i think there should be enough on there, and i'll make do with what i have on there till Dec cause it really is my fault even if it isn't 100% fair .... life really isn't fair i guess.  alright, well i have to get going, the church is true, i have felt the Saviors love for me this week i want you to know.  He does love us, Rev 20:19-20 or somewhere in Rev 20 talkes about the love that Christ has for us, we should do our very best to show our love to him by being obedient to the commandments with which we have been entrusted, for truly only by being obedient will we ever accept the sacrifice that he gave us.  

BHL how goes the preparation????? any other cool things you have learned about your mission?  AH bought a pair of pants for 4 bucks cause my other ones ripped from the pocket down about 6 inches ... i'm gonna try and sew it but .... well ..... i'm an elder and we don't do that very well.  

Remember that i love you!!!!!

Elder Larsen

Here's a recent picture taken mid January.  I'll try to get some pictures uploaded soon!

week 6 and counting

hey family, how are you all?

BRAZIL??????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WHOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, que lastima que BHL va a hablar portugese, pero caiga como caiga.  wow, sister benson called me ...... on thursday i think in the morning and told me to guess where my brother was going .... i'm pretty sure mom asked her to do that .... and i guessed Brazil on the 1st guess, wow, Sao Palo Brazil, i think i know someone who knows someone who is in that mission.  that's awesome, i'm very exticed for you BHL.  and wow .... you just get thrown into the MTC over there .... wow .... be patient and pray alot and you'll pick up the language faster that you'll think, Portugese and Spanish are very similar ... i think it sounds like retarded spanish personally but i'm kind of Biased =]   When do you go to the MTC?  some time early june i think ..... i'll miss ya by 6 1/2 ish months, oh well i'll see ya again.  well cool, i'm glad that the waiting is over .... TRL you're next.

Well this past week was very interesting, we played soccer last monday as a ZONE and had lots of fun, we had a FHE on the Isaiah Chapters of 2nd nephi .... that was fun .... with Davawn, she is awesome, then tuesday it rained for alot of the day ...... stupid rain, man, makes missionary work not as fun, but then it stopped and we went tracting, and we ran into this catholic guy ..... we said that the only way to know if our messege was true was to pray about it .... i'm pretty sure he didn't understand us, he must have thought that we wanted to say a prayer with him, so he invited us in and we watched him do a "Rosary", which is a prayer that catholics pray to the Virgin, those cruzafixes that they wear have a certain number of beads on them and each bead represents a prayer ....... the same prayer ...... over and over and over and over.  so we watched this guy do that and he would randomly look at us for us to participate with him but we had no idea how to do anything so we just sat there and he was like "what a shame it is that you don't know how to pray" so we spent (wasted) about 40 mins with this guy and his wife, we talked about Catholic doctrine and stuff and we basically confuzed him pretty bad cause he kept contradicting himself and we kind lovingly called him out on it .... sigh .... anywho, so that was tuesday, then wednesday we had District Meeting and it went well, my 3rd, we also had presidents interviews, which also went well in spite of us not having keys and having to have our interviews in our car.  i also taught a drunk guy some english ..... that was fun, i doubt he remembered anything.  Thursday was a good day, we talked with Victor, our investigator that is going to get Baptised on the 27th, he is from Guatemala and is quite awesome, super ready.  Friday something funny happened, we were at lunch and i guess i had something on my face and my comp said (he obviously wasn't thinking and wasnt in the apartment mentally) "here are some napkins babe".  oh i pretty much died laughing, and he was super embarrased and now thinks that i think that he is gay. hahaha poor elder mendez, he'll survive though.  

SATURDAY!!!!!!  awesome day Davawn got baptised!!!!! YAY!!!!! we had the baptism at 6 PM, didn't start till about 6:30, took pics and practiced haha she was so scared elder mendez was going to drop her they practiced like 5 times, but everything went fine, during the baptism, and i confirmed her after the baptism cause she was going to bakersfield the next day to visit her dad.  PRESIDENT MURRI and his wife came and made everything worse as far as nerves ahhhh.  i got to do the intermediate piece and showed the last clip of "The Testaments" and bore testimony, then i compared the story in 2 Kings 22-23 to making a big change and getting baptised and we watched the new "old testaments" clip of that story in 2 Kings.  it is entitled,"One Voice" Josh Groban sung a song and it was the narroration of the story in 2 Kings.  it was super cool cause i had a super dry mouth cause of nerves, but my spanish came out perfect, crystal clear, i got like 4 comments on how good i spoke spanish after the service, i don't consider myself an incredibly good spanish speaker cause i speak too fast and i don't speak clear, but apparently the spirit was there helping everything to come out the way it was supposed to, it was really cool.  so then we had the baptism and ended up staying there till like 9:30 cause we couldn't get the dumb door to lock so we had to wait for someone with keys to lock it.  then we went home and forgot to fill up with gas AGAIN! so we spent alot of sunday walking like we did a few sundays ago, but it was alright and we did just fine.  

It was a good week, our Zone set standard for the mission this past week so we are doing really good.  gotta work hard.  so how is everything in smithfield?  how was valentines day?  it's been super hot here yesterday and today, 80 degrees man ..... humidity and sunny, i much prefer to be cold, not wet, not hot, but cold.  oh well.  so i have a request for you all when you get the chance will you send me your favorite scripture and tell me why it is your favorite and what you learn from it?   this will help me get some really good scriptures quick in my mind to pull out when circumstance permits.  thanks!  remember that i love you all, the library people are gonna kick me off soon cause i only have 30 mins.  the church is true, do the little things to get the big blessings.  BHL if you have any questions for me about anything just ask, i'll do my best to respond them.  sorry this is short, i look forward to learning from you and your favorite scriptures.  LOVE YA!

Elder Larsen

PS: both elder Hawes and Triana are dying ... going home ... next wednesday .... it's a sad time for me, both my "parents" are dying..... =/

Elder Larsen's LITTLE brother is soon to be Elder Larsen TOO!!!

Okay so I know this is Chris's blog... but I couldn't resist putting this info in for all those that know Brandon too.  Brandon received his mission call on Wednesday to the Sao Paulo Interlagos Brazil mission!  He reports to the Brazil MTC on June 16th and will be speaking Portuguese (eventually).  We left a message at the mission office in Ventura for them to call Chris and tell him (because he instructed us to do that).  The secretary called back the next day and spoke to Brandon and relayed Christopher's reaction - so that was cool.  Fun times ahead!

the transfer comes to a close ... in 2 weeks and both my parents (of the mission) are dying ... going home....

Family!

howdy do?  no wasting time this time with all the dang new mail procedures and stuff.  how are all of you?  well this week was a good week for us, we taught alot and it rained ... 2 days and i got absolutely soaking wet and both pairs of shoes have a nice small crack in them so my feet got all wet, nice eh?  but no worries, i don't need new shoes, as long as it doesn't rain i'm fine, and i'll probably get sent back out to Bakes after this area and out there it doesn't rain too often.  we don't have too much time today cause we have to be in Ventura for a Zone activity and the library people are crackin down on all the times today cause there are alot of people here today.  so next week i will write you on tuesday cause it's presidents day.

sooooo DEVON IS GETTING BAPTISED!!! yay for her, she is awesome, super golden and super ready.  she is super chill with us now so it's good, no more awkwardness.  she has had alot of experiences that i would never like to have, and she is only 16, very sad back ground, ..... we had an interesting week, alot of issues, a sister in the branch had a son die, a less active had a miscarage and a family in the branch just about imploded because of family problems.  so we've had a full plate this week, but it's all getting better now.  also, two days ago, we were randomly driving in the street and elder mendez saw an old investigator that was supposedly super golden and going to get baptised but 2 days before his baptism, the day after Christmas, he ran off to Las Vegas to work or something without telling anyone, so we would go over about one time a week to see if he had returned and he never did, anywho, so he finally returned and still wants to get baptised so we're goin over to talk and see what happened and get him back on track.  we are also teaching the Presiado Family, a couple and their two kids, the parents are members, and the kids are like 7 and 4.  they are super awesome, they are coming back to church and will be super strong members soon, they love us alot and always have us over and give us hot chocolate, mexican style which isn't sweet, but it's good.  haha so we went there on saturday and as soon as i walked into the apartment place this girl (not dressed very good) came running out and asked me if i knew how to tie a tie ..... how ironic ..... it's all i do ..... anywho so then like 5 other scantily dressed girls and this embarrased guy came out and all huddled around me while i tied this poor kids tie .... it was junior prom i guess. i dunno it was funny and me and elder mendez about died laughing.  so the presiados are awesome.  oh and me and elder mendez are going to buy devon some scriptures for being so awesome so we split the $74 it cost to buy her a quad ..... so yeah, thought i'd let you know that.  i'm trying my hardest to be frugle, i promise i am ...... i have resolved that i will never live here in california cause of the dang price of everything.  

aslynn is moving up there today i think, her mom flew down to drive with her up to Hyde Park.  so yeah, i'm running out of words, my brain isn't functioning today for some reason, i think this happens whenever i fast, cause i was like this yesterday as well .... Derek's B-day is coming up!!! man derek you're getting old .... the older you get the more handsome you get, until the age of 19 and you go on a mission and get fat like me, derek you are gonna sweep the ladies off their feet soon.  well i hope BHL is ready for his mission and that the papers get there soon cause the wait is horrible.  a mission has strengthened my testimony from almost nothing to where it is now.  there is no doubt in my mind of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, it is a book from GOD and no man will ever be able to prove otherwise no matter how hard they try.  from that testimony of the BOM i also can testify that the church is the only true and living church upon the earth, thats just how it is, like it or not.  i think we sometimes complicate things with doctrine or deep doctrine, rumors and falsehoods.  what we represent out here as elders and sisters is either a reallly really really big lie, or it's the most important thing that has ever been, or ever will be on the earth.  i've seen this with Devon, the gospel is making a 180 degree change in her life course, she will be a different person if she contines how she is 20 years from now than she would be if she had never accepted the gospel.  it's chilling to think of the responsibility that we have, to be the messangers to bring such a change to someone is quite a load to carry if you understand it correctly.  i'm sorry this letter is kinda scattered and probably not all that good, i'll try to write better next week with good news of the baptism!  i love you all alot, keep me updated about BHL, i'll try to write him today.  stay strong and read scriptures, they is goooood!

Elder Larsen

wow

Ok Guys,

 

i just spent like 30 mins creating a new email account cause the mission is changing over to some Gmail/church thing that the church has worked out with Google, it's pretty cool looking and works a whole bunch better than the old one.  i'm pretty sure they are doing this to be better able to track what we do online.  anywho, so yeah, how was your Birthday mom?  i hope i did a better job with the pictures, probably didn't, just let me know what i need to take pictures of, other than me cause i already know that :]  

well we had a good week, Devon is progressing alot, she should be getting baptised the 13th, she is reading alot the 2 other investigators with a baptisimal date will probably have to be dropped unfortunatly, cause they aren't progressing at all ... who knows why, but maybe we have planted a seed and in the future they will be ready to accept the gospel.  we had Zone Conference on tuesday with the General Authority Elder William Walker, he's really cool and really liked the mission, he taught us alot of cool simple things about  being a missionary and how to improve, for that is why we have this life right?  

man, we also almost died.  my companion forgot that he had set up 2 dinners for us .... so we just happened to stop by a members home and they were like, hey, you're late for dinner, they had bought KFC ... so we ate with them, they bought it all for us and we ate most of it ... then we went to our "planned" dinner ... man, we almost died, it was bad, good food, but man we couldn't move when we left the 2nd dinner ... then by bed time my motabolism had taken care and done it's job and i was fine, but Elder Mendez went to bed stuffed haha.  

we had a cool Baptism lesson with a less active family whose son we are teaching, we used "faith" to hard boil an  egg (that we had already previously hard boiled but he didn't know that, he's 7), and cracked it, he really liked that his faith had cooked the egg, and peeled the shell (repentance), or the sins, off him and baptised him in a bowl, to get rid of all the other little stuff, then put some rubbing alcohol in a bottle and lit a match, threw the match in and then the egg really quick (the bottle represents heaven, and with or without the shell the egg won't fit into the bottle, the fire represents that we need the Holy Ghost to get into heaven, not just baptism) and amidst a small flame, the egg gets sucked into the bottle.  it's way cool and Axel, liked it alot.  AH and during a lesson with Devon, we were going over the 10 commandments and elder mendez was reading the last one, no coveting, and it says we can't covet our neighbors ass, so he finishes reading the verse and i pipe up and say "now that is an old word that we don't use to much today" i was referring to the word "Covet" and immediatly after i said that, elder Mendez says "it means donky right?" of course referring to the other word, and maybe you just had to be there, but the way he said it was hillarious and we all busted out laughing haha, wow, devon, me and Cameron, a member we brought with us.  it was pretty funny haha.  so it was a good week.

Had a small mercy from the Lord yesterday.  so Saturday we were busy and forgot to fill the car up with gas ... so we have a good 13 mile trip to get to church, and then a good 13 mile trip back.  before we had even gone 1/4 of the way the gas light flipped on, so we were nervous that we wouldn't be able to use the car that day after church, so we got there and got back home, the gas gauge getting more and more past zero, we parked the car in the garage and decided to leave it there for fear of it running out, cause we usually drive a good 20 miles or so during a normal day.  anywho, so we decided to walk for the day.  we walked to the north of our area, seeing people along the way, walked for a mile or 2 on the rail road tracks in the dark among a forest of types and acrost a bridge or 2, the moon didn't come out for some reason, so that was an adventure.  We did it cause it was shorter than walking on the streets.  got to the person we were looking for and they weren't home, our walk was in vain.  so we decided to go to a members home near by and they decided that we would stay for a while and drink some hot chocolet with them (cause it was cold out side) ... mexicans do that, they force their love on you haha they're awesome ... so we did, and we didn't get out of their house until like 8:30.  now we had a good 45 min walk back to the house, i had to get numbers for the week from my district to the Zone leaders by 9:00 ... so we were walking really fast ... and as we were walking, a members daughter and her husband (who live like 6 hours away or something), who had been helping her dad (the member ... the daughter and her husband are members too) organize his house, happened to drive by and see us walking fast and they offered us a ride back to our apartment.  now what is interesting is that they were on their way back to their home 6 hours away, and they shouldn't have been in the part of town where they found us, cause it's on the opposite side of town from the members dad, but they were there and they gave us a ride and we got home in time and it saved us from who knows what, maybe just a 45 min walk and some knee pain but it was way cool to see that the Lord loves us enough to do something so simple for us.  and my district still didn't get numbers to me in time so it was late anyway, but yeah.  miricle.....

thanks for your letter mom, i enjoyed reading about everything.  Taylor, the weather is perfect here and we didn't really flood that bad, but there was alot of water.  and yeah my missionary buds write me and i write them.  i haven't written casy and i wrote mat once a while back.

time to go, they are kicking us off, dang making a new email killed all my time.  until next week, i'll respond better to your letters sorry.  love you all.

 

Elder larsen