HOLA familia!
This week was pretty normal so far as Colombia goes. Teach, and contact and contact and teach. We teach the restoration more than anything else so it´s good that i love that lesson. It´s such a great lesson to show the pattern of prophets and that God loves us enough to restore His gospel through another prophet. I especially love introducing the BoM and promising them that if they read it and pray with faith in Christ they can know por medio El Espiritu Santo the BoM is the word of God. I really like using Mormon 9:21,25 to show these people that all they have to do is use the faith they already have and they can revieve a confirmation of the words of Christ. I like the part in those scriptres where it says ¨this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth¨ because i tell them how i got my answer about the BoM far far away in that land of gringos but that they can get their answer here in little Puerto Colombia because God loves all of His children. It´s a great lesson and it gives you new appreciation for and faith in our prophet. I pray for President Monson everynight because it´s got to be a little overwhelming knowing that every missionary in the world testifies of you alot of times a day. Hmmm... something different this week. It was the branch Christmas party this week so that was entertaining. The primary put together some dancing and singing and that was really great. The best part for me was seeing 3 little girls (who are sisters) sing primary songs about baptism when their family has only been baptised for 4 weeks it was awesome.
Yesterday was kinda a bummer because it seems like the angel of the Lord mysteriously afflicted all the youngest children in Puerto so alot of our intesvtigators didnt come to church because of their ¨sickly¨children (ok in two of the families the kids were a little sick but the other three i heard the kids playing with the dogs behind the house). I guess this week we´ll be re-teaching the sabbath day and how to keep it holy and saturday night i go around and paint the door posts with iguana blood (i saw my first BIG one, 4 feet, this week it was cool and really fast). It just made me sad because they are missing out on blessings that the Lord wants to give them. Sometimes i feel like a blessing vendor because thats what we teach all the time, follow the commandments and you´ll get blessings. The best part about teaching all these people is realizing all the things you´re teaching and all the blessings you´re promising also apply to you and that if you follow your own lesson you´ll recieve blessings just the same as everyone else. this is the way that i most often cry repentance. Teach a commandment and then commit them to follow it, and then promise them the blessings and love of the Lord if they do. it really is a blessing not to worry about anything except for what the Lord wants you to worry about for two years. So thanks family (especially mom and dad) for this oppurtunity to devote myself totally to the Lord for two years. Thanks for your prayers and support.
Have a Merry Christmas and i´ll talk to you soon!
Elder Larson

week three

i´ll start with a week ago from saturday. We´re able to baptize 8 people! i baptized two and it was super awesome. I was so excited that i got the prayer right that i think i dunked them with a little too much authority and they got water in their ears! oh well we believe in baptism by total immersion and nobody can say they werent! It feels great to be an instrument in the Lords hand 24/7. I knew that is what i was in the MTC but i can feel it alot more here. I´m a self sharping kind of tool (and when i say tool i mean sword of course) and the extent of my effectivness is based upon the abiblity and level that i have pushed myself to. So i just got to keep pushing myself to new levels and be ready for the Lord to use me as He see´s fit. This past has been alot of teaching because last sat. we baptizied everyone that we had in our pool who was close to baptism so we taught alot so we could prepare more of our investigators for baptism this week. Elder Moran is a bit trunky seeing as this is his last week and it´s rather hard to take the reins when you can´t really speak the language but i find ways to keep him on his toes. One is when i feel like we´re wasting time i contact the next person we see and so then he has to come in and say something, or i get him talking about his glory days and that fires him up and we get moving. He´s great though, he´s a really good teacher and knows what he´s talking about. Matthew last week you gave me some advice about bearing my testimony and playing the gringo greenie card. So this past week i made a goal that whenever i opened my mouth in a lesson or contact to not close it until i bore my testimony. It was great too see people listen to my testimony and understand what i was saying (because i practiced and made it fancier than ¨YO SE QUE¨). And i love the section about bearing testimony in PMG in the chapter about commitments. When you share a scripture, explain a little, and then bear testimony the spirit comes really strong and i love it (that´s my goal for this week, after i finish my section scrip/ explain/ testify). I also love the greenie card because everyone thinks i´m hiliarious and you know how i am with that. Sunday (in which i gave a talk about tithing and they didn´t have the cd´s to sing with so it was even worse than normal, i timed the opening hymn and it took 10 mins to sing it 10!!) some primary kids were teaching me about foods and they were talking about plantones which sounds like pantalones so i just kept saying pantalones and i was probably the funniest thing ever to walk the face of Colombia. Pretty sure i said i like to eat fried pants and it was a crowd killer. also i use the gringo bit when we contact because i pretend i cant understand them when they say no and then testify again and ask if we can come by and teach, i can usually get away with doing that 2 or 3 times and sometimes they let us come back and teach after the 3rd time. It´s a little frusturating not being able to help and get to know these people as much as i would like but the upside is i get to learn humility and patience (i thought i learned patience in the MTC). I´m trying to find how i can be most effective now because it makes me scared to think that i´m not as an effective tool (big and sharp espada) as i can be. One crazy investigator that is a blessing for sure is this new yorker colombian 40 year old man who i teach in english. It´s crazy how the lord puts people in your path and talk about putting people in your path. He is a retired cook who got sick of the fast life and moved to colombia to cook burgers, REAL ONES, in the park. so we teach him and eat his burgers and it´s loco, the only sad thing is that this week i might leave puerto (it´s cambios) so i´m not sure what will happen to him. But i was able to get him a Book of mormon in english and he reads it alot. i´ll end talking about the buses here which are also loco. about once or twice a week E. moran and i go into Barr. for meetings and take these crazy buses. Basically anything that seats more than 10 people counts as a bus, my favorite are the ones that are like the school buses back home, the ones matthew would leave his trombone on. They take all the windows out (there are a few air conditioned ones but they cost more so we dont take those) and they paint them street racer style and put huge decals on them. Then they decorate the inside with virgins and stuffed animals hanging from the sealing, or tons of colombian flags. They drive these rattly, rickety buses like race cars and it´s the best when they are packed, i´m the only gringo on the bus and we all get bumped into eachother and they blast some bianato music (the stuff with the accordian). I almost feel native but then i either have to look straight down to someone or i see me reflection and know i´m a gringo. it´s great and i love it, we´re working hard to get a couple married so that they can be baptizied that thats our goal.
love you and thanks for your prayers i feel them.
Elder Larson

Quinn with his cousins Andrew (second from left) and Annie (second to last on right) also in the MTC with their companions

OFF TO COLOMBIA!!

Hey friends and family and many admirers of Quinn Garlick Larson!
Sorry that this blog hasnt really been updated enough as of late.
Luckily not all too much has happened...but its starting too now!

Quinn was delayed leaving Utah to Colombia due to his visa.
He finally got it and he escaped on Tuesday morning at like 3 am!
We got to talk to him while he was in Miami waiting to fly out and he was sooo excited to finally be leaving. It was great to hear his voice and we actually get to hear it again not too far off around Christmas time.

So hopefully thats a good enough little update for everyone. I feel like this has been neglected too much and because I love Quinn so much and its crazy how much I miss him, I decided it really has to be my obligation to keep up with this. So check back every so often for pictures and letters.

-Kalan Nora Larson

Heres a little bit from his letter he sent on Monday
((oh p.s - Missionaries get days once every week called P-days or Preparation days and Quinns is on Monday. That means its his day to get caught up on laundry and cleaning and writing letters. So we get an email from him every Monday sometime so just to let you know when he'd be able to have some time to write you all. ))

This place is crazy dirty smelly green muddy wet LOUD hispanic hot humid and great. I´m not sure where to start so i´ll start from when i finished talking with you all in the airport. So we got on a plane to Bogota and said goodbye to American stuff for 2 years and flew for three hours... We took a taxi from the airport to the office and that made me pretty woozy. They drive taxi´s MUY MUY LOCO in Barraquilla (which is nothing like Bogota, Bogota was nicer than south philly by far). They drive alot of motorcycles here and they were weaving in and out of all the taxi´s and buses, if we come back and visit barr. there is no way dad is driving a mini van full of us through the streets...The next day (thursday) us 3 greenies split up and i met my companion, elder Moran from Guayaquil Ecuador and he is great. He is only a month and ten days older than me because his dad is a mission president so he got his call when he was 18. He is about as tall as my shoulder and speaks pretty good english so he is a really good teacher. Which brings me to my spanish which is hilarious. I´m really good at telling people how to pray and why they should keep commandments but everything else is not so hot. But i learn a little a day and before i know it i´ll be habloing espanol gringo missionary style (then colombian a little latter). My area is a smaller town outside of Barr. called Puerto Colombia right next to the ocean, which i have only seen from on top of a big hill that we like to teach on. So this is how most of our lessons go, i get to listen to elder moran speak spanish and then i get to say my name and that i´m a gringo. Then i start out with ¨Dios nos ama¨ and pretty much say that a few times and then Elder Moran teaches some more and i talk about the BoM and how great it is. it´s really fun teaching and i´ll get better in time but elder moran does´nt have to reteach what i teach so that is a good sign. WE do alot of our finding with the poor and they are poor. Most houses are a brick rectangle with a half wall in the middle and dirt floor and some bare light bulds and a couple pictures of the virgen(or bob marley) and a crucifix and maybe a few old appliances, those are the decent ones. The really poor ones are mud and stick houses and one light buld (they still steal their electricity) and some pictures of the virgen or Bob. They are great to teach because they love to listen and commit to things but it seems the bigger problem is getting them to do what they say they will. I think i´m going to get really at persuading here in Colombia...All in all colombia is pretty much what i expected it would be hot, sticky, dirty, and friendly. Spanish will come and so will my love for the people especially because they are really easy to love. Thanks for your prayers and your support, type to ya next week.
Elder muy gringo Larson

August 27,2008

WELL HOLA!!
I'm having a great time so far. Spanish is fun to start learning, i can pray a sunbeam prayer in spanish now so that is exciting (mostly depressing). My biggest encouragment is two things, one the MTC has sent a bunch of missionaries spanish speaking and two, the Lord called me to speak spanish so i must be able to do it eventually so i'll have faith and patience.

My district is really fun, there are 12 of us so that makes things squishy, but it's all good. It's fun being district leader because I get to know them all pretty well by serving them. Out of the 12 of us 10 are going to colombia (the other two to Ohio, we try not to talk about colombia when they are around). Five to Bogota Norte and 5 to Barrenquilla. There are already 5 gringos in each of those missions who went a year ago and they were the first to go since 1990ish. They can only send 10 gringos a year so i'm pretty humbled that i'm one of the few whiteies getting to go.

August 20, 2008

Quinn entered the MTC today. He can't wait to get letters. Check out his current address.