Pa La Gente- April 12, 2010

it was great to hear from you all. It sounds like you are all getting warmed up for a fun larson summer, sounds great. Mom as a response to your question i think kalan doesnt need any boyfriends, also i feel that taylor is a girls name. Dad maybe you could make the fence colombian style like i told you about a while back, lots of sticks on end with a wire holding them together, im sure the neighbors would enjoy it. this week went well with my compa E diaz. he is getting used to being exposed to all the problems of our investigadores that he didnt have to deal with at home (something that happens to all misioneros at first) so i get to cheer him up alot, in my cheery way. the family Jimenez Gomez (laureano y ana) are doing really well, they both have had really tough lives and are excited to have things forgotten thanks to Christs atoning power. Ana has given up cafe like a champ and Laureano hasnt drunk since his birthday 3 weeks ago so we are making progress. Next comes marriage which is going to be an excellent opurtunity to`promise blessings. Ive come to find out here in the good ol Mision colombia Barr. that with anything but especially marriages it seems its alot better to prevent things from going bad as opposed to letting them go bad and then trying to fix them. Some things are just better left unsaid and not done then ask forgivness. I think this is what you were trying to teach me about school mom, its better to start out on top rather than dig yourself out of the hole (although i was never sure how i could dig myself out of a hole, i always thought climbing out made more sense). ohh funny story that only happens teaching in colombia....

so we were teaching our invest. about the word of wisdom and the best thing is that he is living 100% YAYY! when we got to the part about drugs he said he totally agreed and that it is way important to stay away from drugs. Well he said it in such a way that we thought he might have had a problem with drugs which means we need to know if he has or not so we can prevent him from using drugs again. he told us he never used drugs but just when he was a teenager he lived on his family farm in the country and they grew marijuana for a few years!! he said that in the 80´s some guys from bogota came and talked his family into growing marijuana and after they grew it a bunch of gringos came in planes and shipped it all to we know were.... (california for sure). but after a few years they stopped growing it because it was alot harder than growing the normal stuff they grow here and they didnt want any problems with the kind of problems that happen in colombia when you grow drugs. exciting stuff right.

well thanks for all your letter and love, im doing good working away and focusing on the time that i have left to do something that i wont ever be able to do again in the same way. its a gift and thanks for letting me live it.

Love

Elder Larson

Happy P-Day- March 29, 2010

dear family,
thanks for you letter i hope you are enjoying a little bit more sun than what you are used to. But it is still not like my favorite Colombian star that has the capacity to fry gringos in less than two hours or your money back. Sometimes it makes me wonder if it is the same sun here that i grew up with, not having the opportunity to read anything scientific for the last 19 meses I’ve almost forgotten the reason why its hotter here. from my religious standpoint i think it is hotter here because the lord is warming things up here first for the last burn which we got coming but maybe not. The week has gone well finding new investigators and helping people pray as familys. THANKS for teaching me to pray as a family its REAL important that my investigators do it and thanks to you r teaching and examples ive been able to share a very strong testimony that family pray brings happiness and unity. Also we got a couple curve balls thrown our way with some of our investigadores but the Lords will will be done. Funny things this week, well yesterday was Domingo de Ramos and the catholics get all pumped up and go to church for the first time since Christmas. After mass they have a parade in the street where they have the school marching band (there aren’t trumpets or anything just drums and xylophones) start off and then the priest follows with a bunch of people carrying crosses and virgins (the plastic kind). Well my compa and I got to the intersection where the parade was about 15 meters before they were going to pass and we needed to cross before them because we couldn’t wait for them to pass by and get to church on time so we scampered in front of the parade. As we got to the other side I couldn’t help but take a few seconds to watch a bunch of virgins pass by BUT to our surprise the parade started to turn and go down the street in which we were in the middle of! WE started to realized that if we didn’t start a walking we were gonna get stuck in the middle of the after mass mess so we took off, but the best part is that the parade kept following us down the street! Well since we were just about 20 meters ahead of the parade and nobody else was in the street it looked like we were leading the parade so I started marching and waving to the few people who were looking on. My compa almost died but I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

My compa and I are really pumped for conferencia and hopefully we can get our investigadores to go with us Saturday so we can go. But Sunday we get to go si or si so that is going to be fun. Enjoy priesthood session with Dad Lars, that is one of my best memories of being an aronic priesthood holder .

Im happy and safe and I pray hard. Thanks for your prayers for us and our investigadores.

Love

Elder Larson

Fotos - March 22, 2010

aqui les escribo- March 22,2010

Thanks for the letters it was great to hear from you. Thanks so much for writing every week it means alot and as simple as it sounds lots of missionaries dont get letters EVERY week like im so blessed to get so THANKS ALOT! Also thanks mom for spelling Colombia with an O and not a U like the majority of the gringos that write me, you with the spanish awareness award for the week yayy! Oh speaking of spanish (i speak spanish thanks to miracles) its been fun speaking with my chilean compa straight from Chile. He says alot of words that arent words here and gets a little frustrated when nobody understands him, also his vocabulary is more refined than that of the costeños and what i have learned. Words that are bad words (or palabrotas in spanish) in chile are fine to say here which is funny because half of the words i say get him riled up! Like if i drop something i say ¨carajo¨ or ïrda¨which is what the bishop says but he gets red faced and tells me to say things like sapos or rayos (toads or lightning). Personally i think saying TOADS when i drop something will 1) prevent me from growing facial hair for being so girly and 2) make the costeños laugh at me for being a sissy. But ive just realized that my spanish vocabulary is….. well we could say and i basically talk like a costeño, which is to say compared to other latinos, simple yet descriptive. But i like it!

this week has been great because we have found 2 families and they both came to church yesterday! The made quite a sacrifice to come because both walked) about 25 mins to get to church (walked because they cant afford anything else…. just like me). That was pretty awesome and we are going to be praying hard to keep them excited to come. Pray that they can understand the answers that God is giving them to their prayers. WE are working hard and still looking for the BISHOP we are going to batized. My compa is fun because he all excited about everything, his first district meeting he loved it, and today was zone conference and i thought he was going to stop breathing when Pte Roundy started to teach (but really it was a good sermon from our dear Pte. Roundy).

Ive just been really grateful for the service ive been able to give these past months and that i have yet to give. If one thing i have learned is that in serving one learns so much. Serving anyone brings happieness but serving the Lord is the BEST way to grow and learn. Because nobody can do the Lords work by themselves so if someone wants to serve the Lord, He welcomes them knowing that He will have to help that person every step of the way so that they can be sucessful. Well the work i do i can never do alone so if you think i have gained any kind of sucess its because the Lord taught me how to do it and helped me to do so.

Gracias por todo les queiro mucho

Elder Larson

p.s. enjoy the fotos!!

pps the first one is me with my two hijos its the LARSON FAMILY in the mision colombia barranquilla!

CARTOS! March 15,2010

Well hola familia,

It was fun to hear from you all and see that you are all doing well. Im glad mom is off her leashed perch on the couch. Im excited to hear about the basketball results from Lars and Layne. Well im going to actually answer some of moms questions for once (im sorry i forget these things easily). Yes i boíl my wáter (its a rule). I try not to swallow when i brush my teeth but the Little toothpaste that the King Larson family gave me tastes so good that sometimes i do… just kidding. I dont need you all to send me shoes i found a zapatero who is going to sew a tire on the bottom of my shoes (a jeep tire at my request) so im pretty sure that should last, at least till i get home. Monteria is actually pretty big (well its big realitive to the other towns here) im just in the not too rich neighborhoods so it looks like a pueblo. In the nicer parts of Monteria (or whatever city in the coast) the adults have a colombian univeristy education (not the same as an american university education), but where im working the best educated are high school grads. Most times we have to reapeat things alot. All the little colombian kiddies go to school and have to wear uniforms. Because there arent many teachers there are two options of 6 hours clases from 6 in the morning until 12 or 1 in the tarde until 7 in the evening. Other fun colombian insight is that yesterday was election day for their versión of congress. What they do here to get people to vote is almost the same as what we do to get people to go to church, pass by 2 hours before and remind them, and then pass by again. But the politcal people do it in vans and them drive them to the voting polls. WE werent too happen when we got to a investigators house just in time to see him jump in a van and tell the driver to step on it so he had an excuse not to go to church but it happens.

Things are fun with my second hijo elder Diaz, He is from Chile and was a bit worried about his family due to the crazy earthquake down there but he Heard from them before he got here and they are fine. He is the oldest of 3 brothers and they live just with their mom. He got here with a charge from Pte. Roundy to baptize a future bishop and his family so we are gearing up for that (gearing up to find a bishop means contacting alot more, practicing the lessons, fasting, and trying to get members to help us among other things.) Its also funny how naive he his, one time we were talking to a group old kranky catholic men (who were hanging out in front of their houses without shirts) and they asked us not too kindly why we were there. Well i told them because we want to help people have all the blessing that God has for them, and my comps response was because he loved them…. It was a good answer and all but the men looked around kinda awakwardly and said ¨….ok well….neat…¨ i laughed. Or this morning when we were buying mango the guys wanted to sell them to us for the White person Price (higher) and im sick of paying the White person Price so i was talking him down to what they were really worth. Well i almost had him when i said ï all have is 2 mil pesos so thats i can pay¨but my comp said öh dont worry i have more money¨…. We ended up paying the White person Price. But he is excited to work and see miracles and he listens to me and more importantly the spirit so we are doin gerrrreat!

Thanks for everything (life, the chance to be here, helping me get a testimony etc. Etc. Etc.)

Love

ELDER LARSON