Busy setting up things in Zone

Hey mom and dad-

I hope all is well and that you are all healthy. Sorry i didn't have anytime to write yesterday but we received hermanas in our zone. So we were helping them with their new house, and with all their new things that they received. We found a house for them and they are basically starting from scratch. But it seems like the hermanas that are now in our zone will lift us up a ton. One of them is one hermana that has baptized more than anybody in years here in this mission. So it should be fun learning from her. But to tell you the truth is that i cant do al ot what she does because she is a female. Kind of in the same way how the sister missionaries got to talk to grandpa. With some people there is just more trust with the sisters and desires to hear them.But we will see miracles with the work here.This past Thursday we had a meeting with the presidents of the 2stakes here in Huehue with Pres Lorenzana to talk about what we all can do to help these 2 stakes become 3. Very cool meeting to see what a stake needs to become a stake and to see what role everyone plays in all this.

But other than that were still looking for people to teach-baptize. We've been working in a small little town that's basically in the middle of no where to see what we can do there. The Bishop here in our ward is from there, so on Sunday we went and visited with him. The lessons seemed to go over a lot better than if we went without the bishop because there's more trust and confidence with the people.The weeks seem to be going by a lot faster and its hard to believe it.But it is. I have to face it. haha.I hope you guys have a great week in Chicago, Utah, at the house, or out visiting
Elder Larson

And whenever the next package comes down here i am really interested in the book Infinite Atonement by Tad R Callister and if you can get me 4-5 cookie cutters. Like of a snowman, or a star, or an animal or anything of Christmas or Halloween that would be great. I am now becoming a cook. But thanks for everything mom and if you can tell Brother Fisher thanks for the soccer balls and that the pictures will be coming soon that would be great.

Greetings from Huehue Guatemala

Hello to all
I hope all is well and you don't still have a cough like i do.

Sorry i don't have any funny stories this week like Elder Palmer's story about his mission leader.

But hey, we just received a new mission leader yesterday and we´re excited to see what we can do differently here now so we can help strenghten the ward.

This week has been tough because the week before the people we were teaching all fell. Fell as in, they won't progress anytime soon because of marriage problems and divorcements. That seemed to be the biggest problem we had and that there is out there right now. I think that Elder Holland hit it dead on when he gave his talk about love and lust. We all thought, wow that was a really good talk, but to actually see people go through it and see that they are victims from it is very tough to watch. But it´s true. It doesn't just happen in the states but wherever there are bad magazines and people of the opposite sex. Its one of the biggest temptations out there and at the same time, very hard to stop once it has began.

But as for right now we are basically starting all over again. But it´s interesting you know? Its another chance to learn and to do things differently. That´s what i hope we can do differently with the mission leader here now.

But this past week we had a mission conference and i really enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. He talked about our thoughts and how they strengthen us or destroy us and how they can help us increase our spirituality. Getting right down to the root, like Elder Holland did in his talk, is that everything starts with our thoughts. Whether good or bad. It´s a big factor to help my character. It was cool because President explained character in the words of ¨the valor we have to follow Jesus Christ.¨

I'm glad i have this chance to strenghten my character and do things that are pleasing in the eyes of the Lord. And i just hope i can be a blessing to all the people that i will come in contact with to help them know the true love of Christ.

Have a great week.

Love ya all

Elder Larson

Accidental call to a General Authority

Hello mom-

I'm still in Huehue!!! And this week we opened up 2 new areas and I was sick these past 2 days. But hey! what a week. We were kept very busy though. Buying medicine, things for the house, and showing the elders their areas. But I'm a lot better now but my wrists are acting up again, kind of like yours. But life goes on right?

Sorry i don't really have a lot to say this week but i will tell you something that just happened about 5 minutes ago. So we're in Huehue and there is a small zone in Las Huistas (about 2 1-2 hours away from here). The assistants dropped off a new phone for them with me on Thursday. They caught an early bus this morning and then we met up with them at the same Internet place. So he wanted to know if the phone was on the same plan as all the other phones. For example.....instead of calling the number 1234-5678 you can call pound 1234 and you wont use any minutes and its basically free. So he wanted to test it out and i gave him pound 1159 for example. He called and nobody answered. About 5 minutes Elder Falabella (he's in the first quorum of the seventy and the first counselor in the area presidency) calls him and says he had a missed from this number. He said he was sorry and then he starts asking him a lot of questions and by the end of the phone call this elder that just received this new phone was very mad at me. Instead of giving him pound 1159 he said i gave him pound 1151. It was quite funny. But at he same time kind of crazy.

I hope all is well and that you guys don't accidentally call a wrong number that turns out to be a seventy of the church.

Elder Larson

Photo of Quetzaltenango missionaries

This is kinda a "where's Waldo" picture. If blogger will allow you to click on this and make it bigger you can find Erik near the top center, to the left of the gate opening, no suit coat on. Big smile on his face.

We love you Will !

William Murdock is our sweet 8 year friend who is battling cancer. Erik sent some pictures from Guatemala last week to cheer William up. I didn't post them last week because I wanted to take them to Sam's Club and get them enlarged and take them over to William first. Here they are! This is Erik and the children of a family that he and his companion have been teaching in Huehuetenango. The last photo is of William holding the photo of Erik in Folsom! We love you Will ! You can check out William's blog here! http://www.ittakesvillages.blogspot.com/

Baptism, a cement soccer ball and more

The first picture is of Jason and his family on Saturday
The second picture is of Leilie in her new room that she is living in.

Hey mom and family-

I hope all is well and that the Laurens birthday, Grandpa Lawson's birthday, and the fourth of July was fun. It rained almost all day yesterday so it would have been pretty hard to do the fireworks here.

We had a baptism this past Saturday for a 10 yr old kid (Jason) of a less active that is coming back to church. At the same time a reference that we received from members in our ward was baptized. They were cousins to this family and they got married and baptized back to back.

So all in all it was a pretty good Saturday. I felt bad though. We met this couple at this members house one day. The member introduced us to them and we took down there information and we said we would pass the info to the other elders. Well i forgot to do it that week and then we saw them again that next week and told us that the other elders haven't gotten a hold of him. I said sorry and then immediately called the elders and told them to give this a guy a call. They taught them for 3 weeks and they said the whole time they were a golden family. It was really cool to see that they got baptized and have support with their family in our ward. I learned a lot from that experience. Saying to myself ¨i´ll do this later today when i have time.¨ Well....at times we say that but the ¨later¨comes but we don't remember. ha ha. I'm getting better at doing the things that come unexpectedly but at times i just need a little reminder.

Funny story of the week- We got to the baptism with the bishop and he parked in the parking lot. We hopped out of the truck and we were going to go in. We walked across the grass and my companion saw a little soccer ball that the kids use here to pass time. He said something to me like ¨watch this, it´s going to launch.¨ I don't remember what exactly he said but he wanted to kick it pretty far. So he went for it and kicked it about 6 ft. It then came to me that the ball didn't have air in it by the way it bounced. It was a cement ball that one of the liders filled with cement to bowl with the jovenes. My companion had troubles walking for a good 30 min and he thought his big toe nail was going to fall off. He´s doing a lot better now but i still get a good laugh thinking about it.

We also visited Hna. Leilie again this week. She moved places and is in a better place right now. Hopefully she can find some place where they can watch her kids so she can find work. The ward has really helped her out with this but she just needs to have time to go out and find work. But she is active in everything. Went to the day of service here in Guatemala, the baptism on Saturday and went to church yesterday. Its a tough situation to go through and Elder Alvarez and i learned a lesson that we were very shocked to learn. We were with her and the kids one afternoon and when we got there the kids were very out of hand. We tried helping her out somehow but it seemed that nothing worked to get them to settle down. I then turned to my
companion and i told him ¨I always thought i had patience but i have now come to realize that i do not have patience.¨

So today was supposed to be changes but it will now be tomorrow and we will leave Wednesday in the morning instead of Tuesday in the morning for changes. I think i have changes though. I kind of want to train but we´ll see what happens. I will let you all know what happens this next week.

Love you all and i hope that you all have a great week

Elder Larson

PS -i need contact lenses. I'm almost out. And I'm blindisimo without them