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