Monday, June 29, 2009

Elder Isaac Larsen—Email Excerpt

It’s getting pretty hot. The other day Brother Blood said that it was 106° according to the Walgreens thermometer when he drove by, and it was probably 80-90% humidity. It was rather warm. My companion from Lehi, Utah thinks it’s crazy hot. Every time we go outside, on a day like that one, it’s like wrapping up in a big soggy blanket and riding your bike five miles. But from what I hear, August is way worse than anything that has transpired thus far.

Here in South Carolina squirrel is a common food and the Bishop’s son, with the bishop’s permission, offered to hunt, kill, and skin a squirrel so we can try it. So of course we’re jumping on that. It’ll probably be next week when we eat it; good stuff.

Next week we are getting a new mission president.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Sister Paige Larsen—Email Excerpt

I will be receiving my new mission president and mission mom in the nest week. We're going to take Emma to the Washington DC Temple Visitors’ Center tomorrow before her baptism. The baptism is Thursday at 7:00pm. We had a really fun Zone activity today. We studied together, ate burgers and hotdogs, and played Ultimate Frisbee.

My companion and I have been working on being bolder in the past two weeks. Now we've given away 3 Books of Mormon. We've recited the first vision about the same amount of times. We may not be talking to many people, but we feel like we're in the right place at the right time.

We're teaching a 10-year-old girl of a member mom and a non-member dad. The girl has ADD so we need to make all the lessons interactive. We taught the Plan of Salvation first. We had drawn it out with colored permanent markers, and then cut it out into pieces for her to walk on. We had her literally walk through the Plan of Salvation. My companion had a sweater like mine, so she dirtied hers to represent before baptism. Then we gave the girls tools to use in life:
Faith—Flash Light
Repentance—First Aid Kit
Baptism—Bar of Soap (with clean sweater)
Gift of the Holy Ghost—Umbrella

Then when she was resurrected we gave her a white sweater to wear. The sweaters represented her body. She took the sweater off for death when she stepped onto the spirit world.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Elder Larsen—Email Excerpts


I love media referrals. I do. I really do. Give your friends a card for a free video, and make the day for a nice missionary. =]

I’m going to have some baptisms coming up. One for sure is Antonio. He did everything for baptism many months ago, but was on parole. We had to get permission from Salt Lake to baptize him, and we finally got it. So now all he has got to do is get a baptismal interview from President Hobbs.

We committed our next door neighbor to baptism and he accepted. It’s always in the place you least expect it! Oh well, the work is slower than it was. There is a lot more, “What should we do now Elder?” But the lessons that we do have are quality stuff.

We taught a lady the other day and the trinity came up. The lesson started out, “This is how it is,” then turned into “This is what they tell me,” then turned into “You're right, I don't believe it either.” It was funny. We are teaching them again tomorrow. I’ve got some sweet scriptures about becoming gods. (John 10:34, Psalms 82:6, Romans 8:16-17, and John 17:11)

I know this entry is kind of random, but I thought I’d write a longer entry. So stream of consciousness it is. It just so happens that the stream in my head has many turns and bends.

I met a man the other day. He was a homeless man that sat with me, and we talked. He said that he knew that drinking was bad, but that it wouldn’t be right to change until he was ready. I tried to convince him that repentance was his own choice. But he was one of those, “You’re young. What do you know?” kind of people. In the book of Timothy, I believe, it states, "Let no man despise you for your youth."
(1 Timothy 4:12 —Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. )
So I gave the old man a dollar, and told him to go to McDonalds.

I’m kind of loopy because I’m tired. My companion tells me I’m crazy, but when I start to teach I get in a teaching mode and I am completely different. So that’s good at least.

Beware of Golfing Turtles


Last P-day we went down to Rock Hill, South Carolina to the District Leader’s area. We hunted for turtles on the golf course at the country club where they live....no joke. Anyways, I found a turtle and picked it up. It scratched me and launched all kinds of excrement at me. It was madness. I wanted my revenge. I was going to eat it, but the DL said to get a bigger one because there wasn't that much meat on the one I had. So I let him go, but then we ran out of time before we found another one. TURTLES!!