Short email - Week 13 - March 29, 2021

 Hey this week was a great week. It went by so fast. It feels like its been a couple days.  So Cody is getting baptized on Sunday. Nothing super exciting happened this week. Its just been busy with lessons and calling. We have dinner with Bishop on Wednesday this week and I'm so excited for that but its been a great week! 

Also being on a mission is so great because you get to study all the time. Here in Texas everyone goes to different churches and believes different things so a lot of the time people are throwing stuff at me that make me question what I believe. So I study about it and I know that this church is true because I pray about it. Knowledge comes from studying and a testimony comes from the Holy Ghost so make sure y'all are praying when we you study not just read. 

Love yall 

Elder Larsen

Zone Conference - Week 12 - March 22, 2021

So this week was a blast. We had exchanges on Tuesday this past week and Elder Stewart came into Castle Hills. We had a really fun time and we had a dinner appointment with Aaron that night. Which was pretty fun, we didn't actually have dinner we just ate oreo mousse and ice cream. Then we had Zone Conference Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesday and Friday we do a zoom with the whole mission so that's always fun. Then on Wednesdays we go in person with our zone and another one and do role plays and get more training. In Zone Conference we focused on chapter 10 in Preach My Gospel and my favorite thing was How To Begin Teaching. I love using the points that it suggests in the section because they are such powerful sentences. Elder Wallin and I have really been working on our HTBT.

We then had a lesson with Christina, and she was awesome. That was our first lesson with her, so we did a lot of HTBT. There wasn't another man in the house so we couldn't go inside so we went to the car and grabbed the other Elders to come inside with us because their lesson got cancelled so there were 4 of us teaching her with a member it was awesome. She is super excited and is super curious to keep meeting with us.

We also had dinner with Patriarch Parsons and he was the Bishop when the district was filmed in our ward. So he was telling us all the inside scoop of what was happening and the behind the scenes type of stuff.

Yesterday we had a member dinner with this Hispanic lady and her two sons and they made the best Mexican food. So after we ate we shared the Easter video that the church just came out called #startingtoday. When we watched it with them I felt the spirit so strongly and afterwards the mom was crying and I just bore my testimony about how we can start over, how we can start again today. Shared some of my own experiences and the spirit was so strong and the spirit testified to me that we can start over no matter how our past was. We can start over. So I just invite y'all to watch that video. It's called "Startingtoday". Then see how it makes you feel and think about what something is that you can change in your life right now.

Love y'all Elder Larsen

PS - now we can workout in gyms and our gym has a suana so thats super fun to chill in after the gym haha

Hard week, great week - Week 11 - March 15, 2021

This email I am going to keep nice and short. This week has been a hard week, I've been homesick and it's been kind of hard to focus on missionary work.

So Cody is getting baptized. We had a great lesson with him on Tuesday and he told us how he wants to get baptized. So he will be getting baptized in Utah because all of his family lives there. On Saturday we had interviews with the President and I just cried to him because I feel like I'm not ready for a mission. I see all these missionaries that know so much about the Book of Mormon and Bible. I honestly don't know much at all but the President helped me feel better and told me to be patient and to love myself. That has really stuck with me and I am trying my best. Other than that it's just been the same old we had some lessons this week that were amazing we found someone on Facebook and his name is Bryan. We've had two lessons the past few days and we taught him the first lesson and asked if we could drop off a Book of Mormon. He said yes he'd love one, he is really excited to read it. 

So it's been a pretty chill week.

Hope y'all have had a great week though. Keep doing great things.

Elder Larsen

Then there were two - Week 10 - March 8, 2021

Hey everyone! Hope y'all have had a great week, this week was pretty slow for us. This week we didn't have many lessons. A few of the people that we teach and are progressing the most were out of town and a lot are going out of town this week because it is spring break. So we had transfers on Thursday and Elder Hungerford left us. I miss him so much, he is so funny but is the hardest worker. He went up to Garden Ridge which is about 40 minutes away from castle hills. So we had a couple lessons this week with some of our friends and they went really well. 

We had members in all of our lessons and they helped bear their testimony and taught a little bit. Patriarch Parsons took us out to eat on Thursday night at Whataburger and that was the first time I've been there. I love him so much he is the nicest person and so fun to talk to. On Saturday we went and dropped off a Book of Mormon up by Trinity University and that part of town is insanely rich we saw a Lamborghini and Ferrari, so that was super cool. Also we always see this Lamborghini driving by our apartment so that's cool. Oh I just remembered something that I've noticed of Texans that live by us. These people do not care about their house they only care about their cars. We drive by the most beat down houses and they have super nice cars like Mercedes or Range Rover. One time there was a Lamborghini in someones drive way haha. Ya nothing crazy happened this week.

Yesterday I was reading in a book called Teaching of Prophets and this one was on President Hinckley. I was just reading and reading and something that has been on my mind is becoming a better missionary. I want to be just like Jesus. I wan't to have the Christlike attributes that he did. So I remember writing in my study journal something like I want to give my whole self to God and let him change me and work on me so I can be. Something I thought about before my mission is I don't want to come back weird. As I've been out my opinion on that has changed. I want to come back super weird because that means that you've changed. There is a lot of things that have changed about me while I've been out on a mission and a lot more things I want to change. I don't know where I was going with this, but I just want y'all to know what I'm thinking and I want to be as honest as I can in these emails. So I love y'all and see ya later

Elder Larsen

50 lbs of Carrots for Food Drive

Transfer Day; Saying Goodbye to Elder Hungerford

First Transfer done - Week 9 - March 1, 2021

Ok ok so last week I didn't send an email because my preparation day was so busy. I'm going to keep my emails short from now on. This week we had 3 exchanges. It was a crazy week. We had three because we couldn't do any last week with all the crazy weather. This week was a blast though I've laughed so much. On one of the exchanges it was me and another noob and I went off. I was the senior companion. We went street contact and I got a few numbers, I'm actually starting to like street contact. I know that sounds crazy. Well our teaching pool is getting bigger and honestly we think that we could have 7 baptisms this transfer maybe more. There is a family that we just started teaching and they have 5 kids and they are super solid and we have about 4 others that we could get but I guess we will see.

So something I've really learned is that having the spirit with you always makes a huge difference in your life. I used to think oh big deal if I have it with me. I can tell you that it's such a unique experience to have the spirit with you, it's something different. When you know that you are keeping the commandments and doing the right things. When you don't have the spirit to be with you, you feel different and feel empty. So I'm going to challenge you to keep doing the right things, keep keeping the commandments so that you can always have the spirit to be with you.

Love Elder Larsen

Oh PS I forgot to say that Elder Hungerford is leaving me and Elder Wallin; so it will just be me and Elder Wallin.