July 19th 2010

Hey,

Well things are going good here in Hampton. I feel like we are kind of in a rut with our investigators though, especially Joylyn. We have been seeing her alot and she just hasnt really been progressing the way we would like her to, so we are kind changing our focus to working alot with the people we are teaching to spending more time finding. We feel like there are people out there that are more prepared and ready to receive the gospel. Obviously we will keep seeing joylyn, but not as much. We are also going to try working more with members to seek for referrals......

Interviews with president perry were great. I like him alot. He mostly talked to me during the interview, telling me about the things the brethren are doing. Like one thing is to help us teach the 5 preach my gospel lessons the brethren came up with 8 simplified lessons that we are going to be teaching instead, and we are still strongly encouraged to study and apply preach my gospel, but these 8 simplified lessons will help us teach the 5 lessons in preach my gospel better. I dont really know much about them, cause I havent seen them yet. I just know of them.

President Perry also told me that he knew what is like to have children of a stake president and told me that he wouldnt have any prejudgments about me, which made me feel good. Oh and I did ask him about Joylyn, and he told me that Satan cant do any more than tempt. It was a pretty simple answer, but he said it in an encouraging way. But since then Joylyn has been talking alot to this baptist friend of hers that doesnt believe what we believe, so that hasnt helped her out at all, which is a little bit frustrating.

The work with the other lass actives has been good. We have been trying everything. We brought bishop out last week to see one guy who had been offended. And so bishop got to know him and he knows the guy who offended him, and couldnt believe that that had happened, and he knew he could get him to apologize, so we reminded bishop of that task yesterday, and he is planning on seeing him. Also, there is one great family in the ward that got sealed in the temple but recently went less active. And they are wonderful, and they always feed us and make us feel very comfortable in their home, and they are close to coming back, they know they should. So we had them agree to pick us up for church, we told them we needed a ride, and so they agreed to do that, but then yesterday morning when we went outside, there was another member in the parking lot waiting to pick us up, that the less active had called. So he snuck out of that one. I just feel like if we can just get them to come back to church once, they will feel the spirit and the ward is very good about fellowshipping and not judging, and so if they can receive that then it will be so easy for them to become active again.

Well it sounds like you had a fun week on the high adventure. There is a trek that is about to happen down here too, so alot of people have been talking about it. It seems like it wasnt very long ago I was going on the Trek. I am sure it will be a great experience. Well thank you for email and support. I got both of the emails. I will talk to you next week.

Love,
Elder Larson