Oct 25th 2010

Hey,

We are doing good in Hampton. It is beginning to cool down a lot which is exciting. I am excited for the Holidays. We have had a pretty good week. The Smiths are doing well. They got sick yesterday so they weren't able to make it to church. Missionary work is always two steps forward and one step back it seems like. But they are doing well, we had a really good lesson with them last week on tithing. I think tithing is one of the easiest things to teach because it seems like everyone has a story on how at some point in their lives they had to choose to pay their tithing over something else important, and then things worked out for them. And we went to their house with some members and they shared their testimony of tithing and it was just a good lesson and the Smiths committed to live it. We pushed their baptismal date back to Nov 6, well Ethan's date, he is the only one getting baptized right now.

We had a cool story though this week. Last year, when I was in the Newport news Branch, my first area, which is right next to Hampton, we were teaching a couple named Joe and Tammy, you may remember them, if not you can check my emails, who weren't married, but they loved the church and the members. Well, a couple weeks ago we got a call from Joe, the missionaries in the branch had given him our phone number, and the reason they gave him our phone number was because he was moving to Hampton. So he called us and we went and met with him this week. He is doing well, he is in a lot better situation then where he was at in the downtown area of Newport News, and he is no longer living with Tammy, who is in Chesepeake with her family. Anyway, to make a long story short, he wants to start coming back to church, he kind of fell through the cracks as the original missionaries who found him got transferred, but he wants to start coming back to church and we talked a lot about the atonement and how he can start over clean and he wants to be baptized. So he is getting baptized on Nov 27! Its awesome, we just keep getting blessed with people that want to be baptized! It really was a miracle that we found him too. First of all I think it was inspiration from the Lord that we stay here because Joe remembers me and I definitely remember him, and am happy to teach him again, and when we went to see him he got hung up with dinner, we had scheduled to see him at 5:30, and we waited until at 5:55 I was a little disappointed and I just kind of said darn and stood to leave, realizing that maybe it was too good to be true, and then just as I stood up he walked out, right at the last second. He was so happy we were still there and told us he was looking forward to seeing us all day, and I am very happy that for whatever reason we sat and waited for twenty five minutes, probably because we were just tired from biking and didn't feel like getting up, but anyway, it was great and for awhile we just talked with him, and he is ready to be baptized. He told us that he was already slowing down on coffee, because he knew we would be getting to that point sooner or later. So we had a great discussion with him and we read him scriptures, one scripture Elder Haley read which he really liked was Moroni 8:25-26. He thought that scripture was very powerful. Thank you for your prayers, we are being very blessed. I love you and have a good week and Halloween!

Love,
Elder Larson