17 Jan 2011

Hey,

Well things are going good in Hampton. As far as the work is concerned, things are going awesome. The lord is blessing us. Things are changing though and I just do not do well with change. It stinks. I miss elder Haley alot. It is the same as when I left Elder Shelley, I missed him, but then became really good friends with Elder Haley, and now I miss him, but I hope I can become good friends with Elder Phillips. And it doesnt help that whenever we go to the Sly's house I see packed up boxes because they are getting ready to leave. The military is moving Brother Sly onto the airforce base here called Langley before they moved to St george at the end of february. But they are moving to Langley in a couple weeks. They will still attend our ward because the airforce base is very close, but they will be out of our area so we will probably see them alot less. The bright side is, before I know it I will be off my mission and then it will be easy to stay in touch. I know I will. I really look up to Brother Sly and he has taught me so much. He is the most loving person I have ever met. They just do so much to help us and they are always calling and asking us if we need anything or if we have dinner plans. They are like family. And they have twice the load because there are sister missionaries too and they treat them the same way. I am definitely going to have to do something for them to tell them thank you.

But let me tell you about some cool things that have happened. John Cox is solid. We set a date for him to be baptized on Feb 5th. We had a lesson with him last week and it went well and he wants to be baptized. He came to church again this past Sunday and loved it again. Also, Kelton came to church as well and really enjoyed it. I dont think it is possible to not enjyo church here. There is always a strong spirit. But Kelton is also set to be baptized on February 5th so hopefully we can have a double baptism. Also, a previous bishop here started a thing called the needs network. And people donate stuff to it and then he sells it back for super cheap so the poor people can afford things like furniture. He is the one who gave us all our stuff for free when we moved into our Hampton apartment, cause it was a new apartment. Anyway, he has been helping a young couple who have been homeless find what they need and right now he is searching for an apartment for them. Anyway, this couple (named Robert and Natalie) has been so grateful for all the help they received and has asked to learn about the church. Bro Chase, the guy who owns the needs network, had them go to our ward and they loved it. They felt the spirit and afterwards told brother chase how excited they are to come back. So, we are going to go and have dinner and a lesson with this couple and brother chase on Wednesday. It should be good.

Another cool thing, the sister missionaries have been teaching a group of people from napal. That may be a completely wrong spelling but it is some country near india. It is a group of refugees that have come to Virginia and they have been teaching them for awhile but in that culture you really cant change religions without having the grandfather or whoever the head male is doing it first. But they have been open to learning, and there is a language barrier but some of the napals know english so they can translate. Well, they finally decided that they would like to become christian and they started coming to church. So on sundays we have a seperate sunday school class thats taught by us and the sisters just for them so we can teach them slowly and let them translate for each other. Its going good and fun to watch them understand and it has been fun to help teach them. We taught them the plan of salvation this week. The sisters here are really cool and we have fun together. It makes the work alot more fun and the best part is that there is no competition. We are always working together and passing investigators to each other so we can be unified. And Sister sly has gone to work trying to get the Book of Mormon translated into napalese. She has made lots of calls straight to Salt lake lol and the work of translating it is now underway and should be done in July! So the work here is going good.

We didnt have interviews last transfer. Interviews have been changed to once every three months so they are less frequent. They used to be every transfer. I believe we have our next interviews on Feb 3rd. Thanks for the email and keep us in your prayers. I lvoe you and will talk to you next week.

Love,
Elder Larson