Week 3: SSSIIICCCKK!!!

This week had so many ups and downs. it was crazy. its amazing to me how high you can get and how low you can get here in the CCM. i notice as soon as i start thinking of myself, thats when i get discouraged, thats when i things start heading down hill. so it is my goal to look for ways to serve and love others. its my prayer that i may have my eyes opened and realize the opportunites that are presented right in front of me and take advantage of them. because i know that as we serve, not only are the hearts of the people we serve are softened but our hearts are softened as well and then the spirit can really guide and direct and testify. so thats my goal. lets see how i do.

ANY way, this week was really a rollercoaster. last tuesday, i started practicing my soccer skillz. elder thomas is a freak of nature when it comes to soccer. he is so coordinated with his feet and he has so much balance its amazing. he taught me how to balance the soccer ball on my foot and i can almost catch the soccer ball in between my butt and my calf. its super hard and i can never quite do it but im so close! elder thomas also taught me how to catch the ball on my back so now i can throw the soccer ball up and catch it in between my shoulder blades, kind of cradling it with my neck and my shoulder blades. its sick! i can also balance the ball on my forehead for like 4 seconds but tahts nothing compared to elder thomas.  i so want a soccer ball when i get out in the field haha. alright so wednesday, the 13th we had our service project and this guy named fernando was in charge of us and has us clean the apartments. it was awesome and funny cause fernando only speaks spanish so we really had to bust out our good stuff to really converse with him. it was great though haha. i understood what he said and i could reply. it was great. so we have tried talking solo espanol twice now. and i am so bad! yo no hablo mucho cuando hablemos solo espanol. haha its great practice though.

I kind of dreamed in spanish!!!!! hahaha it was actually kind of crazy but it i dont think it really technically counts cause it was entirely in spanish. well most of it wasnt spanish. okay only one sentence was spanish. haha the line was "hago lo que quiero" which is supposed to mean " i do what i want" but i dont know if thats actually correct. elder JBQ(hes black and hes awesome) says i do what i want all the time and so elder ostergar translated it into spanish and now everyone says it in our district. so i guess it was said so much that it finally got into my sub-conscious and i dreamed about it. haha but hey! its spanish! 

any way we taught vicente and guillermo a lot this week. some lessons were good. some lessons were terrible others were okay and one was pretty good. im so glad elder bryson knows spanish! we are basically the only companionship where our spanish is like equal. all the others have a really bad spanish speaker and a pretty decent one. we arent good at speaking spanish, not really when it comes down to it but we get by okay. its great. i love elder bryson. ive gotten a little frustrated with the language cause i sometimes during lessons freeze up and forget easy words like we can, podemos, easy stuff that i use all the time and i probably had just used like thirty secs ago but i just couldnt think of it then. its kind of dumb and frustrating but oh well. ill keep working at it. studying prepararing better for lessons. 

oh okay, so for gym now, all elder thomas and i and elder bryson do is play cage soccer. where we are on a basketball court that has been turned into a soccer court and its freaking awesome cause we are in a cage and there are no out of bounds and you just go. but anyway like our first time playing in the cage court, there was a high ball and i was jumping to head it, but then this kid, elder graham, came up and like tried to head it to, and so we both went for it and our heads totally clashed. it was so bad! elder JBQ said he could here the crack from outside the court like it was ferocious. it was so bad! my head hurt and i was so dazed and i got a goose bump haha, but after like thirty seconds we started plahying again. it was great!

so i have been sick, like sore throat, coughing, and sneezing for like 5 days. its not that bad, but its kind of painful sometimes. its not as bad as elder beckstead though. he has been really sick since august 9 or soemthing. its been like 11 days, and he keeps throwin gup and he cant keep anything down. haha i actually gave him a blessing! first one! whoop whoop! it was so awesome! it was crazy! it was awesome to feel the spirit and to feel what he needed and stuff like that. it was awesome!

so my distict loves to sing. like LOVES to sing. its awesome, but at the same time super annoying! we sing for like 10-15 minutes some time! and most of the time we just seen nearer my god to thee. really slow. haha but its funny cause thats like the only hymn i can play on the piano. haha. and on sunday, i played the piano in priesthood meeting! yeah, i was pretty good, everyone was impressed with my skillz, no big deal. seriously though, i did way good. way better then i do in priesthood opening exercises at home. haha like exponentially better. and now my entire distrcit thinks im good at literally everythin gi do. basketball, soccer, piano, singing,(i dont know why, im a terrible singer) spanish, spiritaul stuff, scriptures, like serciously everything. its really annyoing. sunday was the best though! we had amazing devotionals! we watched elder hollands talk addressing the importance of missonaries being converted to teh gospel before they can help otehres become converted. he talked about peter and the 11 and how, after chirst died, they didnt know what to do so they went to fish, like they did before he called them. christ of course comes to find them and tells them to cast their nets on the right side after they had been fishing all night without any luck. and then their catch was so big that they coulnd pull it in. it was a miracle that their nets didnt break, let allone the catch. and immediately john said, "its him" and peter jumped overboard and swam to him. then christ proceeded to ask peter if he loved him. which peter responded of course he loved him, more than the fish and the boats and the nets. then christ asked him again and peter kind of said the same thing and then the third time,(the third time for peter is really sensitive to him right now because of the crow and everything) and this time peter said i love thee more than anything else. and christ said " feed my sheep". so what i learned from that was if we try to bring in people to the gospel on our own we will be very unsuccessful and it will be terrible work, but if we turn to the lord and heed his promptings, the work will be still hard but more profitable. "once you are called to the work, you are never released until the end" that really smacked me in the face, i need to work, work work.

it just made me want to go out into the field and just testify to everyone i meet that i know God lives. i know he loves us and he sent his son, jesucristo to atone for our sins. i know he lives, and it brings joy to my soul! i know that the gospel was restored through the profet joseph smith and that was truly a profest called and prepared by God. i know that this church is true, how can it not be? i know the book of mormon is another witness of jesucristo. i know that is it inpsired of God and written by ancient profets who lived here, in the americas. i now that thru cristo y su expiacion, we can recibir perdones por nuestros pecados. i know that thru the atonement we can receive peace, consuelo, y happiness. i love this gospel. i love this church. i know with every fiber of my being and in my heart thru the witness of the Holy Ghost that these things are true. and i can never deny them.

i love you all! thank you for your support and love! i miss you deeply and i pray for you daily! 

with love and undying affection

Elder Larson