E-mail of Aug. 18, 2008

Dear Family,
Congratulations Edward! That's sweet! I'll be waiting for the announcement in the mail!
I can't even imagine how hard it must be for that ward and for Greg. (Greg is missionary who lost his dad in the plane crash.) I'm sure those funerals were well attended. By the way, I got a call from Pres. Colton Monday night to make sure I knew what had happened. He told me that you had called and wanted to make sure I was doing alright. Thanks for your concern. It sounds like the choir is going pretty good. I didn't know coach Eldredge was on the high council. That's pretty cool. When is the high school's first game? There is a kid in our branch who plays for the high school here. I was talking with him all about their two-a-days and such. It definitely took me back. It sounds like you're reading some good books. How's your scripture study? I just started over the Book of Mormon. President challenged us to finish it by December Zone Conference so I stopped in the middle of Helaman and started over. I'm marking it a special way this time. I have four different colors: one for each reference to the Savior, one for each of his attributes, one for the doctrines and principles related to the Atonement and one for all of his words. I think I may have a lot of time to get ahead while I'm in lock-down. I'm also almost finished with Jesus the Christ.That's exciting that school is starting. I don't really get why they start in the middle of the week though. School just started today here. All of the kids at church were complaining. I thought it was pretty funny. They only have to go for one day and then they get at least a day off for the hurricane.Fay is on it's way! It's pretty exciting. Dad, don't worry I won't do anything dumb. From the little we've heard it was still a tropical storm but that may have just been because it was over Cuba at that time. We're just on standby right now until we get a call to know what we're doing. If it's a tropical storm or a category 1 we'll just go into lock-down in our apartments. But if it's category 2 or higher we'll go to the Lehigh chapel (which I guess is the only one in the state that's above sea level) and wait it out. After that we'll help clean up. Lately we've just been trying to warn everybody to get prepared because most Haitians don't really know about it.The work is going pretty good. As far as numbers go this week was a little slow but that can be deceiving. At zone conference on Wednesday President Colton talked about teaching more lessons. So this week we've gotten the all-time low for contacts, but that could also mean that we've been the most obedient to Pres. Colton because we also did really good with our teaching.We have one investigator (Fernand) who has a baptismal date for Sat. But that is most likely not going to pan out because he is only 14 so his dad has to sign a paper before he can get baptized and his dad just happened to go to Haiti for a couple weeks. I don't understand how all of these illegal Haitians can just get in and out of the country so easily. Fernand's two older brothers (Jimmy and Mesi) seem to have a little interest but they work so much that it's hard to meet with them. We have one other investigator with a baptismal date. Her name is Mary and she is 63. She has been looking really positive until yesterday when she didn't come to church. We have a few others who have accepted a "soft" baptismal commit but haven't accepted a date yet. Gertrude came to church yesterday with her 14 year old son. We also had a guy named Brinet at church, but I'm pretty sure he only came because he has a crush on a member in the branch. He is really stuck on the fact that you can't make choices after you die and so you can't repent or be baptized. He also doesn't understand the reason why a person would need to be baptized again. With him its been easy to see how much the spirit teaches and how much we teach. Because when we teach him the spirit isn't very strong and you can tell. Even though we teach really well, he just doesn't understand.Yesterday in church Elder Welch and I spoke. It went pretty well. Afterwards a member can and told us that we must have done well because nobody laughed. My Kreyol is coming along I guess. I just can't wait until I get sent to Naples and get to learn ASL to talk to a member down there who is deaf. I'm very excited to do that. I think that everything is going well, It was nice to hear from you. Don't worry about the hurricane . We are well taken care of. I'm going to be able to e-mail you once we get the all clear to tell you that I'm ok.
Love,
Elder Larson