Email of Dec. 29, 2008

Dear Family,
I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas! It was nice to talk to you for a little bit and see how things are going. I hope that the open house went well on Saturday. I wish I would've been there, but I was happy to be a different kind of party. Our branch had a Christmas/Haitian Independence Day (January 1st) party. We had loads of excellent Haitian food and sung a few Christmas hymns. We had a good turnout and a good time as well. This Thursday we should be visiting a lot of members for Premye Janvye. Haitians have a tradition on Independence Day: they all go around to all their friends’ houses and drink pumpkin soup to remember their war for independence from France. I hear that pumpkin soup is really good so I’m pretty excited. I heard some pretty exciting news yesterday during P.E.C. Our branch President got a call from a Bishop in Utah telling him that a Haitian from his ward was moving to Fort Myers. He is a recent convert but is a priesthood holder and a really good guy. That news was exciting enough, but then President Davies said that his name was Bishni. Bishni isn’t a common name but was the name of the Haitian who worked at the MTC cafeteria while I was there. He was also baptized while I was in the MTC so he fits the description. We should find out by the end of the week if it is the same Bishni. I can’t wait. The work here is progressing well. We are still working hard with Peter but we’re putting a bigger focus on the rest of his family. His little sister is now preparing to get baptized as well and we are going to try and get their Dad on board this week. I think I already told you about him, but he is the one who read to Alma 40 in about a week after we gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. His wife will be in Haiti for a couple weeks but hopefully when she comes back they can all start coming to church together. The biggest problem is that the parents aren’t married even though they’ve been together for at least nine years. That’s one thing that this branch could really use is just some complete families. We have a lot of part-member families that we are trying to piece together. We are going to start teaching the husband of Evelyne, who was recently baptized, but they are currently trying to avoid the INS so that complicates things a little. But all in all the work is going great and we have a lot of promising people that we’re working with. Once again, it was good to hear from you on Christmas, I hope everything is going well at home.
Love,
Elder Larson