Email of Jan. 17, 2009

Dear Family,
Surprise! My e-mail is a little early this week. President Colton called us this morning and told us to e-mail today because Monday is a holiday and Tuesday is transfer day. President Colton also informed us that my companion Elder Valentine is going to be serving as our new Zone Leader along with our distrist Leader Elder Hofer. That means that the four of us Haitian missionaries in Fort Myers will just be doing a little switch. I will be moving to the other area to work with Elder Tremblay and Elder Hofer will be taking over my spot. I'm really excited to work with Elder Tremblay, and it'll be nice to have a little bit of a change of scenery even though I'll still be working with the same branch. Elder Tremblay is a really good missionary, he has been out for two months longer than me. He is Canadian but has spent most of his life living in St. George. We are going to have alot of fun. We are going to be getting a new apartment sometime soon too so that should be good. It will be the same apartment that the sister missionaries are living in so we know it's nice. That also means that I will be in the area where Bishni lives so I will finally be able to go visit him. It is pretty different for us to have Haitians serving as zone leaders, it's been about three years since that happened. I am pretty excited for those guys. Also, Elder Hall, my old companion, will be our new district leader. This week we have had some really good experiences. I feel like we are starting to find new people. We did a tour of the church last night with a man named Emmanuel. He has been coming to English class for a while and when we asked him to come on a tour he sounded pretty excited. He is pretty active in his church, although it's in English and he doesn't speak very well (He told he likes that church because it helps him learn the language.) When we gave him the tour, he was very interested and understood all of our points. We had a member with us the whole time who was supposed to help us but for most of the time was just a hindrance. But when we told the Joseph Smith story they were all listening very closely and the Spirit was very strong. It was really good until after when our member brought up some strange topics. It's going to be a little hard to leave this area now that the work has just started picking up, but I'm excited to start working in a new area as well. That area has been having similar problems. They have been teaching a lot of the same people for a while. It will be nice to start finding in some new aces and to talk to some new faces. I hope everything is going great at home, sorry I didn't have any warning that I would be doing e-mail early. I guess you'll just have to write me a letter. Speaking of which, I got that package. Thank you so much for the backpack and the candy canes!
Love,
Elder Larson