Email of June 1, 2009

Dear Family,
Wow, it sounds like life is keeping things interesting. I guess it's always good to be busy and have something to keep you on your feet. Yesterday in church we talked a lot about trials and tribulation and why we have those kinds of things. Our high councilor gave a good talk about it in Sacrament meeting and then we discussed it more in Sunday school as well. I know that the challenges that we have can be a blessing for us. But only if we let them. Whenever we have a trial we have two choices: we can let it overcome us or we can learn from it and grow. I'm grateful for the few challenges that I've had in my life and the things that I've been able to learn from them.
Things here are going pretty well. This week I was looking back a little at the past year and how it has gone by so quickly. I keep meeting more and more missionaries who have been out for less time than me. The three new Haitian missionaries should be going into the MTC in about a week. The work here is going pretty well. Elder Tremblay and myself are excited about all of the good people that we are working with. We have a pretty full teaching pool and they are all pretty positive. We are still struggling to get rides for some of the people who live so far away. We are still working with the Joseph family. They are doing pretty good. The mom isn't too positive but the dad loves the Book of Mormon and also loves dropping his kids off at church and not staying himself. But we're working with him. One of the other more positive investigators is a 16 year old kid named Jean. He is really good at keeping his commitments, especially reading the Book of Mormon. The one thing holding him back is the ride situation. Raynald also has a date to be baptized on the 13th. He is also being held back by the lack of a ride. We are also trying to focus a lot on member work. At our last zone and district meeting Elder Hall gave a training on that subject and he talked about the way that we can double baptisms like President Hinckley asked us to do a few years ago, and as President Colton has asked us to do as well. He said it isn't so much that we need to double our efforts but that the missionaries and the members need to learn to work better together and then we will be able to find more success. We are really going to work better with our members. They need a lot of strengthening and direction. We also want to work a lot with our less-actives. Our branch has a lot of those. We have a lot of work that needs to be done. But I'm grateful for the opportunity. Things here are going quite well. Thanks for your e-mail, I love hearing from you. I can't wait until next week.

Love,
Elder Larson