Email of Aug. 16, 2009

Dear Mom and Dad,
How are you? I hope everything is going well. Things here are going pretty good. It has been nice to be back in Ft. Myers. Church went really smoothly even though President Lowman wasn't there. his two councilors did great without him there. It was kind of nice not to have to do too much at church. I thought I was going to have to speak but when I got to church I found out that they had found another speaker. All I had to do was translate which I don't mind doing anyways.
The work here in Providence B is going pretty good. We don't have too many investigators right now but the ones we have are awesome. We have two young men scheduled to be baptized on Saturday. They are: (capt) Kirk who is 14 and his older brother (William) Wallace who is 18. They are both really good kids and are excited to be baptized. We are also teaching their parents. They are some of the smartest people I've ever taught. The husband is named Amamy Sylla. He is actually from the Ivory Coast but he is married to a Haitian and speaks Kreyol along with French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and a few other languages. Him and his wife both really like the church and will probably get baptized eventually. Their cousin is also going to be baptized this Saturday. His name is Oscar and Elder Tremblay and I found him right before I left for Naples a few months ago. His grandma has also been coming to church and is being taught by the other missionaries. I was thinking back and I remembered how we first found all of those people. Elder Tremblay and I had just got done visiting a member and were starting to bike away, when we saw a kid playing basketball down the street. He looked Haitian and so we decided to go and talk to him. He was a pretty cool kid named Jean but his parents weren't too interested in him talking to us but we invited him to come play basketball at the church on Thursdays. He came, and through him we met Oscar and eventually all of those other people who we are now teaching. It's pretty cool to look back and see how such a small decision to go talk to the kid down the street turned into so much good.
Also this weekend there will be another person being baptized who I taught while I was here before. His name is Richard. It will be a sweet weekend. Also this past Saturday I was able to go down to Naples for Dashna and Gottfried's baptism. It went pretty well. There were quite a few people there, a lot of whom were biliganas from the English ward. But, it all went well.
It's been pretty cool working in a triple-ship. We've gone on splits almost every day which is one of our goals. Most of them so far have been with the youth and we have gone tracting. They have really enjoyed it surprisingly and we want to keep it going. We also are going to do a lot of splits with the older priesthood holders once we have more people to teach. But, everything here is going good. I had heard that there was a storm on the way. I heard it's name was Anne, but that's about all we've heard. Also, I'm a little sad that you got puppies. Not because I don't like puppies but just because I'm going to miss the puppy stage and they won't be as cut when I meet them. But oh well. By the way you have my approval on the name choices. I assume Loki is also a Norse god. i also wish that Ralph and Gerri were on my mission and that they could take pictures for me. I definitely don't take enough. I hope this e-mail finds you well and that everything is going good.
Love,
Elder Larson