Dear Mom and Dad,
Can you believe it is November already? It's crazy. This morning it was really foggy and overcast. I love that kind of weather. I'm really excited for the winter time to come. I wish we could get five inches of snow, but I'm sure there's lots of people that wish they had our weather. Our Halloween was pretty uneventful. We went to the Spanish ward's party. Also, President Lowman went trick or treating by proxy for us. We got a pretty good haul.
The work is going pretty good right now. We had a hard time seeing some of our investigators this week for different reasons, but we found a few more people who I think can progress. Sylla and Carmel are scheduled to be baptized this weekend. Last we talked to Sylla, it had been 2 days since he had smoked a cigarette. It has been really hard for him but he is doing well. One of his biggest concerns is that some of the Haitian members will be offended or have their testimonies weakened because he is a freemason, and Haitians have a lot of poor views of the masons. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal until yesterday in PEC when the two counselors in the branch presidency started talking about it. They were going on about how masons, I was surprised that even they would be so against it. Also, President Lowman doesn't want him to be baptized until he has read the whole Book of Mormon. It's all a big mess. So, the baptism may not happen this weekend, we'll have to wait and see. We are going to see them tonight and we'll see how the smoking and reading is going.
It sounds like everything is going well. I hope that work is going well and all the family is doing good. What are everyone's plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas? Our Thanksgiving should be awesome, we are going to play in the turkey bowl in the morning, then we get to watch a movie (probably Remember the Titans), then hopefully Elder Tremblay's grandma (who has a winter home in Naples) will be able to make us a turkey. As for Christmas gifts, I think I'm fine on most of my clothes, Scott sent me some socks not too long ago and I inherited some of Elder Jones' old pants. But, let's see, gift cards are nice. Maybe some peanut brittle or Carmel, something like that. Maybe some egg nog. Pretty much anything food related is good. I really like pictures. Some new music would also be nice. That's about all that I can think of. You don't need to get anything big, you can just save it up for my birthday. :)
I am so grateful to hear from you, I hope that everything is going great!
Love,
Elder Larson