MYSTERY MEAT

hello family and friends. wow. what a week. i know i say that everyweek but i mean it this week. haha. im gonna start out with funny moments and then we will get serious later on in the letter. hahah. so here are some experiences.

1. so early in the week we were riding in a bus to our area. and these buses are huge freaking school buses that they shove people intolike sardines. so somehow i find a seat by some lady who just went to the local butcher and decided to buy a whole huge plastice bag full of mysetery meat. so this lady hangs her plastic bag of mystery meat on the racks above our heads, and for 30 minutes straight i have to let this unknown meat juice just drip on my head and body. and i have no other option to just sit there and take it like a champ because i cant move anywhere. so anyways. i finally find a little to towel to wipe all the juice off me and off the bag over my head. and so i chuck this soaking wet meat juice  towell out the window and the towell flys out and then flys back in the bus and smacks a dude straight in his face. so i made sure to get off the next bus stop. haha

theres more but my comp wants to go play soccer. speaking of, i got a new comp. im now in a trio. his name is elder escalante. he seems cool. so thats good but anways one more thing. spiritual experience of the week.

so last night me and elder tezen were just walking around because one of our appointments fell through. and i had the impression that we need to go see this family that we hadnt talked to for a couple of weeks. and this family is just a mom and her 2 daughters and they arent members of the church. so right as we get to the house the mom comes outside in tears because her and her 17 year old daughter just got in a fight. so we tried our best to comfort the mom. and then we went inside and tried to comfort the daughter. then we came back outside to talk to the mom again. and for anybody who knows me and my dear mothers relationship knows that were both hot heads and we fight alot about the clenliness of my room. and that wasnt this ladys exact problem but i could relate to the problems her and her daughter were having so well. so i just started talking. and somhow the words that came out of my mouth made sense and were actually in spanish. and i could see as i was talking that this ladies heart really changed.... like a real change. and she understood me. and she understood her daughter. and she felt peace. and now she wants to continue in taking lessons with us!

so the lord works miracles. i know that this might seem insignificant but it was a miracle that i could just talk with this lady and truly change her heart. and she wants to come closer to her savior because of what me and my comp said. so that is enough of a miracle for me.

my new comp wants to play soccer. so i got to go.

much love from hondo town

elder larsen

Pictures

Picture 1:  Ghetto weights made out of rusted cans filled with cement and a bar

Picture 2:  He and his companion

Picture 3:  I showered in this this week "pila" because toilet is clogged in bathroom and it stinks pretty bad

Picture 4:  Spider we found and killed in our apartment - welcome to Honduras!

Adventures of Matt Larsen...

wowzers friends and family... what a week. 

this week has been alot better for me personally. so thank you for all your prayers. ive had quite a few adventures this week. they include:

1.yesterday a dog ran into our church building in the middle of sacrament meeting. that was pretty awkward. this dog almost killed me when i kicked it to try to get it out.

2.also in sacrament meeting i was trying to be super spiritual and get all i could out of the talks. and this lady sitting next to me taps on my shoulder and points down at her baby child. this lady is breast feeding and decided it was important that i see the funny face her kid was making while she breast fed it. gotta love it.

3. in the middle of a lesson on thursday i saw a drunk guy walking down the road yelling and singing to the world and eating a log of a cut down tree that he found on the ground.

theres a couple other good ones but ill save those till i get home. haha. oh i went to the city near our town ( el progresso) and had little ceasars pizza this week!! i was about to cry the whole time i was so happy. 

but anyways. its been alot better week. ive really felt the spirit a ton and seen the lord working in my life. the lord has put people in my way everyday that need to hear of the gospel. our investigators are doing great. we should be having a baptisim this week for this kid named naum. hes 17 and hes a stud. all his friends try to make him do bad stuff but hes on the lords team and doesnt stand for any of that crap. haha. hes the man. so pray for that. i hope that everyone is doing great. thank you all so much for the support. cant wait to hear from you all next week.

with love from the jungles of hondo, elder larsen

Les' Gooooo!!!!

friends and family, hello to all.

just reporting my experiences from this week from deep in the jungle of honduras.

im finally starting to get into the swing of things. everyday gets better and better. definetly wasnt an easy week but was definetly better then last week. the language is all coming along better. still cant really understand anything but i can somewhat know what someone is talking about. alll of our investigators are doing pretty good. a couple of them came to church on sunday so thats good to see them progress. and we have a couple with baptisimal dates. so thats exciting. its crazy how diffrent the members are here. we were talking to a member and she said that she was inviting her friends to go to other churches just as long as they go to church. so that was fun, explaining that you need to go to your own church and you need to invite your friends to YOUR church. not other ones. hahaha

then we found a guy who wanted to talk to us because he knew i spoke english and he really wanted to practice his english. so i let him babble to me for a good hour about his stories of getting deported from the states. so that was also fun. hahah

not much going on this week. just continuing to get ajusted.i bear my testimony this week of the power of prayer. and how it can really change lives. how its changed my life. i couldnt be here without the power of prayer and how much comfort its brought me. so keep praying everybody. its good for you. 

dont have to much fun this week. always remember jesus

much love,elder larsen

From the Jail to the Jungle

this place never ceases to amaze me. holy cow. im still in shock of whats been happening the past couple of days...wow, anyways. ill keep it light. i dont want to make this my journal and spill all my deep thoughts. haha. but yeah. this was the hardest, weirdest, most diffrent week of my life. ive gotten to know my companion and everything. he is really cool. hes from guatamala. this is going to be his last area before he goes home so were in exact opposite shoes, this being my first area. im in a place called guacamaya in the city of la sarrosa. its pretty much a village. theres almost just as much dogs and pigs in the roads as there is people. we dont have running water for the most part in my house. so either you go fill up a bucket of water outside and take it in the shower and just dump it on yourself. or you go outside to this thing called a "pila" which is pretty much a huge cement tub and you just stand outside and dump water on yourself until you "clean". the members here are pretty cool. they all love the church because it is really all they have. so pretty much this week me and my comp have just been exploring our area. its freaking wild. yesterday i saw a dead guy that turned out to just be extremly drunk laying in the middle of the road. and then i saw to birds eating a dog right afterward so that was pretty fun. we have these 2 investigators that we also found a couple of days ago that are really going well. one just kind of listens to us because her sister wants her to but the other seems like she is actually really intrested. i invited them to be baptized and the one said she wanted to. so thats really good. we also meet this guy named pablo i think? we invited him to come watch confrence in the church and he did so that was good. and thats pretty much the highlights of my week. a really hard and diffrent thing to get ajusted to but i know that it will all come.

i hope everyone is doing great back at home. i keep you guys all in my prayers.

much love

elder larsen

WOWZERS!

hello friends and family,

today is my second day in the murder capitol of the world and im still going. so im just gonna let you all know what ive been up too these past 48 hours. which might be the most eye opening and weirdest 2 days of my entire life. so anyways. tuesday we woke up at 2 in the morning to leave mexico. it was actually really sad saying goodbye to my favorite prison. im gonna miss that place a ton. we all got carted to the airport where they split us all up. it was really tough. i had to say goodbye to my whole district which was extremely hard. all of them are going to the states so they all  said goodbye to me like i was going to die.

so i flew to el salvador. which is like the hottest place on the planet. gave away a little church card there to the worker at subway.

then we flew to san pedro from there. which makes el salvador feel like a refrigerator. this place is the hottest jungle on the face of the planet. holy crap. there is not one second that ive been here that i havent been sweating. so we got here later in the afternoon and we me the mission president. hes the man. i wish i could just keep him in my pocket for whenever i need motivational advice. so  i had meetings all night about mission stuff. then some member in the area wanted to have all 22 new missinaries over at there house. so we went over to this little concrete house thing and hung out with a family. the whole time i just watched this dog who has no joints in its back legs slide across the house in the splits. and then the members daughters decided they wanted to dance for the missionaries. so that went on for a couple of hours. the entire time i was thinking to myself. "this is what being on drugs probably feels like..." hahaha. so after we all went over to this house where we were gonna sleep. and by this time we picked up a couple more missionaries so there were 30 or more missionaries crammed in this little house. it was wild to say the least. i used my suit jacket as a blanket. then today we woke up and had a few meetings. then i got assigned my companion and an area. my comps name is elder tezen. hes the man. hes guatamalen. he knows english pretty well so he understands me when i give up on spanish. im in an area called sarosa. its this little village south of san pedro sula. i just got here like an hour ago so i couldnt really tell you to much about the place.  other than that the internet cafe im in right now is a room in some dudes house. oh and on the way here i saw the most massive pig on the planet hanging out outside of our house. but thats all i really have seen in my area so far. somehow through all this im still going strong. i kind of just came to the realization that everything is going to be alright. the lord is going to pull my through all of this. i just have to endure and have faith and he will do the rest.

my p day is monday so everybody write me so i have something to look forward too!

love you all thannks so much for the support.

until next time

elder larsen