Wild Week/transfers

Kia ora whanau!! How are you guys doing? Feel free to send me an email, I love hearing from you guys. I hope you guys had an amazing week. This week was pretty awesome and also pretty hectic. A lot of crazy stuff happened this week. So this might be a long email but I hope it's at least interesting.

Highlight of the week was a lesson we had with our friend Sam. She is so awesome. She has such a cool story too. She started meeting with us right when I got to New Zealand and she has progressed a lot. She grew up in a member family but the family went inactive forever ago so she just stopped going to church. She wanted to get baptized when she was young but the baptism fell through because the missionaries back then forgot or something. I don't know how that happens but it did. After that her family went inactive and she never got baptized sadly. But, a couple of weeks ago we showed up to their door and that's how we found her. We wanted to ask if she would be baptized this week because she's been reading the BOM, coming to church, and also partaking of the sacrament. So, we had a big lesson planned with her on Wednesday. We began the lesson by just chatting. We always chat forever with her haha. But, we finally got into the lesson. This was the most spiritual lesson I've ever been a part of. She told us her whole life story and some things that happened to her when she was young. I just sat there in awe of how strong the spirit was. She started to cry, and then we all started to cry. Never have I ever known so strongly that this church is true and that God is our loving heavenly father. Tears were just streaming down my face and I didn't care. At the end of it all I was choking up trying to bear my testimony. Then, while we were still crying, we asked her if she would like to be baptized. She said yes! I will never ever forget how I felt during that lesson. That moment holds a special place in my heart. I'm so glad to see her making steps on the covenant path.

Sorry that was a long one. We had such a good week of mission work. On Thursday we went on exchanges with the ZLs. So, me and Elder Whitaker stayed in Summer Hill with Elder Komene. Elder Komene is such a stud. Love that guy. This was his last week on the mish so we were blessed to be his very last exchange. Man I learned so much from that guy. We made some good goals and my goal was to talk to everybody we saw. So, when we went out to work I was chasing everybody down. I felt like Elder Calhoun in the Best 2 years. I was just running at people and trying to teach them. It definitely worked tho, because we found 8 people that day. So fun. I learned so much from that exchange. I also learned that Im an idiot on a bike lol. I biffed on a main road right in front of everybody. But, we used the scrapes as an excuse to ask a lady for a first aid kit. We then taught her so that was cool. We just said goodbye to Elder Komene this morning which was really sad. This exchange helped us start off the week because we found 18 total people this week. God has been blessing us with miracles. My grandparents sent me an email talking about how we should expect miracles which I loved. I second what they said. When we expect miracles, we will see miracles in our lives. So, EXPECT MIRACLES!

We had some pretty funny experiences and also some very not fun experiences tho. We were stopping by some referrals one night, and we went and knocked on one of the doors and this guy came out pissed at us for knocking on the door. He threatened to call the cops. So we politely left and just walked away. Then, literally not more than 10 minutes later we got another threat. We were knocking another referrals door, and the neighbor came over to the fence and said "what are you guys doing". We explained that we were missionaries and we were visiting a person named Kate. He said there's not Kate here. We said ya there is, we'll just go knock and see. So, we knocked and Kate wasn't home but the family said a Kate did live there. So, we walked back to our bikes, and the guys says "I told you so". We told him that they said a Kate lived there. Then he said "F off". He then went on to threaten us by saying "you ever hear about those missionaries that were slaughtered on an island, just like you boys". I was fuming, I was legit about to knock this guy right in the face. But, I just said "sir, we only mean good and we do nothing wrong" then we just walked away. That ruined my night honestly. Another interesting experience we had this week was on exchanges. We were just walking in the street and this lady waves us down, so we go over there. The lady says "alright now tell me how your going to make my life better". This caught us off guard but we went up to talk to her anyways. We walked up to her and saw a couple of drinks next to her. Elder Komene then says "you been drinking some apple juice". We have started cracking up. She was so drunk, so we just sat on her porch and had a laugh. Then, she kinda started to argue with us. I said "Tina how many drinks have you had tonight, one too many?", then she said "one not enough". She then told us we could call her Grandma Tina so that's awesome. So we started laughing and then just got up and left.

Also, halfway through the week, Elder Hansen got hit by a car on his bike again. It was the exact same situation as last time. Just a car backing up not paying attention. But this one was a little harder. He rolled off the back of the car. He was fine. But his bike was not sadly. So, we had to walk the rest of the week. Never thought I'd say that bikes are a blessing. But they definitely are.

Alright, Transfer news! This transfer is going to be quite interesting. We got a call on Saturday from the APs saying that I am going to be a district leader and a trainer. I'm also moving to an area called Levin which is just 30 minutes south west from Summer Hill. So, I've been stressing out a ton this week. It's going to be a roller coaster. I'll just have to figure it out as I go though.

We also had some really good food this week. On Saturday we ate with the Malu family for dinner. They are Samoan. Man that was the biggest dinner I've ever had. They made 5 huge trays full of entrees. There was chicken legs, porkchops, enchiladas, cheesy potatoes, salad, and more. That was all just for us. I asked for 1 enchilada and Brother Malu said "lua" which means 2. He just kept feeding us. Then when we said we were done, he just laughed and said eat more. My stomach was legit cramping lol. Then, right after that dinner we had a lesson with our friend Dallas and he made us some Boil up. Which is a Maori dish. It's basically cabbage, dough boys, and brisket in a soup kind of deal. It was pretty but I was already as full as I could get. So, I somehow managed to finish it.

Spiritual thought for the week: expect miracles!!

Also, in case you were worried about the flooding in NZ. It rained a bunch but it only flooded in Auckland and other coastal cities around the island. So I'm all good!

Sorry if this email was long and boring. A lot happened this week so I had to talk about it all. Anyways, I hope you all have an amazing day and remember that God loves you!

Ka Kite, Arohanuo Elder Larson