I Want for Every Young Man to Serve a Mission

Hey! This week has been another good one! We set another baptismal date with a kid from Romania. He is really great and we are excited for him to see the blessings of the restored gospel in his life! He is very excited about baptism and can't stop asking questions about it. Other than that we have just continued to teach our investigators and overall it has been a pretty average week. Although I did get my first interview with President Kelly! He is so great! He invited us to come to the villa to do the interview because he didn't have time to get us at zone conference and since we live pretty close we just took the bus to the villa for a great interview and then some amazing tomato soup and gelato! So those are probably the highlights of the week. I can't believe that our transfer calls are coming in next week! This transfer feels like it just started! So we will see what happens on Saturday! Oh yeah I forgot to ask you if you heard about the riots the week before this one. It was pretty crazy we could hear alot of crazy stuff happening and we weren't allowed to go in the center of Roma. I guess people were lighting the carbinieri cars on fire and things got pretty out of hand. Italians are very lively and sometimes don't have very much patience. Last week after zone conference we did scambi and I went to Ostia with Anziano Larcher! It is really pretty there and the people are very nice! Then we got to go over to the house of the Sorelle and help them clean up their basement that flooded because of a big rainstorm that came through the night before. Later that night we went to an investigators house from the Philipines and they cooked us some really good Philipino cibo! I would call it an overall good successful scambi! !Thank you for your tesimony! I am so greatful to be able to serve a mission! It has been the Best, Worst, Happiest, Saddest, Funnest, Boringest thing I have ever done in my life but I have never felt the Saviors love for me stronger and carrying me through these hard times. I have felt through those hard times even a stronger desire that others come unto Christ and I want for every young man to serve a mission. It is a blessing commanded by God! How great is our Heavenly Father that he would command us to recieve blessings! I love this Church and am so grateful that I have had the opportunity to serve in a country that has so much of the gospel of Jesus Christ in it, But you can just tell there are things missing. The Spirit isn't the same in those big cathedrals. There is a huge difference between a huge nice building that makes you feel good inside and a temple that has been set apart as the house of the Lord and always has the Spirit present! I am so greatful for all of the things I have seen and learned here! I am glad to hear about all the fun Halloween and Birthday parties that are happening back home! Hope everything is going good with everyone! How is all the planning going for the wedding? What day are they planning on? Anyway I think that this week we are going to take it easy and just walk through Rome a bit. I hope that you all have a great week! Thank you so much for everything and love you tons!!!  You're always in my prayers. Vi voglio bene!!

Lunch with Americans

Hey! I'm sad to hear that the pictures were stolen! Luckily I haven't deleted any of them yet! But the other missionaries do the same thing as me and send them home in a envelope but alot of them buy a hard drive out here, for like 40 euro and it has space to save all of your pictures through out your whole mission so maybe I should buy one of those. If you put a little of that money on my card I could buy one but whatever you think is best. I hope that I can get them to you some how. Maybe I will just have to put pictures of Jesus and Mary on the next one and they wont touch it. I'm glad to here that your talk went good! We have such a great ward! I love all the members back home! I'm glad to hear you heard from that family! They were so nice! We were talking to this guy from Russia and they walked buy and said "Hey Elders!", and then we finished and it was time for lunch so we ran across the street and talked to them and they were so kind they bought us suppli and gelato! They were really fun to talk to and hang out with for a bit! The work this week has been nice and things are starting to pick up a bit so we are teaching more and doing less finding. I hope that It continues to pick up. The ward is still great here! They are always inviting us over for dinner! Oh yeah last Saturday the bishop called us and asked if we could give a ten minute talk in sacrament meeting about The Book of Mormon the next day. That was terrifying but I survived and deliverd my first church talk in Italian with out passing out! So things here are going good! That is cool that the Dornys are coming out! They are such a nice family! Thanks for all that you do and I hope we can find a better way to get pictures back and forth without having some one steal them! LoVe YoU tOnS CiAo!!!

Letter from Members Vacationing in Rome

We received this letter yesterday from some members who were visiting Rome.  We were so grateful that they took not only the time to take Caleb and his companion to lunch but also that they would send such a sweet message to us.  It made me cry (happy tears) when we read it!!!!

Dear Brother and Sister Larsen,

My family was travelling through Italy last week and made a stop in Rome.  While walking on the Piazza, we stumbled across your son with his companion, Elder Wright.  We were excited to see missionaries and spent time with them for lunch and later gelato.  We were able to meet the sister missionaries as well.  Your son was very thoughtful as he had invited the sisters for gelato because it was one of their birthdays.  Your son is a great missionary and works hard.  We had some good conversations about the work in Italy and it rolls along with the help of these fine boys.  Our oldest son just returned from Barranquilla, Colombia and our second currently serves in Asuncion, Paraguay, so our family loves seeing missionaries.  My wife and I just wanted to say that we enjoyed meeting your son and from the looks of his shoes, he is working hard.  You should be very proud of him

Sincerely,

Brother David J. Barazoto

Gilbert, Arizona Val Vista Stake

Lot's of Finding

Ciao!! How is everything going back at home? Things are good here! It's starting to get colder so it's been kind of a nice change. We also lost some investigators :( One is moving back to Romania and another one won't answer her phone after we gave her the baptismal invite, and then a bunch of them are just really busy with work and can't meet with us for awhile... So this week we have just been doing finding. It is so much fun but very tiring and hard. Romans are great but it is really hard to get them to stop and talk to you. So we have been trying lots of different approaches and questions but the silver bullet just doesn't exist. We did get a few new investigators from talking to them on the bus so we are hoping things will turn out good with them. Other than that things have been great. The ward is still great and very nice. Next week in church we are going to try to get 20 referalls from the members. We are hoping that the ward will be our way out of all this finding. It's good to hear about all the catching up on friends stuff. I met the Anziano going to Milan in the mtc that is from Edwin and Karens ward. He is really nice! The pizza here is great, but they say it's the best in Napoli. We have this pastry shop below our church and it is so good! The sell cornetti for 50 cents and they are filled with chocolate and they are amazing! Wow Dad that's awesome! Keep up the good work! As hard as I try, I can't seem to put on weight! But I guess Italians eat heavier in the winter so hopefully I can too! Anyways thanks for all you guys do! I love you tons!! Did you guys get the pictures I sent?! Hope you did! CIAO!!!

Picking Grapes in the Vineyard

Ciao!! This week has been great!! Conference was great and there were so many good talks! I really liked the talk given by Elder Eyring as well. It is sometimes hard for me to decide to continue talking to everyone on the bus and on the metro after a whole day of talking to everyone you walk past on the street and avoid the pressing thoughts of justifing not doing it because of your efforts throughout the day, but it is just better to push through the justification and know that there is someone on the bus or metro that is going to give a listening ear to this great message. At first it was really hard, seeing that everyone stares at you and some people laugh, but Hey I only have two years of my life to have fun experiences like this. It is always just better to stand up for what you believe in and share it with everyone. We have been doing a lot of finding and have found a lot of great people! Every day has been really great but yesterday was probably one of the best! We got to go over to a families house with the Sorrelle and teach there daughter, who is getting ready for baptism, and eat with them! Then we got to make wine! haha It was pretty cool! Who would ever guess that I would do that on my mission! We spent almost all day picking the grapes in the vineyard which were Delicious! Then we hauled them back to the house put them in big buckets and had to throw them into a bunch of crazy, wine making machines and the wine was ready to be bottled and aged or whatever you do with wine. But it was so much fun and we took a lot of pictures so I will try to send those off today. This ward is so great and they are really good at working together with us and helping us with everything. They are really great! Last preparation day we went around and saw a lot of the old churches in Rome. Some were up to a hundred years after Christs death. It is great stuff to see and you can see that simple doctrines have been lost in the changing of time. Today we are going to a cool place called Tivoli where there are lots of cool fountains and other things I guess. Well I better run so I can hurry and download the pictures on to the USB drive! Love you tons!!!

This New Area Is Great!

Hey! It's totally fine that you got this off late cause we did email later today anyway! How is everything at home going? Sounds like you are busy busy! Is there anything I can do for you? There is only one Mom That I know that could do all that, and it is Mia Madre! It sounds like just craziness with all of that and the wedding planning and what not! Good thing I'm not there cause I'm sure I would just be another person in the way! I love the mission anyway, This new area is great! It is still in the Rome Zone! So we are only a 15 minute ride on the metro away from the coloseum and all that fun stuff! Our district is great and it is a small one. It's Anziano Wright from Alpine Utah, Sorella Pearson from Northern California and Sorella Camp from Southern California and they are all great! I really like our district! I love the people we are teaching so much.  There are some really great investigators and I love the ward too!! I have already eaten at two members houses! It's sometimes hard eating at members houses. They give you the best food but just way too much of it and you feel like you are going to explode because they will get offended if you don't eat it all. Haha they always say," ANZIANO Do  you not like the food?" and you try to explain that there just isn't any room in your stomach to eat it but it is delicious! And for some strange reason they don't care and want you to eat it all! Haha But it is so good! I love it! One of the houses we ate at was the house of a recent convert and his family aren't members so we are working with them. But he has a really cool conversion story! His friend is a Jehovah Witness and he came across missionaries and wanted to read The Book of Mormon but couldn't because in their church you can't read any religous books that are not of their church.  He gave it to his friend to see what he thought of it. So his friend started to read it and got a huge testimony of the Church and started meeting with the missionaries and a month later was baptized! He is such a great member and his family is really great to and I can't wait to teach them more! It is really great here I really love it! Oh yeah our new apartment is cool inside! Haha it looks like an old grandmas apartment and there are tons of old photos on the wall haha it's pretty funny! I'll have to send pictures soon. I have played soccer but only like twice I wish I could play more. Like 4 preparation days back, we played volleyball with a bunch of missionaries in our zone and that was a lot of fun! Anyways I better run! Love you tons!! CIAO!!

Transfer News is In



Transfer news is in! I will be serving with Anziano Wright this transfer in the Rome 3 area!! Rome 3 is the southern part of Rome but still in the big city so I won't be moving very far but I am very excited to serve in this area with Anziano  Wright! He has been out for a little over a year, so I will be able to learn the language better. I was talking to Anziano Wright today and he said that the ward in Rome 3 is great so I'll be looking forward to that! This week was Great! Lodi got baptized! She asked Anziano Shipton to baptize her and she asked me to do the confirmation. So everything went good with that until I told her that I was getting transferred. Haha Then she chewed me out and said that I can't leave her cause she hasn't learned everything yet and was pretty upset but we explained that I would be able to come teach her again this transfer and she understood that it wasn't my choice to go. So yesterday we went to teach her and she got me 2 ties and some t-shirts as a parting gift. She is too nice! This week we got a sweet referral from the church about this Italian guy that wanted a copy of a movie about finding happiness and we met with him and he is a great investigator and seems very interested in the church. He asked really good questions and was wondering the other day why no churches (other than our church) practice baptisms for the dead, when it talks about it in the Bible. We are really excited and think things will turn out well with him. So other than that we have just been teaching lessons and getting ready for English class which starts tonight. Last week we went to the Sistine chapel! It was incredible!! And yes I did take lots of pictures. Preparation day in Rome is so much fun and there are so many things to see but today we just decided to take it easy and pack things and get ready for me to leave tomorrow. But I have managed to see the vatican, colosseo, trevi fountain, spanish steps, the pantheon, and the sistine chapel. I think one week we are going to rent bikes and go biking through Rome which would be pretty fun. I also have a lot of photos that I could send if you want them now. Just let me know when and I'll send them. Vi Voglio Bene!! Ciao!