Staying another one in Rome 3

It seems like 2 weeks ago I emailed you about transfers and they are already here again! I am staying another one in Rome 3! Haha who would have guessed?! I thought I was a goner for sure, but I'm really excited to stay another one! I am the district leader again and they are combining the district of Rome 3 and Rome 2, so we will have the 2 assistants, 2 Anziani from Rome 2, 2 Sorelle from Rome 2, 2 Sorelle from Rome 3 and Anziano Bunker and I. So it will be a lot of fun having a bigger district! The Sorelle in our district will be Sorella Stebar and Sorella Turley. Sorella Laws is finished with the mission and Sorella Camp is going to Bari. So that's transfer news! That is great that you went to dinner with Anziano Bunkers family! They are really nice, even though I only talked to them for a few seconds on skype! That is crazy all of the new stuff that is going on. I can't believe how fast things change! We had a new family move into our ward! The Dad is Italian and the Mom is American and they were living in Taylorsville but they moved here to work for the Church and stuff. They have 5 kids and they are all really young and they are great! They totally remind me of our family. They had us over for lunch after church and cooked us a great meal and had a good talk about the mission and the Dad gave us some great advice about jumping into institute right after the mission. They are awesome and we are really happy to have them in the Ward here. Wow I can't believe Steven got his call! Tell him congrats for me. He will be a great missionary. This week should go really good! We are looking forward to seeing a guy that came to church with his girlfriend, who is a member, he seems really interested and we feel good about him. We also got a referral from Rome 1 and this guy seems really interested as well! So we have some good leads and are excited to teach them this week. Why is Tayler looking for a job for those days of the week. I hope she finds one! When are they planning on starting the house? How are Miguel and Mimi doing? I sure miss them. The other day I was looking at the letters sent me. Which reminds me, I hope the grandparents got the letters I sent. Please let me know if they made it because I am not always sure if the mail system here is very reliable. Thanks for writing! Love you Tons!!! CIAO! Tanti Auguri a Te! Tanti Auguri a Te! Tanti Auguri Dad! Tanti Auguri A Te!!!  Buon Complianno! Happy Birthday Dad! I hope you Have a wonderful Birthday week! I love you tons and am so greatful I have the best Dad in the world!! I miss you so much and wish that I was there to give you a big hug! I hope that someone will give you a big hug in my behalf! This week I have been studying the Atonement and how Important it is! Tad R. Callister talks in that book about how returning to our Father in Heaven will be such a great reunion. I can't wait until the day comes when I get home and can give you a big hug! But I know this is the right thing to be doing at this time in my life! Thank you for all of the great things you have taught me in my life, even when I have been a bit of a punk and didn't know what was best for me! Thank you! I hope that you know that you are always in my prayers and I'm always telling everyone how awesome my Dad is, and showing pictures of us hiking angels landing together! I hope when I get back we can go to moab or st. george and go hiking again. It is something that I miss a ton! Love you and I hope that you know that even though I am far away I always feel close to you and the family! Love you!!! That is great to hear that you are giving a talk! You will do great! You are a really good speaker! I'm still terrified of speaking but doing it in Italian is really fun because I love the language and how it flows and everything. I sent the Dorneys a letter I hope they got it. Wow sounds like work is going great! That is awesome! Keep up the good work! I Really miss church ball!!! I want to play basketball so bad! Maybe we will set up a preperation day with the zone where we all go play basketball! That would be fun! I probably will struggle because it has been so long! Whatever! You are good at basketball, especially defense! You can shut people down! You play good aggresive D! And the D is where its at! Sounds like a crazy game the 49ers had! Wow! Wish I could have seen it!  Well thanks for writing Dad! I love you tons!!!!! Buona settimana e Buon complianno!!!!

Ping Pong and Foosball Tournament

   Hey!  Transfers calls haven't come in yet they come in this Saturday. We are excited to see what happens. I'm not really sure what will happen, vediamo! First off It seems like I have some explaining to do about the whole rose situation. That was on our Preperation day and we were at the Spanish steps when some British ladies gave them to us.. So we carried them around all day and got some pretty good pictures of us in random places holding them. Don't worry, I can send plenty more rose pictures. That is exciting to hear that Jansen is out of the Bush but also sad. I'm sure he had some crazy, cool experiences!  The ward here has been really great with our investigators in Church. They have done really good at friendshiping them and making them feel a part of the family. It is incredible to see how much the members really sacrifice to come to church and to make sure that others can come to church as well. We have had a lot of activities in church lately. Especially this week. We are doing a family night tonight, on Thursday we will have english course and then Friday is going to be awesome! We are having a ping pong and foosball tournament! Anziano Bunker and I are on a team together and we are planning on winning the whole thing. We will try to make the games close so that people feel like they have a chance at beating us. Haha.  Then friday is the big day of transfer calls where every missionary is always keeping the phone within sight and sound and is scared to talk too long on the phone, having fear that they will recieve the call while they are on the phone. Haha Anyway we feel like we are making really good progress with our investigators and that they are moving in a good direction. One of our investigators has been kind of worried about his family and how they will react if he gets baptized, so we had a great lesson with him and with a member who had similar problems. It was really nice to have a member there to bear testimony about how grateful he is for his choice of joining the Church. Member lessons are so powerful and I hope that I can go to lessons with the missionaries when I get home. This week I have started to do language study a little bit different. I have started reading the Liahona in Italian and writing down all the words I dont know and memorizing them. It is a nice change and has helped my language grow a lot! I love the Italian language. The more you learn the more you love it and the more you can help investigators understand this great message! I hope to hang on to the language for my whole life. Well, Thanks for writing! Oh yeah today we are going Bowling with some missionaries in our zone! Should be fun! Love you tons!!! Have a great week! Hey Dad! Thanks for writing! I'm glad to hear you survived through your early drive last week! I am excited for transfers this week! Part of me wants to get transfered cause I am kind of sick of Rome but the other part of me wants to stay for our investigators and Anziano Bunker is pretty cool. So I guess we will see what happens! I would love to serve in Napels! I hear it is amazing there! It is called Napoli in Italian.The pizza is supposed to be unreal there. But sicilians say that their pizza is better so I have to give it a try. Last night I had a dream that I got transfered to Sardenia with Colton Haha That would be pretty sweet! I am confused about the shoe shining thing. Are my shoes dirty? haha I guess I need to clean them. How are you? How is work going? Are you excited for the wedding! I'm sure it's creeping up on you!  Anything new happening in Utah? Has it snowed yet? Here it is really cold lately! I am ready for the summer. I can't believe that I have one more transfer and the start of the one after that will be my year mark! Time is flying!!! In my presidents interview, President told me that not a lot of the missionaries in our group will become trainers because there aren't that many new missionaries coming in, in the next year! :( so thats kind of sad! I hope I get to train.. It is like one of the only things that I want to do on the mission. But I guess we will see. How is the extended family doing?  I am glad that our family is so united! Thanks to you and mom! Well I love you tons Dad!!! Hope  you have una bella settimana!! ( a beautiful week) Ciao!!!

Another Good Week

Ciao! Another good week. We have been getting our investigators back from the Holidays! A lot of good things happened this week. First off we had a nice dinner with a wonderful family! Second we have gotten a lot of contacts this last week and our investigators are progressing! Third we got "hey eldered" a lot this week, so it was nice to talk to some Americans. Fourth we have zone conference tomorrow, so we have been looking forward to that. Overall a pretty good week! Yesterday we saw an Italian lady freak out at a guy who was parked on the street blocking traffic. She decided to handle the situation by getting out of her car and punching the car and elbowing it... So that was funny. Then later that night we had some Catholic preists come up to us and try to prove our Church wrong... Lets just say they did not succeed, and we are giving them a copy of The Book of Mormon tonight, so we are looking forward to that. The Zone is playing soccer today up  in  the northern part of Rome! Anziano Bunker and I decided that we are going to bring a football so that we can bring back some good memories of high school. Hopefully we can get a little game started. I can't believe that transfer calls are already so close! Next Saturday we will get them. You never know what will happen on transfer call day! I'm glad you got to watch those videos! I really like those and they are nice to show to investigators who speak english. Well, since we are playing soccer today I don't have much time. But I Love You tons!!! Have a great week!

Happy New Year!

Hey! Happy New Year! How was new years? Here, it was insane! There were so many fire works going off it was imposible to sleep! I love how crazy Italy is sometimes! I guess huge fireworks here aren't illegal because everyone had them! We looked out the window and someone shot a huge one across the street at another building and it exploded on the building. It was just insane! Then on Monday we got to clean our appartment so that it is nice and clean! Other than that we have just been getting back into the normal missionary schedule. How is getting back into the swing of things back home? Yesterday we went to a members house to help them remodel, which was overall pretty good except the lady stepped on a board that had a nail in it, that swung up and hit her in the face about a half an inch away from her eye. It was pretty scary because she started bleeding pretty bad and almost passed out. So us and the Bishop gave her a blessing and she went to the hospital to get stitches. A little further down and she would have lost the eye. So she is doing better now, but it was pretty scary. I Loved the pictures of Taylers wedding stuff with her wedding ring and all! That's really exciting! I don't think I like the idea of coming home to a house where Colton and Tayler are gone!! That will be weird! Luckly I will still have Miguel and Mimi! Today we are going to have family night at the church with some members so that should be fun! Hey Dad, how is work?  I have loved doing service the past few days! Some good hard work just makes me feel stronger. Missionary work is hard and all but I really like to dig into some crazy service project for a change. It reminds me of yard work and all. That sounds fun with new years week! I miss football! That is awesome the Utes won! It's nice to have a companion that I can talk to about these things! Haha I love Italy more and more everyday! It is crazy here I hope that we can all come back together! It is awesome! And I was thinking about it, If you want you could pick me up here in Italy or I could come home and we could just all go back out together it is up to you! For me it's fine either way! Which reminds me on the card you wrote a hundred dollars for my present and I didnt even think about the conversion rate from dollars to euros so I spent to much! So sorry! Just don't send me packages for some months until it equals its way out! I felt bad! Sorry! But thank you for the presents they were great! I loved that blanket! And the electronic translater has helped my language so much! That is awesome news about President Wright! Wow! That will be an amazing experience for him! Well Thanks for writing and I hope you have a great week! Love you tons!!!! Buon anno!!

Ciao!! It was so great to talk to the you all Sunday! It was nice to see that everyone is doing good and that the Larsen family is still chugging along! It made my Christmas seeing you all!  The Magnianti family was very nice to let us use their computer and to feed us! Haha I don't know what that Italian guy was doing the whole time behind me. He started yelling right in my ear "Smile!!!!!!!" and "Cheese!!!" when you were making that video. We had to explain that you weren't taking a picture haha! Wow I can't believe that Tayler and Jared are really getting married! Seeing them made it seem all the more real! That is super exciting! It was good to see each of you and I'm grateful that we were given an hour to talk to our families! How was seeing everyone? It sure seemed like you all had a good morning of present opening! I'm glad to hear that Colton won the mink throw! That's awesome! I will have to get one when I get home! I love how over the years our family has just grown! First with Miguel and Mimi and now we are getting that Jared guy! I love having a big family and wouldn't have it any other way! I can't believe that next time I call Tayler will be married! Time is flying by. That whole weekend we ate so much food! And yesterday we had a lady in our ward call us that made tons of food for Christmas and she just doesn't know what to do with all of it so she needs us to come get all of it! And we hear that she is an amazing cook! So you could say we are excited! What did you all do for Christmas Eve?  Even though I am away from home this Chrismas was one of the best! It really shows you what is most important in this life when you are away from home! Well I better run! Thanks for everything! The Presents were great! But it was best to talk to you! Hey Dad! It was great seeing you! That truly made my Christmas! Although we did get to watch 2 movies and we decided to watch Cars 2 and Megamind, if you haven't seen them I suggest you do! It was cool with Cars 2 that we could understand all of the little things they said in Italian! But It was great seeing you! I'm glad to hear that the breakfast went good! How is Jared getting along with the family? I can't believe that things change so fast!  I'm guessing that we call packages care packages now.  Me and Anziano Bunker sometimes talk about the food we want to get right off the plane and we have talked about, Morelias, Cafe Rio, Some steak restaurant, Milts, and JCWs!  The food here is so good but you get missing that food in America! I guess it will make it all the more better when we havent eaten it for 2 years! I cant wait to just go to a restaraunt with the family when I get home! A mission really helps you realize the important things in life! It looked like you have lost a lot of weight! Thats awesome! Did you say you stopped drinking soda? If so that is awesome if not your still awesome! You have to try the juice here!! It is so good! It is strangely good!  That is awesome with work and all! Sounds like you are tearing it up! You can't go wrong with hiring a Matt Larsen into a job!  I loved seeing you and Thank you for the wonderful Christmas! Love you tons!!!

The Baptism this week was Amazing



I can't believe Christmas is just 4 days away! I'm really excited to see you all! Its going to be really great! And yes, I will try to skype at 8 am your time and if anything changes we have been given permission to give you a short call to set things up. The week has been really good! Yesterday we taught a great lesson to a guy that was a referall from his friend and we set a baptismal date with him! He is a really good guy. This year has gone by so fast and I'm already rolling up on my year mark, which is pretty scary! Thank you for that package and all of the great gifts! They have been great and I can't wait to open the rest of them! How is everything going at home with Christmas around the corner! How was temple square? Me and Anziano Bunker were just talking about how we miss going to temple square with the fam! And I can't believe that everyone is getting married! Haha President Monson really helped the guys step it up. Haha The baptism this week was amazing! It was spiritual and everything went perfect. After 25 years of investigating the church he is very happy with his choice and said that it was the best day of his life! So we were all excited for that! After the Baptism we ate tons of food! Pasta, Gnocchi and Torte! It was so good! There is nothing better than Italian food! Aside from that it has been a pretty normal week. It is getting pretty cold here but it is fun doing finding work in the cold cause the Italian people are so nice and will always ask us why we aren't wearing jackets and we explain to them that we are from Utah and it can strike up a good conversation leading into why we are here, so it has been pretty fun! Well I better run! Thanks for writing! I can't wait to see you on Sunday!! Love you tons!! Ciao!!

Ready For Christmas in Rome

Transfer news is in! I will be in Roma 3 again for Christmas and New years with Anziano Bunker! Anziano Bunker will be the new district leader and he will do a great job! And the Sorelle will be in 3, so we are all excited! Yesterday we had Zone conference and it was combined with Napoli zone. It was really good to see all of the missionaries and we had a great Christmas meal at the mission home, which was delicious! We are all anticipating the Baptism of the investigator of the Sorelle this sunday! I can't remember if I told you about him.. haha (I feel like I repeat a lot of things) anyway he has been looking for his testimony for 25 years and we are super excited for him! The week went by really fast and seems to be getting faster as Christmas is coming. The city of Rome is very prepared for Chrismas, the city is coverd with lights! It's nice to be in a country that loves Christmas so much! Thanks for setting up the Skype account! I don't know when we can plan on doing skype. We could probably do it on Chrismas Eve or Chrismas night. Which in Utah would be in the morning on Chrismas or the morning of Chrismas Eve. Just let me know when you want me to. That is awesome that Miguel got that award! What a good kid! Tell him that he is the man for me! That is so nice of the grandparents! We are wanting to make some Christmas Card with our district so I will have to send one to them with a letter. Oh yeah this week we went to see this sweet 18 year old kid from Argentina who was baptized like 3 years ago and he was less active because he moved to France to play soccer and now is in Rome and Romes soccer team is looking at him. He contacted us and wants to renew his baptismal covenants and get the Melchizedek Priesthood so that he can be a stronger member and help his family out in the gospel! So he is way sweet and is learning Italian and we are way excited to help him out. Anyway better let you run love you all tons!!! Thanks for everything!