Home at last!!! Happy Day!

Caleb is back home with us!  We were all so excited to see his handsome face and get one of his trademark hugs.  Lot's of family and friends welcomed him.  These are just a few. He also returned with many other faithful missionaries from the Rome Italy mission whom he will always be connected to.  We love our Caleb and are really proud of all that he has accomplished.  His mission has really refined him and we couldn't be happier to see him again!!!

Leaving this Beautiful Country

This is weird.. I can't believe that I will be seeing you in 2 days!!! I am really sad to be leaving this beautiful country and these incredible people but I am excited to see you all again! I love Cosenza! Yesterday night during English course, toward the end a member came in and sat down. I thought it was a little strange because she had never come in the past. After a few minutes another member walked in and sat down as we started our spiritual thought. After we finished with a prayer the door opened and members and English course students that didn't come to the course that night came in and filled the room. I was pretty confused because the district president, President Favre came in and said we need to talk about the English course. Then turns out that it was just a big surprise party that they planned for me and thanked me and cut my tie ( I have no Idea why they would do that!) and then we ate a ton of food with the members and English course students! It was really cool! I am so grateful for the members and for their strong testimonies and for everything they have done for me. I have loved this two year experience! I have learned a lot and grown a lot closer to my Heavenly Father and to our Savior! I love the church and am infinitely grateful for everything It has given me! The Church is true!! So tomorrow morning I go up to Rome for some interviews and then Friday morning early we will be leaving! I can't wait to see you!!! LOVE YOU TONS AND SEE YOU IN TWO DAYS!!!!

Sneaking up on us Fast!

Wow the 22nd is really sneaking up on us fast! I am sad to see my last days of my time in the mission winding down. I love the mission so much and I will miss it a ton! I am also extremely happy to come back to my great family. This last week has beeng great we found 4 new investigators who are very interested. We are hoping that everything goes well for them. We are planning some great activities with the branch here. We want to teach the members how to better teach in our lessons. Sounds like Tayler and Jared are excited. If they aren't moved in by the time that I get back, I will be more than happy to help them. Well today is really busy for us so I dont have much time but I love you and will see you in 9 days!

The Gospel changes Lives



Buon Giorno tutti! Great week. The Baptism was great. Tons of members came and also english course students showed up to see what all the fuss was about. It was a great baptism. The spirit was really strong and she was really happy. She showed me the email you sent her to help her translate it. The gospel changes lives! It is crazy how fast time is flying. It feels like I emailed you yesterday. The members are still trying to kill us by feeding us to death! We are spoiled here. Ha They are great! They love to show their love through cooking for us. On Sunday they called a new branch president. President Di Nolfo. He seems to be really on the ball and has already helped us out with a lot. We are hoping to find some new investigators. We keep finding great contacts and then they tell us they are too busy or that they aren't interested anymore. We will keep on trying hard to find the prepared ones. Yes, I did get the letter from Mimi! Thank you! I will be sure to bring some money back from Italy. Thank you for keeping an eye out for work for me. Any of those jobs sound great. So with Anziano Green, he is going to finish right before school starts and to move out he is going to have to find a job as well so until he finds work he will live with his sister that lives in Lehi or something. But he thinks he will find work fast. I am excited/ nervous. It will be a good experience. Well thanks for writing! Love you!

More Pics

We received a really sweet message from Roberta this week.  She has taken all of the missionary discussions and has committed herself to getting baptized this week.   Her taking the time to write and send pictures really meant a lot to us!  We are all so very excited for her to receive the gospel in her life!

Roberta and Anziano Larsen

Anziano Larsen

Planning for the Baptism

Hey! This week we has been having fun planning for the baptism, which should be on Saturday. Here they don't have a built in baptismal font so we are going to learn how to use the "blow up font" here. We are really excited and hoping that everything goes through as planned. Thanks for all the prayers. We have also been having fun doing finding and trying to use a survey that we made to find new investigators. It seems to be working pretty good. Who doesn't want to participate in a Mormon survey?! ha The members have been helpful here the past few weeks. They have put forth a good effort at befriending our investigators in church and encouraging them. I'm grateful for the members here and their strong testimonies of the gospel. For english course we have started showing mormon messages for the spiritual thought at the end of the lesson. It seems to be working pretty well. It always sparks a good conversation and lots of questions! Wow that's cool that Colton got a new job! You will have to let me know if he likes it. It's weird being toward the end of the mission because you feel like you don't have much to say.  Hey Dad! How are you? Sounds like you are just having a great time! Haha golfing and kicking it in the sun!  I'm glad to hear that you didn't pass out when you got hit in the head with a golf ball! The blessings of the gospel surround us! I'm sure that if you weren't a strong member in the church you would have passed out for sure! Is Cocoa alright! Poor thing. I miss that dog! I was thinking about your question about what I want to do when I get home. First off I want to show the family all the pictures from my mission and tell stories of the crazy stuff that has happened that I could tell, or forgot to tell through emails. Then I want to watch movies with the family and maybe go to a movie with the family. I think that would be fun. oh yeah and eat a ridiculous amount of cereal! haha. Other than that I'm fine with doing whatever. I can't believe we are only a little over three weeks a way! I can't wait to see you! Love you tons and thanks for writing! Oh yeah, weird question. Do you know when my homecoming talk will be? Because if it is the first Sunday I get back I'm going to have to start preparing it here. Just let me know please. Well thanks for everything! Love you all!! 4

The Spirit Truly Guided Us

So.. Our investigator Roberta is going to get baptized next Saturday! The 2nd of March. She is great she is about 26 and she is an architect, she is super nice and loves the church. Keep her in your prayers. This week we went to Catanzaro for an exchange. I was with Anziano Di Caro, an Italian who is in his first transfer. We went to an appointment to teach a guy the first lesson. He called us and asked us if we could meet him in his studio. We agreed and went on the search for his studio which was pretty hard to find, but after about an hour we found his studio. We went in and he told us to follow him up stairs. To our suprise there were two other men in the room sitting in front of computers smiling at us. One of them was the head preist over the area in Catanzaro and the other was a pastor of an evangilist church and the third was just a devouted member to the evangelist church, all three of them were great friends that thought it would be fun to invite the mormon elders over to try and confound us. They had their computers filled with researched material ready to destory us! They started bombarding us with questions both about the doctrines and history of the church. It was intense. Haha I don't think that they expected us to know the Bible better than they did. We concluded with a prayer and invited them to pray about it all and went on our way. Hopefully they will do so. I gained a testimony of D&C 71:10 "And if any man lift his voice against you he shall be confounded".. The spirit truly guided us. Then yesterday we found a new investigator! So its been a good week! Sounds like everyone is having fun at home. Grandma and Grandpa are too kind! I sure miss the whole family but am also loving the mission too much! Well I love you a ton and can't wait to see you again! Love you tons and thanks for always writing!! Email 5