Friday, September 30, 2011

And then there were five..

Dear subcribers to my weekly report,


I give this title to my weekly report because of an event that happened in my district this week. Believe it or not half of my district including three hermanas and two elders have left and ran off to the Republica Dominicana(Dominican Republic...) MTC and left us to suffer the last six weeks. I keep seeing elders and hermanas coming out of the mail room with blue packets labeled flight plans and I get a bit jealous. I am going to miss the old district but it will be very nice to have some more personal time with our teachers. Since there are only two companionships that means that we are going to be teaching a heck of a lot more also! I am already teaching two or three lessons a day. I talk to the more experience elders who have been here for like six or seven weeks and they are telling us that planning and teaching lessons is going to get much simpler when it comes to week seven because we have spanish down a lot better along with the lessons.


Let's see what else do I have that happened this week...I am starting to understand Espanol a lot more than the first day! I guess I am making some progress...ha. One of my teachers is from Chile and speaks super fast and slurs his sentences really bad and he expects us to understand most of what he is saying. This teacher is also really cool because he is also a professional badminton player. He participates in badminton tournaments all over north and south america!


My weekly weight check in is not so good news. The cafeteria had some ultra good food this week so I did partake of much of it. Since coming here 23 days ago I have gained about 6 or 7 lbs. No bueno!


The tuesday night devotional this week was an elder from the quorum of the seventy named Ron E. Clarke...I think. He gave an amazing talk to us about the importance of the Holy Ghost in our teaching and what resources are most important to a missionary.


This past week has probably been the hardest for me since I got here. Minor discouragement hit me a bit earlier in the week for some reason. I think it was right before a class with Hermano Trigo(the Chilean Professional Badminton Player) but now I am over it. Serving a mission is not a selfish act. It is important to realize that I am going to go through really hard times here but I know that through the Lord all things are possible. Because of all the help that I have needed recently, my knees have started hurting. My testimony of prayer has grown so much in the past few weeks. I have found some things that I wasn't including in my prayers before I left on my mission. If you want an answer to your prayers, then try going into a quiet place and pray sincerely with real intent and Heavenly Father will reveal his answer to you. Before your prayer, picture Heavenly Father right in front of you. It is also really important that we realize that God is our loving Heavenly Father and that he is our friend. He is there to help us.


I feel like I have much more to say in this email but I cannot remember. I accidentaly left my journal in my classroom. I only have a few minutes left anyways so I will just end with a message:


Spiritual Message of the Week:


One thing that is really cool is starting at the beginning of the Book of Mormon in first nephi 1 and reading for the first few chapters noticing when it talks about family. You can learn many cool things by studying in that section of the Book of Mormon about families.


I have been reading and studying a lot about prayer during the past week and have found some really good scriptures. If I had my journal with my I could tell them to you, but that is not possible right now. The power of the holy ghost and prayer work hand in hand with each other and give an amazing result.


1 Nephi 15:11
the famous Moroni 10:3-5
I have more, but I can't remember them so you'll just have to deeply study those two. They are both great!


That's it for this week! I hope all is going well!


Con Amor,


Elder Larisch


La Iglesia es verdadera!
Addition...-----> Oh! And I can't stop thinking about General Conference this weekend! Classes are cancelled on saturday!!! Wooooh! But more importantly we get to hear the words of God throught his prophets!