Jeremys P Minute

Its so good to hear from all of you!! This last week has been insane. Longest and shortest week of the mission. Katie is trying to perform it for her Graduation? That's not this year right? There is no way she is graduating this year? You've gotta be joking me, or punking or something she is still a Junior right? You've gotta tell me the truth on this one! She is still my little sister, she can't go to college and all that jazz, I thought she was accepted in like two years. I don't know why this is hitting me so hard right now, but I can't believe that Katie is graduating High School, this is the gnarliest thing I've ever heard. SO i'm going to have to get another part of this email to you in just a bit, turns out this Pmoment is over..... I've been in full sprint mode for the last 4 weeks and its been dope, Norton keeps me busy for sure. I'll hit you up in just a moment. Love ya Elder LaRy Sr.

Zack and BYU sports figures!

well papa im not taking that stupid drug I got to my mission medical person and she sided with me that I do not need such medical things. no im not having emotional problems which is exactly why I didn't wanna take that med or any med for sleep haha! California docs are just dumb, I dunno how they got their degrees but they are terrible with my minimal medical knowledge I feel like im more capable of diagnosing myself than them. there is my unchrist like rant for the day :) well glad things worked out and that my story helped out with your lesson! trek medic would be tons of fuN!!! I saw some pics of alex playing soccer and liam hiding in a coat because its cold. I am glad they are doing well! I love them and miss them! I got my itinerary this week which is disheartening! however this week has been full of trials and miracles. where do I begin. lets start with trials so we can end on a spiritually good note :) first off our baptism fell through because he drank coffee day of the baptism but I guess we shouldn't expect quitting to be easy, he has been drinking it religiously every day from 12 years to 30 years old. he is ready for next week though! he is doing great but I swear coffee is harder for people to quit than smoking out here! sadly mission medical doesn't cover my BP meds so I have been paying for that on my home card :( its 15 bucks every time and im on my third bottle. my comp and I don't really see eye to eye on most things, he is super marriage trunky and has a lock your heart with one of his old converts so that proves to be an issue. that just kinda makes me sad because my last comp and I were getting along perfectly and man its just different! anyway now on to spiritual and great things! one im living with a BYU basketball player that is as tall as kevin durrant no joke! he is cool and I paly bball against him and he is hilarious! also before him I was living with a national champion rugby player for BYU he is cool too but he is now a zone leader!!!! also we have two baptisms set up and the zone is really doing well! I love this work so much! I have been making the atonement a topic of my study for the lst couple weeks and I cant even believe how much I understand now thanks to the spirit! I am learning so much! I read a talk called "the character of Christ" by Bednar its amazing!!! READ IT!!! the whole atonement is just so crazy!! I was wondering if I could get grandpas obituary sent to me? :) also keep on parker I wanna live with him :) this week we have been able to be a part of many great things in helping the community in service projects we had a multi religious helping hands day where we helped the whole community! the mission is going well but shortening! I kewep hearing from members "oh you almost done" which is only a true statement to be fair and im certainly not against going home since I know it has to happen but I would like conversation to head other directions from time to time :) I saw my boy elder black andhe is training a dude from Japan he is great! I have tons of FOBS in my line elder wong and elder fifita and elder dorrp yup pretty crazy! anyway life is great! I love it here! oh I need to renew mt liscense so if you can send me the info I need ill take care of that just so you know :) how is the thunder doing? how is dusty and others? kev is going to UVU? so am I!!!!!! wow im a trend setter :) well I love you all so much! KEVIN- sounds like youand chinchy are getting along quite nicely! are you taking her out and holding her and letting her run free in rooms like we use to? that could help with her not wanting to escape so bad :) she seems to be doing just fine when I left haha! I enjoy all the poop you taking on the floor haha! she does poop quite a bit! I remember when I let her run around the room all night while I slept I woke up and the room was filled with poo! I dunno why she doesn't eat much for her to poop so much! oh well! hey you better keep me updated my friend! I aint heard from ya in a while and ZL is fun but lets just mourn for poor Jeremy who is AP which is a task that I hope im never called to :) loves!!!

Jeremys AP Duties

Padre!!!!! First off I love ya. Second off I've got some funny stories. So funny story. Norton and I were praying to know how to correct people in A loving way. So it's a beautiful Spring day, the birds are out, the sun is shining... So we throw on the Khaki's! We had a meeting with President to coordinate a meeting that morning so we head over. Well we get there, he lets us in and we start to talk. Then he proceeds to teach us about how the pants we are wearing aren't in accordance with mission standards... We can have Khaki color, but that had to be no cotton slacks..... Ours weren't. So he lovingly taught us for 45min about it hahaha then at MLC we talked about the slipping standards of mission dress and used us as the examples.. It was hilarious and humbling. Mainly hilarious haha needless to say, all I had were Khaki's and because of the Mission standards on clothes slipping the light gray suit I wore isn't actually okay anymore just so I'm at a higher standard then everyone else. So now I have 3 pairs of pants haha. Luckily a member donated a suit to me! I have had a bunch of clothes donated my way which has been helpful. Most to big though haha So don't quite know exactly where in Salt Lake City but they live in the valley. I am excited to have them there. So as for my duties... Haha I said duty... Well we do a lot of different things. We train the ZL's, we take numbers and have been creating a way to track the progress of the work over the last few weeks. We got back to the beginning of 2013 which was a miracle. We set up plan, and teach at meetings. We work with the missionaries a ton. Our main responsibility is to build up future leaders and to train the current. It's a ton of fun. We are up incredibly late all the time, which honestly I can see helping me in the near future. We live with two other Elders, one of which is really struggling right now. I'm learning charity at a much quicker rate for sure in is assignment. We are seeing a ton of success in our area on top of all the craziness going on around us. We are teaching a kid from mainland China right now. The culture over there is fascinating, not necessarily in a good way. They grow up being taught that there is no sure answer to anything, truth is relevant to the situation. It's a crazy because he has felt the spirit stronger then most he has seen a vision, he has had so many witness' but he doesn't have faith yet. It's a tough to teach against a life time of cultural difference. We have a baptism coming up and a bunch of meetings so life is never slowing down for us. I was also a part of a Passover Seder this last Saturday. Our 1st councilor to President Sammy, president Lewis is a Jewish convert, so he speaks Hebrew, knows the Seder and ran us through it as a ward. It was an awesome missionary opportunity, we had about 40% nonmember or LA's there our of 110 people. It was sweet how he Seder actually goes along with Our religion. Elijah actually returned the day of the Passover feast in 1836, Jewish oral tradition is that he would return on the Passover and take a seat with the family at the feast. Kinda cool.... Well it was a great week I love ya and I'll talk to ya again next week. Also, did Shipley Email you? Love ya padre and tell everyone else I say hey and that I love them! Also tell Kate to give me that news!!! Elder Lary Sr

Because of Him Vid boosts the work!

well sounds like a blast! always good stories in the Larsen home! im liking how the eggs had scriptures you can be physically fed and spiritually fed haha! I still don't know where the bunny came from! in fact we have a recent convert who was Buddhist he asked what is Easter to you guys? where does eggs and a bunny come into Christianity haha! its really funny! HAVE YOU SEEN THE CHURCH VID "Because Of Him"? its amazing! you need to share that with everyone! we been asking people on the street to pull it up on their smart phones so we can watch it with them and have had amazing experiences! Miracles came out of that movie with our investigators we had a baptism last Saturday we have one this Sunday and we are setting one up for the following Saturday! its amazing! anyway im glad Easter was great! sounds like the family had fun which is important! I like the pic of Alex climbing the tree a true climber!!! ill take him rock climbing when I get home I miss that! I cant believe another transfer is gone by so fast! I feel like I need to just keep working harder and harder because I only got 3 transfers left! the work is great here my Ethiopian friend is getting baptized Sunday! lets see we been dealing with a mini missionary in the apartment who doesn't clean up after himself but that's ok because we told him clean up or face the consequences and he said there will be none and later that night i snuck up on him while he was praying and right as he finished I jumped up to the second bunk in a smeagle screech and attacked him and he was super scared haha! he said after the attack that his heart was racing to much to sleep haha! well sadly my companion is getting transferred and i want to cry!!! he is one of my most favorite comps I have had and we had an amazing teaching style together! we were steller! we did great together and i loved every bit of it and I will miss him, im unhappy he is leavin for sure! I dunno about this new guy I know him but we have pretty different styles of everything sometimes it works out sometimes its a nightmare so we will see I been praying a lot haaha! so we had to give the Easter talks which was crazy! i did it on the atonement and I KNOW THIS WILL BLOW YOU AWAY! I prepared ALL WEEK for this talk. I learned so freaking much about it I was blown away! my comp did the Resurrection and same thing for him! we gave them and the bishopric told us that it was one of the best talks they have ever heard on the savior and they took tons of notes so that felt good and then to our forgetfulness we were teaching 3rd hour! we had a heckler in there that was asking semi anti questions so we instantly went to testify mode and the spirit was SO STRONG everyone went quiet and we shared our testimonies about the restoration and how they can know its true and if they already know to find out again! which was great for our investigators that were there! its was amazing! we taught elders quorum and relief society. The spirit was strong and it was amazing! the heckler was silenced and when we sat down i told my comp i felt like were Alma and Amulek! because other people we starting to get into the anti questions when they were being asked so we testified of how they can get answer and how that the question was not what they thought that the real question is was Joseph smith a prophet of god? If he is then that question wouldn't matter would it? there was obviously more to it but it was awesome no bashing simple testimony! i love it! i love the work! i am very happy and my comp nad I have had a great time together no bonesing each other and pranking each other pretty badly and our roommates. well love you all so much! bye! HAPPY EASTER!

Jeremy and "P-Moments!"

Padre, sorry for not getting a letter out to ya last week. Turns out we don't get Pdays, we get P moments. This has been the longest few weeks of the mission for sure. We had our MLC and we didn't have a system for accountability that was very acceptable so we started working on getting he numbers from 2013 to up to date so that we could start to measure the growth of the mission. As a mission we went through a personal sanctification to create a Christ like culture in the mission. Now we are on to making the missionaries productive, one of the ways we are trying to do that is by adding to our culture a culture of accountability. Unfortunately the last year it hasn't been a big deal so our record keeping has been shoddy at best... So we have been working through several sources to create accurate graphs. This has caused many many many many long nights... Norton and I figured it out last night, if we were being paid 12$ Every hour and we were pulling the hours we have been for a year we would make 116,000$. Not bad for a 22 year old. My mind and commitment has really been put to the test here haha we haven't been able to get out and do as much proselyting as I would like to, however, I am happy to be doing whatever God asks of me. Go and read the conference talk by Packer "called these things I know". The poem he wrote accurately describes how I feel about where I'm at with the mission. We did set up a baptism last week and I'm going to be going to another baptism back in Dairy Creek for a guy that I was working with out in Forest Grove. Some more cool news, a family that I was working with, the Marck's are moving to Utah, Anne is a gal that is a RC from Salem. I'm pumped they will be back, I love em so much. We'll definitely have to kick it with them. They are a fantastic family that will really help build the kingdom. On top of the fact that they really are just great friends now. I had a dream about being in southern Utah haha we all went down there last week! That's awesome you got to go to the Holy of Holies, that would be intense... We are going to the temple tomorrow, which is going to be so so sweet! It's going to feel good to get some revelation in there. Please tell everyone, Gma B, Gma A, and Gma F, Kevin, Jason, Katie, Darlene, Steph, Lisa, and errybody else that I love them! I love the gospel of Jesus Christ; because of Him I have felt joy and we all can experience it as well. Ya'll sound like life is crazy as ever. I'm learning so much in this calling and I am grateful for the opportunity you have given me to be here. On the bad news side I've lost my mission card again. In this calling you can only remember 3 things at a time that really need to be accomplished but you have 7 other things that badly need to be done. The trick is having your companion remember 3 other things and have no overlap haha. Really though, I can't remember almost anything anymore, I feel like my mind is slipping slipping... Into the future.... Oops sorry, music quote haha. I love ya'll!

Amazing experiences in Wilton Zone with Zack

well i didnt get anything from kate so i dunno what the big news is. anyway All is well here we actually had a pretty amazing week! I CANT BELIEVE YOU WENT TO THE HOLY OF HOLIES!!! thats nuts! i think i would go there and die haha! thats amazing! we have a struggling missionary in this transfer alone he had his comp get sick and go home (he is coming back) and two emergency transfers and so he is very discouraged. we went over and did a sit down pep talk essentially and gave him advice that i didnt know i even had! the spirit was so strong and amazing! i loved ever second of helping this missionary. we gave him a blessing and had an experience i prolly wont share over email but essentially it was an apostolic experience and it was amazing leaving us all saying well.... gospels true! so amazing! the work is great! we are working harder than ever we found an INV that we contacted and said "i been taught everything already and i been to church i just need to know its true" we just found him on the street and he recited every lesson back to us. so we took him up to a temple tour and it was amazing and then another INV walked into teh church for us and said "what doi need to do to be baptized" its just been so many miracles! i love serving others and i love helping others as well! the missionaries are some of my favorite people to just sit down with and see what i can do to help. when i got here they all hated the zone leaders i guess my comps last comp was not so kind to them so we had a lot of repairing to do. we get along super well and the zone likes us a lot now. its been tough but so amazing to just show people how motivated by their success we truly are and how much we love them. this work is great imlearning a lot but im also bummed our mission president goes home like a month before me so i have a departing interview with the new guy which i dont want because he doesnt even know me at all. and trunky papers are the papers that give us the itinerary to go home there are 4 sets of different ones im on my first set with my comp since we go home pretty much same time haha! well love yall bye!!!!

Zacks Conference thoughts

this week has truly been an amazing experience! i did hear much at conference that stood out to me! i really learned so much! i have written many things down that i will improve on and become better at! i loved the talk on "not sleeping through the restoration" that stood out along with elder Nelsons and Andersons talks. this conference was amazing and has given me motive to be the best self. i learned that the gospel isn't really about changing who you are as a person but to change you motives, desires, and nature.... to become your best self. i want to be my best self and i want to be an example of the faith to defend it with courage and courtesy. we had a recent convert watch conference with us and he instantly turned to us and said " I need to [pay my tithing...how do I do that? we promptly showed him how! I got my trunky papers sadly also our phone got smashed up and doesn't work however it is ok because I played requiem for a dream on the piano :) anyway things are so good we have help in the uplifting of a very depressed elder and I had such a good sit down talk with him, I felt prompted I needed to talk to him. I found that he has been very discouraged since his companion was sent home and that things were not going well for him. we had a prayer and discussed ways to help him and it was amazing! we gave a blessing to a less active couple in the YSA and they had us over for dinner later this week and it was amazing they cooked us steak and potatoes which you just don't get in a YSA ward and cream soda from the bottle. we had a wonderful lesson on gods love from Romans chapter 8 and he was in tears by the end of it I have never hugged anyone out here other than missionaries really until now he is amazing! the spirit was so strong! my companion and I get along so well although he comments that he has never done so much work in Wilton before and we are tearin it up out there! that's my terf haha! I love this work and all of you! I feel your support! im so glad parker is looking good and was at priesthood session I pray for him every morning and night. I have where we will be visiting all planned out seeing as I will prolly end my mission here. I love this work and I love all I have learned from it. this is an amazing place to be! sadly my spelling ahs only gotten worse but my knowledge of the scriptures is increasing so its a fair trade! as for the whole fam im glad everything is going well! im going to be honest no matter the amount of emails on the new fam I don't really know them and cant differentiate them in name so I figure that I will learn when I get home. as for student housing I don't think shio will want to stay in student housing we were discussing more of renting a very small home so the rent didn't increase per amount of people living there however I don't want to share with strangers in the home since im still semi untrusting so we will figure things out and im contacting shio right now so in a separate email I will get his info if he is still in. contact parker blood and seeif he is in im sure he will want to :) love you and hope all is well. as for classes I dunno what I wanna take not a lot since ill just barely be getting home and I don't want to be completely overwhelmed as soon as im home ill take a light amount of school at the beginning but enough to keep my study habits! our mission president did comment on this D&C says that the lord will hasten his work in his time...... president monson has come out and said "NOW IS THE TIME" that's powerful! keep helping our missionaries there wherever they may be I never saw em growing up haha! well love you all bye bye!!!! stay happy!

No email from Jeremy but this from his Mission Pres!

1 April 2014 Dear Elder Jeremy Scott Larsen, Congratulations on your new calling as an Assistant to the President in the Oregon Salem Mission! This honor and responsibility comes to only a handful of missionaries in the entire world. As an assistant to the mission president, you will be responsible for the training and welfare of missionaries throughout the entire mission. Your first priority will be to be successful in planning, finding, teaching and baptizing of individuals in your own area. You will participate in companionship exchanges, primarily with zone leaders to help train and motivate them. You will be responsible for coordinating the activities associated with missionaries returning home, new missionaries arriving in the field, and the transfer of missionaries to new areas. You will be asked to study the scriptures, receive revelation, and teach from Preach My Gospel and the Missionary handbook in mission leadership councils, zone conferences and specialized training. Finally, you will be asked to be a confidant and representative of the mission president. This will require maturity and a commitment to excellence in all you do. Your parents and priesthood leaders will also receive a copy of this message. I would like them to know of the sincere gratitude I have for this Elder. You can be proud of the type of missionary he has become; he is the Lord’s finest. The call to leadership is best done by example. Those you serve will watch you and will desire to become like you. This will require you to be faithful, diligent and most importantly, loving in all you do. Perhaps above any other mission calling, this one comes through inspiration and qualification from your Father in Heaven. It is a sacred trust given to you, from Him. Know also of my trust and gratitude for your willingness to accept and fulfill this most important calling. With Love, President Samuelian

Zack busy with investigators and injuries

so am i staying in student housing or in a basement of another place you got? im a lil confused... we have been so busy i couldn't get that info but ill get it to you next monday! i cant call that number so ill need you to sign me up and ill prolly have to just do 2ed block i guess because since we are switching mish presidents i cant move my time :( ill keep trying if i can ill let ya know ASAP. uuhh ill get the info goin and see who wants to do what. if we get like a basement or a starter home kind of thing the rent doesn't go up with amount of people right? also my back has been kinda sore still ill get it checked out when i can find some time but we been so busy. ill definitely be taking all the fire classes i can especially the wild land courses if possible. anyway our missionary was out of the hospital but then he relapsed hard just to discover it was not west nile it is viral meningitis, the hospitals here are SO FAR BEHIND! they are terrible even UC davis which is supposed to be way nice is terrible we go to sutter general now because its the nicest one they got. he was put into a medical coma and was out for 2 days before they brought him back and he is recovering but is probably going to have to go home sadly for recovery. he is doing a lil better but is unstable still he was in the ICU for a week, meanwhile i been having my own injuries its been a week of them i jacked up my leg on a rusty chunk of metal and got slammed into a pole damaging my man parts slightly which was a very unpleasant experience although my comp thought it to be very funny. we have been on the road doing hour long trips to the hospital for our missionary and so i been ahving to spend money on my home card to get food sadly.... however!!!!! good things are, we added a ton of new investigators that are super SOLID! the work is picking up big time even though we dont have time to work much in our area and my comp is the best he is so great we have so much fun together! im getting good at soccer so alex would be proud and life is great! the week has been full of trials and miracles and i couldnt be happier!!! we are enjoying life here in sac! life is great. we are comin close to a baptism so we are excited and i get to see all my converts from wilton and sheldon wards! Alex is a pro and when i first started playing soccer out here with all the mexicans i did the same as liam and they were quick i guess i have always been parcial to basket ball :) anyway love yall so much! i hope you enjoy the new house and i hope all is well!!!! :) :) love you so much!!!!