Week 7

 Week 7 

Alright, this is gonna be a long email cause there's a lot that happened. What the frick is up guys, I am officially a missionary right now. That's wild. Here's some highlights/other stuff of the first week:

-I had like 4 days of travel and that was so fricken long with so many bus rides and flights

-My companion's name is Elder Baldwin and we have a lot in common. Like we both played basketball in high school and both our first names are Hunter so that's lit

-We've been teaching a few families, and I think that the lessons are going good, but it's hard to tell when all I really do is smile and agree with what my comp is saying

-I had to get up during the sacrament and introduce myself, it did not go good. I tried to say I love you guys, but apparently I said something like 'to me you guys love me' or something so everyone laughed and I couldn't figure out why until I learned that. 

OK so this week has honestly felt like a few months. Going back to my comparison of each day being a week at the CCM, if those days were weeks, every day here feels like a month. I've really only been in the area for like 3 days because of how long it took to travel here. We left the CCM on Tuesday at 1 AM and traveled until Wednesday morning when we got to the mission home (we slept in a hotel in Buenos Aires) and we got to stay there for a while and chill. That was actually a ton of fun to hang out with my district and just mess around at the mission home for a while. Anywa,y after that we stayed in a hotel and met our new comps on Thursday. 

This is my comp, he's so lit. The way that they had us meet the comps was so sick too. They had us in the welcome meeting and at the end, we sang called to serve and as we were singing all our trainers walked in and were singing too. It's hard to explain but I thought that it was so dope. 

Anyway, after that we all kinda just left to our areas and we had to stay a night in this random home and that house was so sketchy but the house that I'm in now,

that's more permanent, is a lot less sketchy. 

There is so many dogs that just wander around and they're actually smart because I've seen some dogs check both ways before crossing the street which is wild.

The people that we are teaching are so nice to me, even though I can't understand them. We've had some really good lessons so far with a lot of awesome families. I mean it's hard to always tell what Elder Baldwin is teaching, but I do feel the spirit and when I feel the spirit, I'm like, oh shoot, he must have said something good. 

Yeah, the people that we are teaching are really nice, but I can't say the same about some of the members. When we talk with some of them, they'll just be talking super fast and then they'll look at me, realize I don't understand them, say something to my companion, and then they'll both laugh and look at me. And I'll ask Elder Baldwin what they said and he's told me like 3 times that they're just making fun of me for not speaking Spanish. Like bro not cool.

I've been doing my magic tricks for some of the people that we're teaching and they've loved them. When I want to do a trick that requires more explaining, I've just been saying it in English and having Elder Baldwin translate for me and it works out. 

There's been so much that has happened in the last four days and a lot of stuff that takes some adjusting to. It's really weird living on my own, especially living in a third world country and having to drink everything thru a filter (we have one attached to our faucet in the kitchen so its chill), having our milk in a cardboard box, and not ever really having peanut butter 🙃 (they have it here but i haven't tried it yet and I've heard it's not great so ima try it end let yall know next week). 

I feel like there's so much that has happened, but I don't even know how to explain it, I actually love it here, tho, it's gonna be a blast for the next two years.

Spiritual thought:

I haven't had a crazy spiritual experience yet because I haven't really understood anything that's happened so I'll share what I read in the Book of Mormon yesterday about how the spirit works. When the spirit talks to us, it doesn't use a loud voice that yells the answer to our questions. It explains it amazingly in 3rd Nephi 11:3, and it says, "...it was not a harsh voice, neither was it a loud voice; nevertheless, and notwithstanding it being a small voice it did pierce them that did hear to the center...". I love how plainly that verse explains the spirit. The spirit is so amazing and can help so, so good in our lives. 

Alright that's all for right now, I'll talk to y'all next week. Love you guys ✌️

-Elder Larson