April 25, 2011

Hello again family! Wow Im so excited for all the news of the family this week with jared and his crazy driving and Nikki with her calling and bay an chix with their dancing and Ken wow great job with golf and brecken with your crazy school texting and all the other great things! Cousin Josh Im so excited for you too! Chinese in New Zeland great work!!!! Well family as you all know that this week was Easter. Here in mexico there is not one day like easter. Here it is called La Semana Santa or Holy Week. Everyday has a special significane of the last week of life of the Savior. It is sad though as it is now more of a Spring break for the people than anything, but I still felt the spirit and specialness of this week. It has been a rough week to as many people left for this time of vcation and literaly the streets were empty and we contacted the whole day and very little people wanted to listen to us. It was probably the hardest day of my mission on sat but it ended well as I closed the day in prayer. I was prompeted in prayer that duh its hard because satan is so real and is doing everything he can to try to stop this amazing work. As a missionary I have to keep an attitude of happiness 100 percent of the time and fight off every thought of discouragement of satan. It is a constant battle to fight off this opposition to retain the spirit. And if we dont have the spirit, we can not teach and for me, even more, I will not have the gift of the spirit of the gift of tounges. Every moment is so important. And so with this I am just a happy little gringo man walking down the streets of Mexico all day. I love it. This day was hard but I learned much, again of the importatnce of the calling. If we are not doing all that we can to live and teach and speak and think as Christ, whose work are we doing? and so it is that I just love trying to be like Jesus each and every day as i meet new people and have the opportunity to share my testimony and for them to feel just a small sense of the love. It is just so amazing! We have been working hard but ´people still have agency and baptism and investigators have really fallen through but in times of darkness, there always follows the light of day and this amazing gospel. We ahve one investigator named Ramone and he is 32 years old. His girlfriend is a returned missionary and has really taught him everything and he will get baptized this saturday. I am so excited for him as he is making the covenant to follow on strongly to make other covenants in the temple to have an eternal family and enter into the kingdom of God! Wow how special it is to see this in the lives of people everyday! When we have people like this, I just have such joy in my soul and can only imagine how happy our Father and Savior are to see another child return and choose for theirself to follow them. Wow this life is so special and so esencial. so we can all do better to live more in the way that our Father has asked us, and not only asked but commanded. I want to remind you that we all have these covenants with God right now and when we dont not honor and keep them, there really are consequenzes after this life. Also with these covenants, when we keep them, we will have more blessings than we can even think of. Remeber this as the work of the Father and Son is only this, to bring these blessings of eternal life to pass, to all of man. There are just so many things happening here everyday that I cant even think of them all. I really just love the mission more and more everyday as I thought lI loved it yesterday, It is amazing how much more I love it today. Its just like disneyland! Well everyone keep up the good work and some one tell Hma Mathews for me to keep up the good work in the MTC and just be so excited to enter the field. There is no way youcan learn all you need in the MTC to prepare for the field so just work hard and enjoy it! You will have strength moer than you can imagine if you learn to put your will competley in line with the will of the Father. Mi testimonio por Hma Mathews, tenga fe que El Senor va bendicirla. Solo podemos aprender todas  estas cosas con la ayuda de El. No tenga temor porque esta tiempo es tan corto y temor es de Satanas. Solo es un obstaculo por nosotros misioneros. Le amo mi prima! Nos vemos en como 19 meses! Cuidese! Ok nada mas ah nothing more. I love you my family and really take care!!!! Elder Larkin