Christmas

Olà todos!

I hope you all had a wonderful week and a wonderful Christmas! It only seems fitting that Christmas was a little strange this year. This year has been pretty different, I have definitely learned to expect the unexpected. I am so grateful for all of you, thank you for all the mail! I appreciated it so much, I loved getting all of your christmas cards. 

This Christmas I'm grateful that I am a missionary and able to testify of Jesus Christ. He is the one that we celebrate at Christmas time and I'm so happy to be His servant! I loved the Light the World initiative and how many awesome service opportunities there were. It made me realize how many people we can serve daily and it made me want to be better at looking for those service opportunities. 

We were also able to have exchanges this week! I went to Lewisburg with Elder Smith. He's an amazing Elder and I was able to learn a lot from him that I want to implement into how we go about the work in our area. We had a blast and it's always fun  to be around someone new.

Thank you for all that you guys do. I'm so grateful to have so many wonderful examples of Christlike love and service in my life. You are all awesome!

Amo vocês!

Elder Larkin

Pics: Exchanges with Elder Smith and the sunrise this morning! Sorry I don't have any pictures from Christmas! It's kind of hard to take pictures of zoom calls hahaha

Showers

Olá todos!! Feliz Natal!!

I hope everyone had a great week, we sure did in Covington.

On Saturday we had a mission wide day of contacting. As a mission we had the goal to contact 3500 people. Well, we blew that goal out of the water and made 8,011 contacts in one day!! It was pretty incredible to see all of the miracles that happened. There were countless stories that resulted, there were many blessings that came from unified hard work.

Funny story, last Tuesday our shower broke. It was super clogged, the water from our sink started to fill up in the bathtub, and it smelled HORRIBLE!  We called our landlord, the mission housing coordinator, and a plumber after we tried to fix it ourselves, and didn't hear back from anyone until today. We've been showering in our garage, and that was an experience. I'm never taking my shower for granted again!

This Christmas I'm grateful for the Savior and the hope he brought to the world. He is the greatest gift of all, I hope we can all remember Him during the holidays. This year has been hard for a lot of people especially, but there isn't a problem that can't be solved with a reliance on Jesus Christ. He loves you all so much. I love you all. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Elder Larkin

Pics:

Feijoada (Brazil rice and beans, super good), our district, and today we went and checked out a resort in our area!

Travels

What's up everyone!

This week was honestly pretty crazy. An Elder in my district is originally assigned to Taiwan and he had to go back to Utah to get his Visa. That meant that I had to go to Lewisburg, WV, to pick him up, pick up another Elder who was travelling with him in Beckley, WV, drop them off in Charleston, then head back to Lewisburg to be companions with Elder Diede for the week, all during a snowstorm! It was a fun adventure that I'm not going to forget anytime soon! Up until then I had never really driven in the snow, but I'm basically  a pro now haha. It was a fun week though! Elder Diede is an awesome missionary. He has only been in the field for about 6 weeks, but I still learned a ton from him. 

We had a zone conference on Wednesday and I loved it! It was all online, which was a bummer, but I was still able to learn a ton. We talked about Christ- like attributes and how we need to strive to develop them in order to progress. President Newman taught that right now, serving a mission, is the best time to develop those attributes. We literally focus all of our time on Him and bringing others closer to Him, the impact it will all have for later on will be incredible!

Also, my companions and I made some Christmas cards! If you'd like one in the mail please send me your address! 

I love you all, thank you for all you do! Have a great week!

Elder Larkin