Miracles

Boa tarde todos!! 

This week... was INCREDIBLE! There was a miracle every day. I'm really amazed at Heavenly Father's love for all of his children, for a couple different reasons.

 We had a baptism on Sunday! We found a little girl this week whose grandparents are members but she hadn't been baptized. She is 10 years old, her name is Clarice, and she is super sweet! When we found her, she was with her grandparents. We wound up sharing about the restoration and she totally understood it! At the end of the lesson, we asked everyone to kneel and Clarice to pray and ask if The Book of Mormon is true. We also asked everyone to stay kneeling for a minute in silence after the prayer. Clarice's prayer was so incredibly powerful. For that one minute, everyone stayed kneeling, and there wasn't a dry eye in the room. I felt as though I was in the temple. Clarice, a little 10 year old girl, certainly changed my life for the better, reactivated her less active mom, and invited her aunt to take the missionary discussions. I will never forget when Clarice looked at us and said, Elders, I want to be baptized. As soon as possible.

It was so special to see her enter the waters of baptism and be baptized by her grandfather.

Another wonderful moment was when I met a member of the ward who met my Great Grandfather! My great grandfather had served in Recife many years ago. This member said that his family were the pioneers of the church in recife, so I asked if they knew a Presidente Larson. This member had a picture with him! He was pretty young, but his father had served with him. They had a picture and everything! So cool!

There were many other very powerful miracles that happened this week. I'm a witness that the Heavens are certainly still open and that we have a loving Heavenly Father who desires nothing more than the eternal happiness of His children.

I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Larkin

Brazil!

Olá todos! 

It's been a wonderful week! After a very long flight, I'm back in Brazil!! On the way here I met up with some Elders from my MTC district, it was super fun catching up with them.

The area I'm in is Imbiribeira, it's pretty far north in the mission and I'm loving it! I'm with the Zone Leaders for the time being, their names are Elder Teodoro and Elder Mondadori, and they're hilarious! They were both serving in Africa before the pandemic and they're super fun to be around. They told me that the week before I got here, President Crane told them they had a miracle coming. So they prayed for this miracle. Then they got a call from the assistants to come meet their new companion. They were shocked it was an american. Elder Mondadori said it is a miracle! A very BIG miracle. Ha ha.  

There have been so many miracles already! We had a baptism on Sunday, that was a super special experience. The only people there were us, another companionship of Elders, the Bishop and Severino, the guy who was baptized. I played the piano, we had a quick testimony meeting before the baptism, and that was that haha.

When I was in the MTC I had a really good friend named Elder Marques. He is from Recife and we connected because he knew I was coming here. He told me all about the city, and all about his family, and he hoped that I would run into his family when I got here. Well, long story short, I ran into them after sacrament meeting! After talking a while I mentioned when I was at the MTC and they said they had a son there the same time as me! Their son is Elder Marques! What a small world we live in, I was so happy to meet them.

I'm so happy to be back in Brazil! I've already had the chance to run into some of the people I worked with the first time I was here. The two areas are close to each other, so I was super excited about that! I can definitely tell that I am meant to be here at this exact time. God's timing is perfect, He knows a whole lot better than we do. 

Thank you for all that you all do for me, I really appreciate it! I love you all!! Have a great week!

 

Até mais!

Elder Larkin

Arrival Of Elder Larkin!

Welcome to the Brazil Recife South Missionary Family!! 

We are very happy to welcome your missionary to the Brazil Recife South Mission. After the plane landed, we loaded the new missionaries with their luggage and took them to our home for dinner and to spend time getting to know each other. We had a wonderful conversation and taught them a little bit about the area where they are serving. We show two photos: one of them was Marco Zero that marks the birth of Recife. From this point, the entire city of Recife and the state of Pernambuco were measured. We discussed with the missionaries that just as Recife started in this same place, so does its missionary service in the Brazil Recife South Mission. We asked new missionaries to decide what direction they would take in their missionary service and what kind of missionaries they would become, when comparing the beginning of its mission to the simple starting point of this great city and state.

 

The next photo we shared with them was of the Recife Temple. What a beautiful temple it is! We focused on the teachings of our dear Prophet, Russell M. Nelson, to "start with the end in mind". As we discussed the importance of the Temple, we discussed our mission purpose: to invite others to come to Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost , and endure to the end. Our goal is to help everyone come to Christ and receive the blessings of the Holy Temple.

 

After dinner, they spent the night at a hotel near the mission home. This morning, we spent time in the mission office with each individual missionary to get to know them better and discuss any personal or medical needs they may have. They then met their coaches and received instructions on health, safety, finance and life and daily missionary work. After lunch and questions, they went to their areas. Know that we pray fervently to know who should be the companion of your missionary. They have some of the best missionaries in the entire mission!

 

We like to see our new missionaries frequently, so that we can personally discuss how they are adapting to the new environment and missionary life. In the coming weeks, we will have additional follow-up training in the office, as well as zone conferences and in-person interviews. This ensures that we will see each new missionary several times during the first six weeks of the mission. If they are serving in Recife, we will probably see more than that. We love to take every opportunity to visit you in your areas.

 

Here's a little bit about our family. We have 6 children and a daughter-in-law. Our eldest son served a mission in Chile and his wife served in Texas. Our eldest daughter served a mission in Japan. Our 19-year-old son is serving in the California Fresno Mission in the United States. The other three are here with us in Brazil. Their ages are 16, 9 and 6. And finally, President Crane served in Portugal and also in the Cape Verde Islands.

 

This is an exciting time to be a missionary, and an especially exciting time to be a missionary in Brazil! In September 2019, President Nelson said: “They talk about things that go viral. Participation in the Church will go viral here in Brazil ... This growth will be exponential ”. Your missionary will play a significant role in this growth! We are grateful for the sacrifice you are making to allow your missionary to serve as a representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 

Oh, how we love these powerful missionaries! It is difficult to describe, but from the moment we met them, we felt an instant love for them. Thank you for preparing them to be here and for trusting them with us! We love you as our own family and will do everything we can to protect you and help you become what Heavenly Father wants you to be.

 

Each week, you will have the opportunity to chat with your missionary on the day of preparation. As you communicate with them, we invite you to share positive news to help them focus on work and not be overly concerned with things at home. We also encourage you to write a spiritual message for home (this can be part of your journal). Many blessings are bestowed on friends and family as they share these experiences. We recognize that this is a sacrifice for you and your missionary, and we hope you will see the wonderful blessings that come from supporting you in this, the greatest of all causes! As President Nelson said, "There is nothing more important on earth today than helping to bring Israel together!"

 

With love, 

President and Sister Crane

 

 

Contact information:

President Mark Crane

1-55-81-9268-2943

mark.crane@churchofjesuschrist.org

Sister Cosette Crane

1-55-0 81-9941-5979

cosette.crane@churchofjesuschrist.org

 

Send letters and packages to this address:

Elder Larkin

Missão Brasil Recife Sul

Rua Doutor Pedro de Melo Cahu, 104

Boa Viagem, State of Pernambuco

51020-080

Brazil

Facebook Group: Missao Brasil Recife Sul —Presidente e Sister Crane We use to post announcements, information, experiences and photos. However, any important information will also be sent to you.

Mixed Emotions

What a wonderful, busy week!!

Some pretty awesome work happened this week, I'm so proud of all of the people we have the privilege to work with.

We got to meet with James every day this week!! He told us that we're his best friends, and everyone was in tears when he told us that what we've been teaching him has completely turned his life around. I'm so proud of him, he is definitely one of my best friends too.

We found an entire family to teach!! They're the Baez family, and they are AWESOME! They have 3 kids who sat through the entire discussion AND asked questions. Pretty incredible.

I'm also off to Brazil on Thursday. I would really appreciate your prayers for the process to run smoothly and that all the small details workout, that I'll be able to arrive without any major problems. I'm very excited to get there, I'm super sad leaving the WVCM. Lots of mixed emotions, but that shows that God has put a lot of really awesome people into my life while I've been here. What a blessing that has been.

Thank you all for your love and support!

Your favorite missionary,

Elder Larkin

Pics: 

We toured the Greenbrier as a District today! It was pretty awesome!!

Recife South

Hello everyone!! 

We had another fantastic week this week. On Saturday we had a day, mission wide, of purposeful invitations. It was a day set aside just to extend invitations! One that really stood out was when we invited our Branch Council to read the Restoration Bi-Centennial proclamation and to let us know their thoughts and feelings about it. I'd like to extend that to you all as well! Let me know what you think after you get the chance to study it!!

On Thursday I got a phone call from President Newman, he said that my assignment from The Brazil Recife North Mission had been changed to the South Mission! I'm so excited to return to Brazil I can hardly stand it. It's definitely something I've wanted to happen for a while, and it's finally here! So I've been preparing a little bit and making sure my Portuguese is up to par, I'm so excited to see what the future holds in store.

On Sunday my companions and I had the chance to speak in sacrament meeting. I spoke on The Plan of Salvation and focused on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I basically focused my talk on a quote from Elder Matthew S. Holland's talk from the October 2020 talk, it says, "We must never forget that the very purpose of repentance is to take certain misery and transform it into pure bliss. Thanks to His “immediate goodness,” the instant we come unto Christ—demonstrating faith in Him and a true change of heart—the crushing weight of our sins starts to shift from our backs to His." This is so true, because of His Atonement, our downfalls can be used for our good. 

I love you all! Thank you so much for all of your love and support, it really means a lot to me. I love hearing from you all! Because we were in Lewisburg for most of the day today, I didn't have much time to reply to all of you. Know that I'm grateful for all of you, and I'll catch up with you next week!

Elder Larkin