Froolisha Vienachten (merry christmas)

Elder Ure and Elder Larson

Tuesday and Wednesday we had meetings this week with the new missionaries. One is called New missionary training and the other is new missionary certification. At certification we pretty much have all of the missionaries that are finishing training come and teach the lessons to their trainers to make sure that they are all trained up and ready to train someone else. 

On Thursday we did some preparation for MLC which is this week and we got to go out to our area for a little bit. 

On Friday we went to District Council down in Broadway and then we went over to Baytown to have companionship study with one of the companionships down there. We were supposed to go to the temple that nigth with some Recent Converts but there was a lot of flash flood stuff and so President Hewlett decided to cancel it to keep everyone safe.

Saturday we got done with our daily planning and we found out that we had an extra car at the mission office and so we took a road trip up to Livingston to drop off the car. After we had a lot of things to put together for MLC but we really felt like we needed to go out to our area for some reason so we followed that. We ended up sitting down with a man named Oz who has had a lot of hard things go on in his life. We were able to testify that the Savior could help him and his family. We are going back this Thursday to teach him and his family. As we taught him I really felt how much love our Savior has for each one of us and wanted to help out Oz. 

Sunday we had Stake Conference in the Summerwood Stake. We got to hear from President Rascone, President Hewlett, and Elder Torres of the 70 so it was a spiritually uplifiting meeting. Then Elder Mills and I took an Elder to the Airport who was waiting on his Visa. I got to meet President Peterson of the Houston Texas mission when he dropped off the other Elder that was flying out that day. 

We were finally able to watch the Christmas Devotional (Elder Mills)

We have transfers again this next week so we are getting all planned for that. We also have Christmas conferences the first week of the transfer so we will be getting everything all preped for that. I love this season and Love the Savior and I'm grateful for His life. I love you all!

Elder Cameron Larson 

Hey Everyone

Hey everyone here is the run down of the week.  

This week we had interviews on Tuesday and Friday with 2 of the zones in our mission. On Wednesday and Thursday we had zone conference with the missionaries. We talked about what it means to have Faith in Jesus Christ. It has been my favorite thing to study on my mission is what it means to have Faith in Jesus Christ because it is the first principle of the gospel. We talked about what it means that he is the Firstborn of the Father, The Only Begotten of the Father, The Redeemer and all of these other merits that Jesus Christ possessed as a spirit child of Heavenly Father. I know that He is the only way that we can return and live with our Heavenly Father again. 

On Sunday it was the only day that we were able to go out and do a little bit of proselyting and we also had fasted that day. We got super blessed and we found a part member family that we are hopefully going to be working with. The Wife is a member and the Husband is not. They also have a sweet 9 year old that is not a member. We also found this family of 3 that knows some members in the ward and we had an amazing Restoration lesson with them. The spirit was very strong as we talked about the First Vision and we are going back on Thursday. 

I love this Gospel so much and I know that Jesus Christ lives and leads this Church. I promise as you learn more about Him you will find greater joy in your life. Love you all!

Elder Cameron Larson 

Mom’s Questions

Will you be watching the first presidency devotional tonight?  Where will you watch it and who will join you?

We didn't get to watch the First Presidency Message because we didn't have anyone to watch it with. We did catch a tiny bit of the last talk before our meeting with President Hewlett. 

What goals have you and Elder Mills set?

 Elder Mills and I just finished helping make everyone better teachers. We might focus on building leaders and people who can support the mission in the Future so we will go out and do companionship study with a lot of the missionaries.

Tell us about Elder Mills family.

 Elder Mills is the oldest of 4 kids. He has 2 siblings that are adopted in his family. One of them is from Louisiana and the other is from California. 

What will you be doing with Light the World?

 We will have to figure out what we want to do for light the World. We have New missionary training and Certification for new missionaries this week. We also will be going to the temple to help out with the recent converts that are going to be coming that week.

What percentage of time do you spend doing administrative work vs proselyting?

Recently we have spent a ton of time doing administrative stuff because  

we have been super behind this whole transfer. We had some stake realignment things happen out here and so for right now we live like 35 minutes away from our area. So until we can get things situated Proselyting has been pretty hard.

Week 3 with Elder Mills (kind of)

Happy thanksgiving everyone! I forgot it was thanksgiving this week until Wednesday and someone asked us if we were eating anywhere. 

This week Elder Mills and I were not really companions. We had 3 exchanges so we were with other Zone Leaders all week. It was super fun though because we have the best missionaries in the world in our mission. 

This week I was with Elder Brown from American Fork who is the Orange Zone Leader, Elder Stevens from South Jordan UT who is the Kingwood Zone Leader, and my old companion Elder Robison from Beaumont! They are all such amazing missionaries and I learned so much from them. 

For thanksgiving we got to eat with a family and then we played catch up in the office and got everything done we needed to. 

Friday we drove with President down to Beaumont to do interviews with all of the missionaries. 

Sunday we went to the Mission President's Fireside and got to listen to all of the recent converts speak and that was an awesome experience. 

I'm so grateful so the opportunity I have to be a missionary and to learn more about the Savior. I love the gospel of Jesus Christ and know that we have a Heavenly Father that loves us. Here is a good scripture for you to ponder for the week. 2 Nephi 2:6-8

The video is a sweet send we found next to our apartment. 

Mom’s Questions

Were you in the MTC with Elder Mills?  Did you fly out together?  Were you in different districts?  I don’t remember seeing any pictures of him in the MTC.

So Elder Mills came out the same time as me but he was in a different District in the MTC. We still were on the same flight and everything. 

Any family conversions on Thursday at 5:00 as prophesied by Elder Mills? 

We actually got super behind on stuff so Thanksgiving was our catch up day so we didn't get to go to our area on Thursday at 5:00. 

Where did you spend Thanksgiving?

We spent thanksgiving at a family called the Febbos. 

This week we didn't get to do the "turkey trot" Elder Mills has been a little bit sick so running isn't the greatest for him. I'm not sure if I could get under 21 minutes that is pretty fast. 

Voice Memo This Week

Found this bike in a tree....

Great Picture of Elder Mills

I am excited to hear from you tomorrow and hear about your new responsibilities as AP.  What does your day/week look like?

It really depends on the week. I'm super excited because at the end of November we have Elder Ochoa coming and we will tour the mission with him. We will probably eat dinner and everything with him so that will be a really cool experience. Other than that we conduct a ton of meetings so we drive around with President Hewlett a lot which is awesome since he is the best ever! I'm going to send a little voice thing since that is a lot faster too. It's been pretty crazy but Elder Mills and I get along super well and things are going great!

Busy Times

Elder Larson and Elder Mills

Sorry today is going to be super crazy.  

We had a couple of amazing miracles this week that I want to tell you about. 

1) we have been contacting on campus a ton and we found this girl who's mom is a recent convert. She offered to feed us and so we brought a member from the branch wirh us and had a powerful lesson on the restoration. 

2) Alex, the kid we have been teaching, sent us a text this week saying, "Hey can I ask you a question?" We told him to go for it and he said, "can I get baptized already?" Originally he was going to wait all of the way until December for his girlfriend to come back but he had been praying about it and just couldn't wait. It was a complete miracle!

After our awesome day president Hewlett called and asked to talk with me and he called me to be the next assistant. I'm super excited for the opportunity to serve and to learn from him. My new companion is Elder Mills and he is from Heber Utah. He came out with me and we are going to have a super good time together. 

I also figured out that Elder Valerga, who was a senior missionary here served in the same mission as Grandpa Dennis. 

They called me on Saturday night and said they were going to come get me the next day at 3. As soon as we got back to Kingwood on Sunday we hit the grind and transfer planned and met with President Hewlett. We picked up 15 new missionaries yesterday so it was super weird to welcome them. They were like deer in the headlights they seemed so lost. Then we took them to the mission home and had dinner with them and we are training them today. Then we are going to the temple with the departing missionaries. We will take them to the airport tomorrow. 

I'm super excited to get to work with my new companion and President Hewlett and learn from them both,  it will be a good experience. 

I will talk to you later love you!

Elder Cameron Larson 

Hills!

Missionary Correlation

Elder Olsen

Elder Ure

First Day of School

Hey everybody!  

So we tried to be festitive and all on Pday and carved pumpkins in preparation for Halloween. The only problem is I forgot that the humidity in Texas is like 8000% so they only made it like 2 days RIP. 

The rest of the week was really good. I got to go on an exchange with Elder Topham who is a new missionary and is from Mona UT. The only reason I know where that is is because of the rope swing down there. We had a great day and we contacted a ton of people on campus. Our typical day is we go down to the insistute building at 9 and we teach people if they haven't gone to class yet. If there is nobody there then we go out and talk to as many people on campus as we can. It is a ton of fun and you get to meet a lot of really cool people. 

On Friday Elder Robison and I went to up Woodville for their District Council and then we split up and I went with Woodville and Elder Robison went with Jasper. It was soooooo pretty up there and there are actually HILLS!! I got super hyped about it since it has been forever since I've seen anything besides a dump or a bridge haha. Woodville is a super small town of like 1,000 people so everyone has met the missionaries before so that was super different. Everyone that is a member there is just part of 1 big family called the Odoms. 

On Sunday we drove all the way out to Kingwood with Hans who is a returning member and he brought Alex who we are teaching to the mission presidents fireside. I got to see a lot of the YSA's from my last area so that was super fun. And a lot of the people that spoke I knew because they had been recent converts in the Lake Houston zone. So it was really just a great day. 

Things are still going out here and I know this is the work of the Lord. It really is His work and I'm so grateful he lets me be a part of it. Something I have really come to learn and love on my mission is that it is ok if we know we can't do things because it helps us be humble and rely on the Lord. When we are truely humble and rely on Him then we can be confident! I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Cameron Larson 

Mom’s Questions

Is Lamar the only campus you visit?

 We only go to Lamar since it is close. There is another college campus out in Lake Charles Louisiana but that is pretty far away so we don't try to get people who are out there to come. 

The kids and I went and got our flu shots this week, do you get a flu shot on the mission?

 We got our flu shots last Pday!

In what way are you and your companion similar and in what way are you different?

 We both really like to talk to people which is good for a YSA and being on campus a lot. We are both pretty good at being able to connect with people. 

When is the next transfer date?

 Transfers will be next week on Tuesday

Do most of your members of the YSA ward live at home or on campus away from home?

Most live in Vidor and just drive from out there. We have a few that stay on campus that their families don't live very close. 

Another Good One

Lamar Football Field

Well this week was pretty crazy with all of the stuff that we had going on so I will just give you the highlights. 

1) We went 3 exchanges this week. It didn't even feel like I had a companion this week. We went to Silsbee, Port Arthur, and Eagle Springs with the assistants. I loved going to Port Arthur because it was my old area! I got to go see my convert Dallas and his family and they are going to work to get him prepared for the temple. 

2) Silsbee is a super cool country area and I was with a new missionary Elder Baumann and he is doing a great job. 

3) Crazy story: We have been trying to track down this less active in the YSA that actually went to my highschool. We decided to go to Canes in Port Arthur after our exchange and some members walked in and said hi to us. After that we went to go say hi to them and it turns out that they were from Pleasant Grove AND they were the parents of this girl we have been trying to track down. There really are no coincidences in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Well that is really all that happened this week. It was such a remarkable experience to get to meet Elder Holland and all of the other general authorities. I think I am having withdrawls from hearing general authories speak to us on the weekend now. 

Love you all and keep the faith!

Canes!

Just carrying around the kids in the van

Tri-Mission Conference

A tri-mission conference was held for the Houston, Houston South and Houston East Mission.  Cameron was able to connect with Sister Emily Simpson (Houston South) and Elder Cole Karren (Houston).

We had to drive 2 hours to go back to the Summerwood chapel Friday Morning so we left at like 7:30 in the morning. We had a zone conference before the tri mission conference since all of our mission was going to be together. After that got over we went to lunch really quick and then we headed back for the conference. We sat in the very back of the chapel since that is just how things worked out. I saw Sister Simpson come in and so I waved to her and she came over and talked to me for like 5 minutes but then the meeting was going to get started. Pretty much everyone in my mission knew she was in the other mission and so they were all just waiting for me to say hi to her so that was probably a little weird. After that the conference was really good. It was to all 3 Houston Missions and we had Elder Teixera who is in the Presidency of the 70 and Elder Lynn G. Robbins spoke as well. They talked about a lot of really good things and I took a ton of notes from the conference. The really cool part was that they all wanted to meet us and shake our hands and so they let like all 500 people there go and shake all of their hands. Elder Holland said he wanted to do that so that he could look into our soul real quick and see if we are doing alright haha. But he said he was surprised and said that our missions are doing really well. After that we had to hustle because we had a lesson to get to that night. So we hurry and got a picture because I knew that you would want one.  :) I also got to see a lot of people from my past area that were there to help with the technical stuff of the conference. There were 2 people from the Fall Creek ward and I got to talk to Stake President Rascon for like 10 minutes so it was really was an awesome day! 

The next day the same people did a broadcast for all of the YSA's in the area so we got to attend that as well. It was a really good conference and I took a ton of notes about it. Something that stuck out to me while Elder Holland spoke was he talked about how much God really loves us. He is not a vengeful person that judges all of the mistakes that we make but he loves us and he really wants us to be happy. He asked all of the YSA's to know that because he felt that they were being to hard on themselves and worrying too much. 

We also got the opportunity to go to the temple this week with our YSA group. We took a recent convert named Patrick so that was our ticket to go haha. After the temple we got to eat at this really good place called Gringos. 

Ashley Brown who we taught in the Beaumont 6th ward got baptised this week so that was awesome. We missed it since we were at the temple. Our investigators Alex and Daniel are both progressing towards a baptism date and we had a less active/recent convert reach back out to us and asked us to help her come back to church. 

This week is going to be crazy because we have 3 exchanges planned and we need to get 2 baptismal interviews done and a bunch of lessons with our people that are progressing. We aren't really sure on how we are going to get it all done so far but it is going to be a super fast week. 

Anyways Love you all and have a great week!

Elder Robison

Cameron was assigned as a zone leader in Beaumont YSA ward with Elder Robison (they were trained in the MTC together)

Back in Beaumont!!!

Elder Larson and Elder Douglass

Hey family!

Sorry I don't have a ton of time to write this week. I got transferred from the YSA.....to another YSA!!! There are only 2 in the mission so I don't know what I have done to deserve this haha! My companion is Elder Robison from Payson UT. He came out with me and we were in the same MTC district so this is going to be such a good transfer. 

Elder Douglass and Elder Larson

This past week was a blur. It was super hard to leave the area because I have grown to love the members and the people there so much. Elder Douglass was an awesome companion and we will continue to be good buds. I got to say bye to all of the people we baptized and so you can't ask for much more. We have one of the people we were teaching in the YSA getting baptized this Thursday but I won't be able to go since we will be super busy over here :( 

Elder Briggs Family

Sorry for the short email but I will send some pictures to make up for it. Love you all and have a good week!

Elder Douglass adjusting to missionary life

Elder Jensen adjusting to missionary life

Dem Boyz go to the temple

Elder Larson, Ammon (YSA Ward) and Elder Douglass after the temple

This week we saw a ton of ways that the Lords hand was in the work. I will give a few examples.

-We had exchanges with the Baytown Elder planned for Tuesday night this week and so we drove down there and we had a dinner with Brother and Sister Davis. While we were there the Baytown Elders told us they were sick and they were not going to be able to do an exchange. We could have thought that it was a mistake to go down there but we both really felt like the Lord needed us to go down there. Brother and Sister Davis have a son who is about to come home from a mission and they have been praying about what they should invite their son to do. Elder Douglass felt prompted to share his experience with how BYUI really helped him gain a testimony and got him out on a mission. They really felt like that was an answer to thier prayers. It was cool because we would have never gone down to Baytwon unless we thought we were going to exchange.

New mission bike (JK)

-We taught this guy named Yi who came from China and has recently been introduced to Christianity. He was actually planning on going to Utah that weekend so he is going to check out temple square. Also perfect timing!

Here are some other highlights of the week:

-We got to go the temple! The recent convert we were planning on taking for the first time had a really bad situation with her friend like an hour before we were supposed to leave so she cancled. We called her up and we both felt strongly that she still needed to go. At the temple she said she felt peace and didn't worry so much about her friend

-Exchanges with Elder Price! He is such a good kid and is a really good football player. We figured out that we actually played basketball against each other growing up. 

Elder Douglass on a swing

Something I have really felt like recently is that the Lord is over everything and knows our circumstances. We had so many times this week where we could see his hand in the work. I know that as we trust him and follow him he will lead us to happiness. He helps us who are weak be able to meet the challenges we face. Love you all!

Mom's Questions:

What is the deal with the tie you are wearing in the picture with Cecilia?  It looks like Elder Douglass is wearing your tie or he has one like it….. Where did you get the tie you are wearing?

I got that tie in the picture from a member in Vidor and I just decided to wear it haha. Elder Douglass has the same tie that I have so maybe one of these days we will match. 

Have you started reading “Saints”?  I am on chapter 12…..

I did start reading it this week! I think I am on chapter 30 or something. It is a really good book!

 

Last week you said you did district training.  What was the topic of the training?

 The topic of the training was whatever we wanted to train our districts on. We decided to talk about staying dilligent and making sure our missionaries are out talking to people all day. 

Anything out of the ordinary happen this week or business as usual?

There's always pretty crazy stuff that happens but it is pretty usual now so I have a really hard time coming up with stuff during my emails. I have kept a journal every day of my mission so that has been good! 

Other than that things are going really well out here. I think I might get the boot for transfers since I have been here for 4 transfers but we will see! I would love to stay here another one haha I feel like I could spend the rest of my mission here