Sept. 26 2016

This week was ehh. My companion (Elder Castro) still has his infection of the kidneys and also we took an x ray of his foot cause it was hurting and turns out he has 3 fractures in his foot. SOOOOO basically it's like what I went through but only with my companion. It kinda sucks but my comp is getting better faster than I did so that's good! 

Good Stuff

This week in sunday school, we were talking about repentance and there was a question asked, "when is it too late to repent?" Some people were saying a few things like, when we lose the desire to repent, when we've committed very big or very many sins, and things like that. I realized something in that moment. Literally there IS NO "too late." That is the beautiful message of the Atonement. Jesus Christ's atonement is infinite, without end. It doesnt matter at all the things youve done, how old you are, what nationality we are, if we are of a different faith, whatever. Christ only asks that we TRY to keep his commandments, and when we mess up, ask for forgiveness. Even when we die, we'll have the chance to accept and use the infinite forgiveness that Christ offers us. I imagine that even when we are standing  before God, being judged, that we will still have the chance to be pardoned of our sins. Christ is the one who intervenes for every single person that ever lived, is living, or will live. If we accept his gospel, and his atonement, we have a chance to live with our Heavenly Father again. Alone, we will never ever be perfect, which is kind of a requisite of getting into heaven, but thats just part of being human. Since no unclean thing can be where God is, alone we are done for. But if we join up with Christ, we can be perfected. Its like 2 companies. We are like a company that is completely bankrupt. And Christ is the head of another company with infinite amounts of money and profit. Christ extends us an offer to merge our companies, and all we have to do is give all we have to him, and in turn we get all that he has. By merging the companies, we immediately become profitable, it doesnt matter how much money we had before, how much we lost, or what happened, because now, we are apart of the only truly successful company that there is. The only way we lose this opporotunity is if we cut it off.

So, in this life, we should search out Christ, and his gospel. We need to give our 100%, to try to be the best we can. Its never too late to start, and theres nothing we can do to lose the love they have for us and no way to lose this opporotunity.

Onto some fun stuff now!

So this morning I had the pleasure of waking up at 5:30AM to my companion basically wailing in pain, saying his back was on fire, stomach hurt, and basically wanted to die. Naturally i was like "ahh freak what now," and called my mission president. We contacted our branch president and had him drive us to a clinic about 30 minutes away in his little plantain truck. There my comp was put on an IV drip and took a urine sample. Turns out he has a stong infection in his kidneys. Awesome right?

Anyways, things are going good here in my area! We have like 5 people that will probably get baptised in October so we are working with them, and the branch keeps getting better! The presidency change was really helpful. We are all good here!!

Hope everything is well back at home! Also thanks everyone for sending pictures! Awesome to see :)

Until next week,

Elder Larkin

Last Week with American's

This week was the week of a big service project for a handicapped member in our branch. She has a wheelchair and every week we go to her house to take her to church. The only problem was, that to get out of her house you basically had to go off-roading, and that is very difficult in a wheelchair, and absolutely impossible for her. She literally cannot leave her house at all unless she has someone help her, so once a week she gets to leave her house to go to church. We had an idea to level the ground and make her a ramp and told the branch about it. We did it this week for this sister! (The same sister who's child died in the accident) We got all the tools and all the stuff to make a cement ramp and we got together at 9 in the morning to start. at around 2:30 we were almost finished and we made the way x1000% better. The sister still cant leave her house without help but this way it'll be so much easier for us, or someone else, to help her out. It is so good to do service for others. We had a discussion about service and it was decided that service is one of the most important things we can do in this life. We imagined that God will know that we aren't perfect in everything and that's why we have Christ, but we do have the chance to be charitable and do service for others. That's what I think will be very important. To see if we served our fellow man. 

Matthew 25:40 "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Oh and with more coconuts this week we played "coconut baseball" with a machete. Good stuff over here!

Be sure to send me alot of pictures and everything! Hope all had an amazing week!!!

Elder Larkin