Elder Affleck

Elder Affleck was Harry's companion for only 6 weeks, but they became really good friends.

The pitfalls of leaning back in your chair.

So while Harry is getting a new companion and 2 more missionaries for his area, Elder Affleck has gone to Luten to companion with an autistic elder. ":o it's cuz the Lord trusts him so much."

To remember each other they bought matching jackets. (sorry, no picture)

Need a Missionary Moment?

The Lingo and the Suit

Harry was so thrilled to not have to learn a foreign language for his mission, but we noticed right a way that he was speaking a different English than before he left.

He talks in £ not $ (I couldn't even find the symbol on my laptop)

we live in a place called essex filled with "chavs," look it up xD bruv, init?

our flat is so posh! (a flat is an apartment)

its like 23 degrees not 80 mom. that's ridiculous ;3 lol, it's measured in celsi over here :)

hope you have a lovely rest of the week!!

Everything's cushy mate ;D that means, everything is good :)

so do you mean chips like fries or chips like crisps?... i speak english now

reading out loud is brilliant,

i've been having a grand ole time!

:D don't you worry bout a thing :) bruv. just keep everything nice n cushty. xD i so wish you were here to observe essex and all of its... essexness.

everything is good :) and my trousers fit totally fine, no need to worry. and why on earth did we spend so much on my trousers back home?? you can get proper posh trousers for 10 or 15 quid over here. quid means pounds btw. local lingo for you ;p and yes, i quite like my plaid shirt! Thank you :DDD i've had such a lovely time as of late.

>:p why? Do they just feel like wasting all of our petrol ;p that's dumb.

you should totally read Alma 34, it's choc' full of jolly good stuff. lol, no one actually says that here. well, here in Essex anyway. maybe elsewhere? whatever, Queen's English.

oh goodness p-day. oh i could go on and on xD p-day was beautiful!! we went to the lakeside mall with (almost) the whole zone! :D it's like, a proper mall, which doesn't happen often over here. anyway, i had TACO BELL!!!!! it's so not even as near as good over here, but it was quite nice :D and i had cinnabon as well... bleh ;p it was super good tho :) but yeah! :D and! most importantly!!! I got a proper english suit!!! xDD YES! :D super posh, way nicer than the ones i have xD and suits don't have to be plain black btw, in any way. it's a quite slim-fit suit and it's a nice grey :) super posh. i love it :) fits like magic.

We bought Harry the two suits required, 7 shirts, like 5 extra pairs of pants, the socks, the ties-everything the booklet about his mission said he should have.We dragged him out shopping. He has never liked to shop.

HE BOUGHT HIS OWN SUIT.
  
I'm glad he is finding his own style even if it's a little flashy for me.

The Faith of a Missionary

After this past week's Relief Society lesson (don't you just LOVE George Albert Smith?) I wrote to Harry:

I've always thought i had plenty of faith and that I understood it... until you went on your mission. I worry all the time and miss you so much- its like I've lost my faith in the Lord a little bit. I'm having a hard time having faith that he is taking care of you. Soooo this week I'm gonna be studying faith and praying to have it.

His response:

And mom, silly silly mom. I would like to quote scripture to you from the blessed book of St John. It's in John 2:4, Jesus talking to his mom. "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" ;) I find it very silly that you think you lack faith, because your faith is what got me out here in the first place! faith doesn't mean you won't worry, it doesn't mean you won't think about it, it just means that you trust in the Lord enough to DO it. Faith is a principle of ACTION. and you're quite an active person in the gospel :) you trust in the Lord enough to let your favorite child go all the way across the world for two years. (see how i sneaked that favorite in there? clever, huh?) anyway! I love you :) and it is always good to continue to increase your faith. that's the whole point of being here! :D developing, growing, making mistakes, learning, becoming more Christlike, etc. So i do encourage you to study it out :) but know that you have faith, don't ever doubt it :) and I have faith in you as well! So we can help each other out, yeah? ;) The Lord will open the way if we exercise our faith.

And it reminded me of all the times Harry has pulled me out from underneath a dark cloud of "poor me". He's just THAT kinda guy. Positive. Happy. FAITHFUL!

Harry's Adventures in Cooking

Before Harry left on his mission, we did all the things to prepare him to live on his own. We made him go shopping (with his sisters,so I don't know if that counted). Taught him how to do laundry and how to iron (I think it was the night before he left). 

But mostly we tried to teach him to cook. We taught him the basics: bowed dinners, spaghetti, baked chicken.

It seems that cooking falls to the new missionary companion. So Harry jumped in and started cooking.

I've realized that cooking is quite fun ;D especially when your only judge is yourself and a ukrainian who will absolutely eat anything you give him and say its delicious. quite ego boosting ;) i made tuna potatoes the other day, and they were pretty darn good if i do say so myself!! ;)

tuna potatoes are baked potatoes with tuna chunks, sour cream, and cheese!! :DD and i made something even awesomer the other day!!! so i made a plate of yorkshire puddings (these little flour based cup things) for each of us, then cooked some scrambled eggs, threw in some tuna and cheese, made refried beans in the microwave, my companion sliced up some carrots and bell peppers, put the mix in the puddings, added some creamy salad dressing... and VOILA!!!!!!!! twas awesome ;)


i bought a digital scale with my money xD everything in cooking over here is measured in grams, and the only way to accurately measure is with a scale ;pp quite accurate tho :33 makes cooking even MORE like chemistry :DD I made this absolutely sinful chocolate treacle cake the other day :DD it was filled with cream and covered in chocolate ganache
and it was three layers and HUGE and topped with raspberries :3 i took it to our district
meeting and everyone was quite happy :3

my latest cooking adventures have been preeetty fun xD i made monte cristos, disneyland style, they were amazing. we made like. i don't even know what it is. just tortilla wrap filling. we threw like everything from our fridge into a pan and cooked it. not nearly as gourmet as the monte cristos :3

 and i made a three tier cake, each tier a different flavor of citrus, lemon, lime, and orange. it had whipped cream and raspberry jam as filling. pretty sweet :3 and huge. but it was quite nice :) i made lemony couscous chicken the other day too. it was very nice :DD

so in my baking adventures this week.... we have a sister in our district who is allergic to wheat. usually i make a cake for district meeting so we all have something to enjoy together. but then this sister comes along and can't eat wheat, therefore, no cake. UNTIL! i notice a recipe i have for a cake without flour?..... coconut cake... so instead of flour, you use dessicated coconut :oo weird yeah? i thought it was too. and then i made it. and yeah, it's weird. the batter was legitimately more like a cloud than cake batter. egg yolks beaten with sugar until all fluffy and stuff. a bunch of coconut folded in. stiff egg whites beaten in. a cloud. WEIRD. put it in the oven. baked it. LIGHTEST CAKE OF ALL TIME. plus some creamy coconut filling inbetween the layers of cake and some dried apricots soaked in orange juice. kinda weird ;p not my favorite cake. but the wheat allergic sister quite liked it! 

You can see that he's getting better and better. It's gotta be the chemistry of it all. Whatever. I'm looking forward to never cooking again once he gets home.

FIRE!

i almost burned the flat down xD i was heating some oil to make some fried chicken, while i was preparing the chicken. i had like nasty flour and barbecue sauce mix all over my hands and whatever. but the pan of oil starts to smoke a little bit. like white smoke. and i'm like.... hmmmm, that's probably not good. so i start to wash my hands to take it off the heat when the PAN CATCHES ON FIRE! xDDD and i just yell to Elder Affleck, and he comes and he's on the phone, and he just picks up the pan is like WHOA! so the first thought that comes to his head... QUICK!! TAKE A PICTURE! so i'm looking for the camera (to no avail, sorry) and the fire is just getting BIGGER and we're kinda freaking out xD cuz it's a grease fire, we're not supposed to put water on it, but we have nothing to cover it with! So it's huge now, getting way too hot to hold, so Elder Affleck just throws it out our back door onto the yard floor, and THE SKY JUST BURSTS INTO FLAMES!!! xD but it hit the ground, nothing caught fire and it eventually went out :3 and that was it! :) but then i made the fried chicken more carefully, and it was super good! Elder Affleck commented that it had a nice smokey flavor to it.

And you wonder why I worry.

Missionary Moments

I thought I'd share a couple missionary moments that Harry's had. I'm amazed that he is always so excited and positive.

This week has been so busy! I feel like everything is just MOVING so fast!!!!! we have a couple new investigators and they're really good :) we're trying to get a few people to commit to baptism, but everyone always needs more time ;3 but the work is so good!!!!!

MARK:
He starts to tell us about this dream he had... about this big, beautiful tree.... with this "glinting" fruit on it. ELDER BOYSYUK AND I JUST LOOK AT EACH OTHER. NO WAY. The man has never read Lehi's dream! Never at all in any way shape or form even heard of it!!! So we just kinda freak out (but try to hold it in so we don't look too silly) and we open chapter 8 in 1 nephi! :D we read it with him and he's just like wow. that's exactly what i saw. and then the spirit was just SO strong, we invited him to baptized and he said YES! :DDD so exciting :DDD and yeah! :))) that's our miracle for the week!

RITA:
SHE'S FROM CALIFORNIA!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!! and her brother is Mormon! Double yeah!!!! But she believes in aliens!.... what? yeah, aliens. and these things called archons. and this guy named Lord Rayel? crazzzzyy stuff, super weird and totally a bunch of rubbish. and did i mention she's been catholic, protestant, jehova's witness, buddhist.... but she's meeting with us so that's great! and she's super receptive, she reads the things we ask her to and more! and she's been praying! she said that she just had this wonderful feeling when she asked God if he was there! :D and she didn't want to stop praying! then she wrote her brother and he said it was the Holy Ghost, and then she told us and we testified to her and it was AWESOME!!! :D

DANIEL:
so we were walking down the street and this guy was pointing at us on the other side of the road. he walked across the street to us and asks heeeeey!!!! What are you guys doing here! and we had this awesome discussion with him! his name is Daniel and he's from Poland! and he believes that God and Christ are two different people! RARE. and he doesn't believe in drinking or smoking. The guy is PREPARED. so we're gonna meet up with him and teach him and BAPTIZE him cuz he's READY!!!! :D man, it's so exciting! who woulda thought the potential drunk would turn out to be such a prepared investigator! :D so that's great!

JAMES:
we had a workover (exchange, whatever, we switched companions for the day) with our zone leaders and i was with elder mosalakae! he's from south africa, as soon as we walked out from an appointment these guys come up to us (maliciously) and yell "i have a knife in my back, i have two minutes to live, how do i become saved!!!" and elder mosalakae destroyed them :3 then we talked with this atheist guy and those other guys walked by and told him not to listen to us cuz we were heretics ;p and then the atheist, who's really a nice guy, said it was people like that that make him an atheist ;ppp and then a few minutes later while we were still talking to the guy the police came up to us and asked the guy if we were bothering him xD straight up police man xDD the police said they recieved a complaint and the atheist guy (his name was James) started to say how we were just nice guys talking to him but these other guys came by and were being jerks about it. so that was fun :3

Hare's another cartoon by Arie (I really like him):



I'm so glad Harry is laid-back and easy-going. I'm glad that, as a missionary, he is blessed and protected cuz sometimes his missionary moments scare me a lttle.

First Companion and 4 Baptisms

From President Renn M. Patch,
President England London Mission:

We are pleased to let you know that your son, Elder Harald Douglas Charles Larsen, has arrived in the England London Mission. He seems very happy to be here, and is anxious to get to work. We are excited to have him here and look forward to getting to know him better.

Soon after he arrived, we introduced him to his first companion, Elder Maryan Boysyuk. He is a wonderful young man and one of our very best missionaries. Elder Boysyuk will teach your son the joy of sharing the gospel. They have been assigned to work in the Romford area in the Romford zone.

 Here are some excepts from Harry's first letters. I know it's a lot to read. If you don't want to take the time just read what's in bold text- you'll get the gist.

 Elder Boysyuk trained Harry for 12 weeks.
He's ukranian!!!!!!
elder boysyuk has three sisters and a brother :3 he's the youngest tho ;) one of his sisters got baptized while he's been on his mission! but no one else is a member, they're catholic :3 ukraine is apparently very orthodox :o he used to be a boxer, and a welder, and in construction... he's done many things with his life :3 he's 27 by the way! he wants to be a pilot when he gets back! he always comments on the huge "machines" in the sky ;pp it's quite funny. he's a funny guy, i love him to death :)

Harry doesn't use much punctuation just a lot of smiley faces and winks. :) ;) :D ;3 ;p xD

Anyway, Elder Boysyuk worked him very hard.

ive done more walking in the past week than i have in my whole entire life,

and oh my goodness, you don't know how much yardwork we've done xD in fact, we're about to go do more right now!!!! and i installed a television?...

SHOVELED HORSE POOP AND CUT DOWN A TREE FOR AN INVESTIGATOR.

and mom... i'm a real missionary now. i ride a bike. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW RIDICULOUS RIDING A BIKE HERE IS!!! i scoff at the bike riding i did while out with the missionaries back home, this is insane!!! But i'm getting super fit ;p so it's good! it's an attitude thing! I was REBUKED by my ward mission leader when i kinda complained about it a little bit, and he gave this whole lesson moments later on agency, and how someone can take away every basic physical choice you can make in life like what you wear, how you dress, when you sleep... but they can never take away your choice to be happy or have a good attitude. So i took that as a sign to get over it and be happy about my bike ;3

And because we've been fasting as of late ;pp i'm so bad at fasting. it's not even funny how driven by food i am. without food i am NOTHING. because usually i can use spiritual energy and physical (food) energy throughout the day, but fasting just leaves me to completely rely on the spirit. so by the end of the day i am absolutely completely drained of all everything everything ever. no reserves, no nothing!

In his first month, Harry (and Elder Boysyuk) baptized FOUR people

FINALLY A REAL MISSIONARY!!!!!!!!!!! AND GUESS WHAT?!?!?!??!?! HAD MY FIRST BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Samira :DDDDDDDD we baptized her in a chair cuz she has bad knees!!!! it took two times, but we got it done! and i was in the water too because we needed help to tip her back!

We baptized a family of three this week!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! four baptisms on my mission so far :D gomlath ralalage dilani kumudini menike, virigirege minod hasmitha hashiya srikantha, and virisirege gangul methushal srikantha! that was from memory btw ;) They're from sri lanka and they're so cool!!

I know! I know! You wish there were pictures. Me too. Elder Boysyuk kept Harry so busy he never had time to send pictures. He tells me he took some- I hope so.

So here's a cartoon by Arie Van De Graaf

At the MTC

Harry has been in the field for 4 months. He is happy and busy. Read about his leaving here. I've searched around for a website to post all of Harry's adventures to (and there are some out there), but I wanted to be able to do it my own way. I wanted to be able to write lots of stuff. 
And give you the opportunity to leave comments and provide a link to email him. So I decided to do it as a blog.

He went to the MTC in Preston, England.

They began to arrive. I was sooo glad to see his face!

Some struggled with jet lag. Harry was not one of them.

 

They were fed. He wrote that the food was AWESOME!

They went to lots of meetings.

We got lots of pictures of the back of his head or the side.
We told him to look for the camera and  SMILE!

They visited the town square.

And The apartment where Prez Hinkley lived while on his mission.
It was here that his father wrote to him:"Forget yourself and do the work."

Believe it or not there were a few missionaries that had not gone through the temple yet. So that was one of the first things they did. They had a special session just for them.

Preston was the place that the church was officially established on British soil in 1837.

 

The country is beautiful. 
Harry enjoyed sight seeing with his group.

Elder Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde went on the first England Mission and served from JULY 1837- APRIL 1838. When they arrived in Preston it was election day. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, had ordered a general election for members of Parliament. As they exited the coach they saw a flag flying that had on it the following motto: ‘TRUTH WILL PREVAIL.’ They decided to take make this the theme of their mission.

On July 30, 1837 (Sunday), in the River Ribble, nine souls were initiated into the kingdom of God. They were the first fruits of the Gospel in a foreign land. Starting out with only 9 members, Preston caught on fire and the gospel continued to spread, igniting city after city. The Preston Ward holds the honor of being the oldest continuously functioning LDS Church unit in the world.

And then it was Mother's Day and I got my phone call.

I was thrilled to hear his voice. But he hadn't been gone long.

They spent a lot of time out in the town practicing talking to strangers. 

There were only 52 missionaries in his group. Most of them went to the London South Mission. Only a few went to the London Mission.