Sister Larson's Blog: Week 10

This last week has been full of lots of ups and downs that is for sure!

Starting with last Monday the 12th, Sister Bone and I went to visit a less active member, Brother Winspear. We brought the Elders with us because he is a single man and we can't be in his home unless with either have another woman or two other males so the elders were great to bring along. Brother Winspear has definitely had to go through a lot of different trials in his life but some of them I could relate too. One of those was having had gone through a divorce and I know how hard it was to get myself to go to church when all you could see were couples sitting together with their happy little families. After he told us about this life, I was able to open up and share my story with him. As hard as some of my trials have been I am grateful that I am able to use them to help relate with others and give them that encouragement when they're hurting and struggling to see beyond the moment. Our visit was very powerful and the spirit was on fire! I am keeping my fingers crossed that Brother Winspear will open his heart and come back church!

Tuesday, the 13th, Sister Bone and I had our Mission President's wife come out with us to go teaching that evening. Sister Forbes is—well how do you say it— interesting and that's to say the least. It definitely was a trial of our faith to have her come out with us. All day long we were praying that we would know who we felt comfortable taking her to see. Thankfully everything ended up working out and we both survived the night.

Wednesday, we got a random text from Brother Longstreet asking us if we could meet him. We instantly got worried that something was wrong. Turned out that he just wanted to take us out to get some hot chocolate. It seemed to come at the perfect time! How did he know that both Sister Bone and I needed to take a little breather. It was so nice to be able to sit down and just talk. I love Brother Longstreet! It is so easy to be myself around him and that is quite refreshing! After a nice cup of hot chocolate he ended up taking us across the street to go grab some lunch at our favorite place, Snuffy's! Oh man, he was sure spoiling us that day!

That night we went to go visit Angie. Every time we go to see her we invite her to come to church and every week she never comes. This week, however, we had a different approach. Since I was going to be speaking I wanted to personally invite her to come and listen to me speak. She kinda just rolled her eyes and said that she would think about it.

Fast forwarding to Sunday— ANGIE CAME TO CHURCH!!! It was a miracle! She has been meeting with the missionaries for over two years now and the last time she came to church was probably about a year ago. My heart just melted when I saw her. But it gets even better! Angie seems to always have her walls up and comes off as a very cold person. She never has anything nice to say about most of the members of the church and for some reason she has told herself that she doesn't like our Bishop at all. Well, yesterday the speakers at church were just me and Bishop Patterson. After Bishop's talk she turned over to Sister Bone and said, "I take back everything I have ever said about that man." WOW— talk about someone's heart being softened. She had to leave at 10:00 to get herself to work on time and when Sister Bone tapped her on the shoulder to reminder that it was 10:00 she told Sister Bone that she could drive fast. She WANTED to stay for the rest of Bishop's talk. If you knew Angie at all you would understand that this truly was a miracle! I am so excited to meet with her this week! We are hoping we can maybe have a lesson in Bishop's home, but we will see.

Now, backing up to Thursday, January 15th, we spent a good chunk of time tracking and knocking doors in the afternoon. It was so nice out!!! It was probably in the 30's! The sun was shining and the sky was blue! It was just beautiful! I can't tell you what a difference that sunshine makes! Sister Bone and I were just chipper, singing and dancing around, it was great!

Friday, we went to visit our favorite Courtney and Debbi. They were doing so well with not drinking, but sadly they kinda fell off of the bandwagon. Debbi was just killing us today. She let us know that she was doing so good with not drinking until today when she had some shots, however, she also let us know that she is smoking weed like crazy to make up for the lack of alcohol. In fact, Debbi was kind enough to let us know she had some weed on her right then. She was just cracking us up the whole time while we were over there! But she had some really good questions for us and we were able to help answer those questions by sharing some scriptures with her so that was nice.

Most of that day we spent trying to plan a wedding. Tanneh and Joshua decided that they wanted to tie the knot this Saturday. They were going to just have Sister Bone and me there and have Bishop marry them. We weren't about to let that happen- so all day long we made phone calls to try and get things set up. We were going to do it in the Bishop's home. We called different members of the ward they had met the Sunday before and invited them. We got people to bring some cookies for afterwords and we were going to take care of the decorations. Pulling off a wedding in a day is crazy— let me tell you. Sister Bone and I definitely were working under pressure.

After dinner, we got a voicemail from Tanneh telling us that the wedding wasn't going to be able to happen on Saturday because they weren't able to get their paperwork done in time. We couldn't believe what we were hearing! We had just spent all of this time getting things ready!!! The next thing we knew we were making phone calls unplanning everything we had just planned. Oh my goodness, we were so frustrated to say the least. After all of those phone calls. I said ok let's call Tanneh. As soon as we asked Tanneh how she was doing, she just broke down crying. She explained how much she was struggling and that she was having a hard time understanding why she was having to deal with all of these problems. She told us that she was praying right before we called. She was yelling at God, asking him why He was doing this and if He even cared about her and then her phone rang. We were able to talk for awhile and calm her down and help her step back and see things from more of an eternal perspective. By the end of our phone call she was feeling a lot better. When we hung up we realized how selfish we were being. We were thinking about us and how much work we were having to do. It was a good reminder to refocus on what is really important. And how grateful we were that we called Tanneh right when we did. It's amazing how God works!

Saturday morning the 17th, we had a meeting at Bishop's with the Elders to go over some missionary stuff. Afterwards, Bishop asked if we could could talk. You could say I had a "PPI" with him. Oh my goodness, I can't begin to tell you how bad I needed that! We actually had interviews with our Mission President earlier this week on Monday. Sadly, my Mission President just doesn't seem to connect with a lot of people. I was really excited to meet with him, but I left feeling a little bummed out. But luckily, Bishop Patterson was able to make up for that! We had a wonderful talk! We talked about some things that had been weighing on me and he gave me some awesome advice! I think I will hang on to that advice for the rest of my life! Thanks Bishop! I am so grateful for that man and for him being so willing to take time out of his schedule to sit down and talk with me. What a cool guy!

Yesterday, like I said, Bishop and I spoke in church. I have to say it was an awesome sacrament meeting! I love speaking! I love sharing stories! And I love being able to bear my testimony to others! After sacrament meeting so many people were talking about how amazing that meeting was. It was cool to see the Spirit working in them. Dad, you will be happy to know that I got a text later that night from the Hosteters (the family we had Christmas dinner with) about how they sat down as a family and decided they wanted to apply something I said in my talk. They text me and told me that their family now has a family motto of Striving to have PMA (Positive Mental Attitude)! There go Dad, your PMA magic is spreading across the world! That's pretty darn cool if you ask me. And CJ so many people loved the story I shared about you at the bowling alley when you were 15 years old. I even had a little down syndrome girl come up to me and tell me how much she like the story about my brother. What can I say, the people out here in Minnesota just love us Larsons! ;)

A little girl, Catherine, from church made this for me. What a sweetie!

Like I said, this week has had some ups and downs, but I have to say we are on the rise now! I try to be like my Papa Bear and have PMA! Heck, let's be honest, it's really the only way to live!
Love you all!

Sister Larson