On Sunday, July 12, 2015, I hit my 8 MONTH MARK!!! Sister S. and I had worked really hard all week to try and get a new investigator to come to church today. We exercised a lot of faith and said a lot of prayers. We had a few solid potentials who said they would come. In fact, we were even going to meet one at her apartment and walk with her to church. Unfortunately, all of them had fallen through. The girl we were going to walk with to church told us later that she had got a bit to drunk the night before and didn't make it home, but that she wants to come another time. Her name is Agua and she is our favorite neighbor here. It's just too bad that she and all of her friends are constantly drinking and getting high. But that's what the gospel is for right?! It changes people! Anyway, so when we got to church we were a bit bummed thinking we weren't going to get our new investigator and then BAM Heavenly Father answered our prayers and sent us Cesili. She had looked into the church a couple of years back, but nothing ever came of it. And then TODAY she just randomly showed up and wanted to start coming back to church and learning more. Wow—how cool is that?! God is so good to us! He knew we had done everything we possibly could and then He provided a way for us to get our new investigator.
Sunday evening we had a group of people (and a couple of investigators) come to the church to watch the movie, "17 Miracles". (I believe it is on Netflix if you want to watch it). The movie was about the Mormon pioneers walking across the plains. There wasn't a dry eye in the room by the end of that movie and only more tears came afterwords when we opened it up for people to share their testimonies. I am so grateful for all of the sacrifices the pioneers made and I love hearing about the many miracles they saw along the way. This would be a great movie to watch on a Sunday evening! I highly recommend it!
Monday, the 13th, we helped Jen Reek move with a bunch of other people. On the drive back, the Higbees stopped at a gas station and let the elders and us get some treats. I just love those Higbees! They're just the cutest country folk I ever did see!
 |
| The Higbees are so good to us! Those were the BEST chocolate donuts ever! |
That night we had a going away surprise party for Daya for FHE. She is going back home to Mexico so it was a fiesta theme. Dixon challenged me to a game of ping-pong and we all know me and sports... but I decided to give a wack at it and guess what?! I WON!!! Yep, I guess all those years at our Larson family reunions played off. Nick– you would have been so proud of me! Your cuz dominated! Dixon couldn't believe it! To tell you the truth, I couldn't believe it either, but it's true, I beat Dixon!
Before we left to go home, there was some extra cake that hadn't been eaten from the party and well, I hated to see it go to waste so there was only one thing that could clearly be done with it! Who says cake is just for eating?! ;) Yep, there we go again... Sister Steadman and me at our BEST! (Bahahaha)
 |
| Here she comes! |
 |
| Yup, that's my face! |
The next day, Tuesday the 14th, we had some awesome lessons! First, we met with Iris. We were wondering where Iris was really at with the gospel. She was keeping her commitments, but we didn't know if she was really progressing, but today we were able to have our questions answered. This was one of those lessons were the Spirit just took over! I asked her what her favorite thing about the church was and she answered she love how it made her feel. We talked about that for awhile and then I felt very strongly that I should TELL Iris that she already KNEW the church was true! I couldn't believe what I was saying. But then Iris agreed with me. And then before I knew it, I was asking her if she would be baptized and she said YES! We talked about some dates and then prayed about it and decided on August 8th. Now the coolest part about this was during the opening prayer Sister Steadman had this strong feeling come over her that Iris was going to be baptized on August 8th and this was before we had talked about any of this! Man, I just love how the Spirit works! I'm so grateful for the Holy Ghost and for the promptings we can receive from Him.
After meeting with Iris we met with Dixon. We ended up listening to the conversion story of Bill Carpenter (I'm not totally sure where you can find a copy, but if you can IT IS INCREDIBLE!!!) Dixon has had a lot of challenges come at him in just the last couple of weeks that have made it hard for him to be able to go through with his baptism right now. It's so hard to watch him have to wait when there is nothing he can do. Dixon has the most faith I have ever seen a person have. He has to have one of the strongest testimonies I know! He is simply amazing. He wants so badly to be able to be baptized, but for some reason other people's choices are stopping that from happening right now. Bill Carpenter's conversion is unbelievable! We wanted Dixon to be able to hear about someone else who also had to go through a refiners fire in order to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Dixon was brought to tears listening to this man's story. But once we were done Dixon walked out with faith in God's timing and with his head held high. If only we could all be like Dixon!
Wednesday, July 15th, I spent a good chunk of the day at the "sleep" doctors trying to get some things figured out that will hopefully help me. I can't even begin to put into words how I felt walking out of there. For the first time in 28 years, I felt a hope I haven't ever felt before. God was answering my pleading prayers. The coolest part about this is the simple fact, that I wouldn't have been able to get this medical direction unless I had come on a mission. Looks like God really did know what He was doing when he sent me out on a mission. I'm so glad I listened!
The rest of the day we spent doing iPad stuff. We are having to switch over all of our area's paperwork onto our iPads and let me tell you it is quite the task to say the least, but we are slowly getting it done.
On Thursday, the 16th, we had a great district meeting where everyone in our district had a chance to share "their story". We're working on being more unified and part of that is being able to be open and vulnerable with each other. It was neat to be able to hear about everyone. There were some pretty cool stories that I would have never guessed. It just goes to show you that everyone has a story! We must love all we meet and look for the good in everyone!
That afternoon, we met with Iris again. We watched the restoration video so she could better understand the story of Joseph Smith. And then Iris asked us to tell her the story about Jesus. Sometimes, we forget that Christ is still very new for her. We were able to break down the story of Christ's life and we watched a little video about that as well. Iris loves learning and it is so exciting to see her grasp new things!
We also met with Dixon and went over Christ-like attributes. Jarrod joined us and the four of us were able to take a quiz out of "Preach my Gospel" to see where we were in different areas and see what areas we could work on improving in. We had a great discussion and were able to learn a lot from one another. I love how our lessons with Dixon have turned into these amazing discussions where I end up feeling like the student half the time. I think it is so neat that we can learn and grow from one another!
Telise, from the ward invited, us out to this fancy restaurant called Crave for dinner. And it was only appropriate that I order sushi of course! I'm not going to lie it felt a little weird going out to such a fancy restaurant on my mission, but it was still fun. My favorite part was when they brought us out our own individual warm wet towels to wash our hands with before our food came. ;)
After dinner we went back to the institute where Dixon was waiting patiently to play me again at ping-pong. He thought it was only fair that we have a rematch because he claimed he injured his finger on Monday night when we played. I figured I should let Dixon have another go, but once again this little lady WON 2 out of 3! Yep—sorry Dixon, you have no excuses this time! ;)
 |
| Just Ping Ponging it up with Dixon! |
Yesterday, Friday July 17th, we helped Courtney move in the morning and then we went to see Cesili (our NEW investigator). Cesili pretty much knows everything already. She wants to simply get involved with the ward and go at her own pace. Apparently, the thing that made her stop coming was the fact that she felt pressured to get baptized. So we're just going to be there for Cesili and help her make friends in the ward. Honestly, she is pretty solid already, she just needs time.
We switched things up again this week and ended up having our P-Day today. We got a good nap in, some letter writing done, and then we decided to take a trip around the world . Yep, that's right, the world. Our first stop was Italy. Sister S. took me to this little place called Cossetta's which is an Italian restaurant where we got pizza and gelato! Then we hit up the Global Market. This place has food and shops from countries all over the world. I ended up getting a cool little head scarf thing from Nepal. We had a fun time walking around and looking at random things from different countries.
 |
| At the Mexican market... Does that poncho look familiar Trev? ;) |
It's been another good week here! Hope you had a super duper awesome week! I'm praying for you all! Love you bunches!
Sister Larson
Scripture of the week: Alma 38:5
No comments:
Post a Comment