May 21,2012   I Love My CHILI

This past week has been a lot of fun and full of some really good teaching experiences! We have lots of investigators now and seem to have a lot of appointments every day which makes the week go by SO fast!! I love it! On Tuesday we were able to teach the little girls, Madi and Kendell with their friend Abby (who we will start teaching next week at her family's house! Whoop!). We taught them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ which includes the basic principles of faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end. As we taught the girls each step we wrote each word on a separate piece of paper looking like stepping stones and they loved moving through each of them, it was a lot of fun. Each girl explained what each principle was before they could move to the next one and their answers was what made teaching them fun. Madi is the oldest around 9yrs old and she understood that the holy ghost was a gift that is given to you after you get baptized but that you can still feel it before you get baptized but its not with you all the time. She also understood that you can only have that help/comfort from the holy ghost when you are doing what you are supposed to do and not doing bad things. They all had some really cool answers that I will cherish...they're all some special little children of God, no doubt about that one. That night we had dinner with the Hamilton family and Neal was a little nervous about saying the prayer but while the kids were outside, he grabbed the drawing we gave him from off the fridge and said the prayer for the food!! It was so awesome. We all had a fun and good night at their house on Tuesday.

Wednesday we had our last district meeting before the end of the transfer and it was so fun! Since we had 2 elders taken out of our district last transfer, its been just the 6 of us for awhile and it has been lots of fun. It was a tender mercy for us that day to have a good last meeting together too. Sister Barnum was having a really rough day from morning till mid afternoon and it was cool to see how she would get better little by little as the day progressed. I love the power of prayer. We did get to teach this girl October who is dating a member, she is about 20yrs old and has grown up in a home where God is all around you that he isnt a person and doesn't really understand the importance of Jesus. It was a really interesting yet awesome lesson we had with her! She has a lot of really good questions and read Alma 32 that we gave her to read, which she had a lot of things highlighted that she liked! We also got to teach her on Saturday which was an even better lesson as we focused on the spirit and how we learn through the spirit. Since she believes in energies around her, meditation and taking time out of each day to ponder, she has this really awesome spirit about her. I loved hearing different spiritual experiences shes had. The best part about teaching her, she loves to read and learn! She read Mosiah 3 and 4 that we gave her which she highlighted in those chapters all over the place too! We love her, she is such a fun and willing investigator...she likes to take her time too so baptism isn't quite in store for her yet but it is totally okay! It is all in the Lord's timing.

Friday we had service that morning at the salvation army like normal, went to a members house in town for our usual lunch time and drove up to see their 2 front trees cut down into pieces ALL OVER their front yard!! The 13 yr old girl said she had no idea that their tree was even coming down that day and her dad (who is seriously like the hulk) was hauling the branches by himself. He came home when we had finished our lunch, so I grabbed Sis Barnum and we went out and went to work! The tree limbs were huge and there were a LOT of them. I was helping Mr HULK with the big limbs, moving the big trunk pieces around and doing the big stuff. We put them on the trailer, loaded us all up and took them to the city burn site, went back home and did another load. I gotta admit, it felt SO good to do REAL service and labor for someone but man I was SO tired the rest of the day haha. I felt like such a pansy! Spiritual tired, I get that all the time but the physical tired, its been awhile but I loved it :) Later that night after dinner, we went to see if one of our investigators was packing her stuff to move to Brookfield (outside of our mission...boooo) and found her fiance and friends loading up all their stuff in a horse trailer....so we helped them load up! The fiances friends were total country boys, swearing, one lighting a cigarette every 5 min, the other with a big dip in his lower lip but man they were hilarious! It was a lot of fun helping them move, didn't even feel like work. One of them reminded me of my cousin Trevor, he was so fun. (Larson family - please tell Trevor its not too late to write me!! Haha. I miss that guy!)

Sunday was one of my favorite church days since being out here. The first speaker was the branch pres wife and she started her talk but 5 min into it she said that she felt like she needed to bag it and talk about revelation. It was such a beautiful talk about feeling the spirit, knowing when things are true, acting on those feelings in moments instead of just letting them sit there and do noting for your life. She brought in an amazing spirit to sacrament and the rest of the lessons in church seemed to flow perfectly all together! It was so awesome. October was able to come to church and she said she really enjoyed church! I love when the spirit allows others to be teachers to so many others, exp non members :) After church we were able to commit this single mom we found a few weeks ago to learning from us! She was taken back when we told her that no one gets paid in our church and that we don't have 1 minister/pastor who speaks every Sunday. It was pretty cool watching her get all excited about it and then asked us if she could come to church haha. We said yes, don't worry ;-)

Today will be a fun Pday too, we're going up to Jamesport to the Amish community and meeting up with the Gallatin elders to go on a buggie ride!! The famous Leonard's in our branch live up there and hooked us up! I am pretty excited too, should be a fun day. I am totally nervous about transfers this week too so it will be nice to do something to keep us busy. Last week on Pday we went bowling with Momma Sperry and Nate (family we live with), so fun!! We had dinner with the fun Deardeuff family last night and the mom/daughters hugged us for so long because one of us or both of us might not see them again. It was so weird to have that feeling already with saying possible goodbyes. We find out on Tuesday night where we will be going and will have to be in Indep by 7am on Thursday if we are leaving. This week will be an interesting one. Please keep us in your prayers a little extra this week, I know I will need it. I love you all and am so grateful for all the letters and prayers you send my way!!! I miss you!!!

Love

Sista Larson