Week #29

Hello!

I hope that everyone is doing well. It is hard to believe that it is August! Schools here in Arizona are starting this week. Oh, and we are having a mission tour coming up next week! It is going to be August 14th and a member of the 70 is coming. I have forgotten his name at the current moment... it starts with an A. That's helpful I'm sure. He's the first one with all the pictures in the most recent general conference edition of the Ensign. haha. Oops. We are excited for the mission tour though. Should be great to have some training! 

This week our ward mission leader helped us so much. He's been really busy with work and hasn't been able to attend very many lessons with us. But our branch had a young men's camp out this week and he made a huge effort to get as many youth there as he could. And there were about 6 nonmembers there which is so exciting. We also had 12 investigators at church on Sunday--because our ward mission leader was so good about contacting them, and having members invite them to church. We weren't even at sacrament meeting because we were on shift at the VC, but our branch took good care of them! 

One of the nonmembers that went to the ward camp out was the son of a recent convert and one of our investigators. His name is Alberto and is such an awesome kid. He's fifteen and we had our first lesson with him last night. He had a really good experience at the camp out and during our lesson it became clear to us that he really doesn't know anything about God. He believes in God, but hasn't really ever been taught anything. But when we asked him if he wanted to learn more and grow closer to God and be able to say more firmly that he believes in Jesus Christ, he said yes. So we are really excited to teach him. We're excited that his dad will be able to bear testimony to him and talk about his conversion, and also that he can be an example to his mom and his mom can see the change it makes in his son. They are going to Mexico for two weeks from August 12-25, so we won't be able to make much progress while they are gone, but we are trying to do as much as we can while they are here!

We are hoping to have a couple of baptisms this coming Saturday. Blanca and her two daughters are going to be ready and we are excited. She has been ready for a long time but hasn't been able to quit smoking. But she is doing SO good and we are so excited for her to be baptized! We have a couple other people that have dates for this Saturday that are less firm... I don't know how else to say that haha. We are praying they happen but we aren't as certain with them.

Last night there was a mission president's fireside in English and we took an investigator, Lupe. He speaks English even better than he does Spanish, but insists on attending the Spanish branch. (It actually caused a little bit of drama with the English elders that cover our area. They kept passing by to see him and inviting him to the English ward. Lupe told us that he felt like he was in a tug of war and we had to get some leaders involved. haha) I think it is because he is a single dad of an 11 year old girl and wants the sisters to teach her and not elders. I'm not exactly sure of all his reasoning, but we teach them in English for the most part. But Lupe absolutely loved the fireside. He is so excited for the day when he can get up and share his story and testimony with other people. He is planning to be baptized on July 18th... and he's telling everyone about it!

This past week we had interviews with President Ellsworth. He is such an incredible mission president. I honestly don't know how he does it. We have over 200 missionaries in the mission, and somehow he remembers everything that I write about in my letters, and everything I say about our investigators. I've been struggling lately with feelings of inadequacy. Here in the mission there is a lot that is expected of you... you have to be exactly obedient and are constantly self-evaluating yourself, setting goals and looking for ways that we can improve--which is so good. That's something that everyone needs to be doing in their lives. If you aren't trying to improve and don't have goals, then you are probably aren't making any progress. But it's been hard for me to feel like I'm never quite there, and that I'm not good enough. That's sounds silly saying it like that, but it's how I've been feeling. But President Ellsworth helped me a lot to realize that we are never going to be perfect here, and that we need to just try our best... and be happy now. 

We also got to go to the temple and do a session this past Wednesday! It was pretty busy because it had just opened back up from the two weeks of maintenance they do every July! But was so good to go to the temple and feel the spirit and peace that is there! 

I love you all so much and I hope that everything is going well!! Be good :]

Love,
Sister Larson