My Dearly Beloved Family,

How is everyone doing this week! I hope really well. It's been a great week here in Mesa! The weather is beginning to turn a little more reasonable. Still hot--but bearable. And I hear that once we hit the second week of October, it's smooth sailing :] We even got a pretty hard rain storm one morning. We were on shift at the VC and it was great to be able to look out on it and see the wet people come in--but not be out in it :]  This morning the VC sisters did a service project together! We went over to the building/warehouse place where they store all of the Christmas lights for the temple. I don't know if you all knew this (it's okay I didn't before my mission :] ) But the Mesa Arizona Temple has crazy awesome Christmas lights every year. It's like twice as many than they have at SLC or something (or so I hear!) They don't hire anyone to come put them up.... each stake in the area is assigned a certain part of the temple and members help. Well it's a huge project that they work on year round. So we helped them to organize today and put stuff together. It was really fun and got me a little bit in the Christmas mood! (we listened to christmas music!). Apparently Stakes start coming in October to start putting lights up! And the day after Thanksgiving the madness begins! Each night they have concerts right outside of the VC. And it's every night until new year's eve. So I'm excited! All the sisters that were here last year were just talking about how exhausting but super fun it is!

This week has been good... I'm started to feel a little sick (I think that Sister Sordes gave it to me!) But it's not so bad that we can't work hard everyday! Just bad enough that when we get home I'm EXHAUSTED! But our area has been good.  We worked a lot with daily contact and have some people that are really progressing well. We are teaching Rodrigo and Edgar still and they are doing well! They have dates for this coming Saturday! They are both kind of nervous about it just because it's something new, and they don't have the support from their family. But right now we are taking things one step at a time and right now we are working on getting them to their baptismal interview on Tuesday! We reviewed the questions and they are both good to go in those aspects (at least as far as we know!) We are also teaching their older brother, Jesus, who has progressed SO much this week! It's been incredible! He went to the VC and saw the movie of Joseph Smith, and we also had a couple other lessons with him. He said that he has gone to a lot of different churches before where they have tried to get him to get baptized really fast and he isn't ready for that--so we are trying to respect that while still being bold with him. But his younger brothers are really excited to have some more support from their family.
We moved houses this week which took a couple hours out of our studies and time in our area on Saturday morning, but we are all settled in and are happy to be where we are. Although it was SUPER sad to leave the Jackson's house! I thought that I would be excited to have more space and stuff... but as we left we were both like oh nooo.. this is like home! The Jackson Family has been incredible hosts and have helped us so much. But I am excited for them that their son will return from the mission next week. We have moved into the Kellis house. It's so funny because they have their name--Kellis, written on everything and every time I see it it reminds me of Kelli. It look like it says Kelli's... like it belongs to my sister.. haha. They actually don't even live in the house-- they own two houses just a street apart from each other. So we live in the one they don't live in... but they are still there a decent amount. It is an interesting situation. But we live in the basement and it's been good. This morning we were actually studying when the doorbell rang, and since we were the only ones there we went and answered the door... and it was Jehovah's Witnesses. I was SUCH a weird experience to be missionaries when other missionaries are trying to teach you. We were like analyzing their approach and we actually talked to them and tried teaching them ourselves.
As a companionship we are working this week at setting baptismal dates--because we have so many people that are progressing... but just tell us that they aren't sure this is what they want and that they will pray about it. We know we need to invite them to be baptized with a date no later than the second visit, so we are repenting and setting a goal to really work on dates this week! Another goal that I am personally going to set this week is to spend 15 minutes with the area book each night. I haven't been the best at taking time to update the book EACH night and just review the progress of our investigators, recent converts, and even formers. We are always exhausted when we get home, and this week as we haven't been feeling well we've just wanted to go to bed, but I know that we will be blessed for being obedient in every aspect! Even with the area book!
I hope you each know how much I love you and how grateful I am for the love and support that I recieve from you! It means a lot to me to hear how you are doing and to hear what is going on in your lives! 
Love,
Sister Larson