Week #45

Happy Last Week in November! Ah!

It was fun to hear about every one's Thanksgiving! Sounds like it was a great day and that everyone was able to spend it with family! Mine was a little bit nontraditional... but good! The mission policy was that it wasn't a p-day... still a proselyting day... but that we could schedule as many dinners as we want and try to just spend time with investigators and members. So we started the day with a Turkey Trot! It was awesome! Apparently our stake does it every year and I was so excited when I heard about it! I tried talking Sister Sanchez into doing the 10K but she pretty much just told me that I was crazy. So we did the 5K and it was so fun! We actually did pretty well considering that we are out of shape missionaries. We ran it in 28:02. And when we finished I just remember how much I LOVE running and how good I feel afterwards. It didn't really distract me or anything... just made me excited to be able to get back into running when I come home. They had a pancake breakfast afterwards which was super delicious. We were then able to go and visit the Jackson Family that I used to live with. They have invited us to come eat dinner with them, but it conflicted with our scheduled dinner in the branch so we only went for a half hour to see them. It was fun to see them and see how everyone is doing. Then we went to dinner with the Soto Family. Something I didn't really think about is that all of our members are Mexican... and don't celebreate Thanksgiving. So I had pizza for Thanksgiving. But it was really good pizza and I was grateful :] Then we had meetings in the visitors' center in preparation for the lights starting and had the VC picture they do of all the sisters at the beginning of lights season. Then Sister Sanchez and I went back to our area to work because we weren't assigned to the lights until Friday. We had made these turkey cookies for all the members and investigators to be able to go and see them on Thanksgiving. It worked out great and gave us something to do on Thanksgiving. We were able to have a couple of lessons. A lot of people weren't home but we were able to leave them at their door with a note so they knew we were thinking about them!

Friday night we were officially back in the visitors' center. It was so weird... I felt like I didn't know what I was doing and that I didn't belong there anymore. But as the night went on I started feeling more comfortable and I am excited to be there and to be able to see the beautiful lights! We are there at night from 5:30-10:30pm. I love it... I expected it to be similar to the Easter Pageant... but it's not. The VC closed from 8-9 during the pageant when the pageant was going and we had that hour to eat or rest or just not be on our feet. But during Christmas lights we don't have that hour. And I forgot how exhausting it is. I was tired from being full-field on a bike and was excited to go back to the VC... who was I kidding. Christmas lights is wayy more exhausting. I love it. I've already seen so many miracles of just prepared people wanting to talk to missionaries... being about to talk to them and then send their referral. But it's seriously exhausting being on your feet happy talking to everyone for that long without any breaks. We just have huge mobs of people in there every night. Right now we are averaging 6,000 people in the nighttime hours but I've heard as we get closer to Christmas it gets even heavier. It's so incredible to be apart of this missionary effort. The VC right now has an international nativity display with SO many nativities from all over the world. That might be my favorite room to work. It's so neat to see the nativity scene in so many different cultures and realize that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the entire World.

So it's been a great week, but it's been full of a lot of changes! Just having the holidays and going back into the visitors' center has definitely turned our world upside-down. A lot of days it ends up with us having 0 or 2 hours in our area, but we are staying positive and know that God will bless us in our areas as we serve faithfully in the Visitors' Center. Sister Sanchez is awesome. She's such a great missionary and is loving serving in the visitors' center (it's not part of her calling but as long as we are companions she'll work there). She's doing so great and she's going to be ready to do whatever the Lord needs her to when we are done (is it possible that we only have three weeks left of training?) Transfers are December 19th. I'm kind of sad that they'll be right before Christmas and I'll probably be in a new area for my birthday and christmas. But I'm sure things will be so busy it won't be a big deal. 

Juanita has her date for December 8th. And she i a little bit unsure about it still. But this week we were able to have an awesome family home evening with her and her husband and a couple other families in the ward. We read in Moroni 7 about charity and talked about how we can try to develop Christ-like attributes this christmas. Then we played some games that were SO fun and it was awesome to see that family have fun together!

Well I hope that everyone is doing well! I love you all and hope that everyone is getting excited for the holidays!

Love

Hermana Larson