Sister Paige Larsen—Email Excerpt

I will be receiving my new mission president and mission mom in the nest week. We're going to take Emma to the Washington DC Temple Visitors’ Center tomorrow before her baptism. The baptism is Thursday at 7:00pm. We had a really fun Zone activity today. We studied together, ate burgers and hotdogs, and played Ultimate Frisbee.

My companion and I have been working on being bolder in the past two weeks. Now we've given away 3 Books of Mormon. We've recited the first vision about the same amount of times. We may not be talking to many people, but we feel like we're in the right place at the right time.

We're teaching a 10-year-old girl of a member mom and a non-member dad. The girl has ADD so we need to make all the lessons interactive. We taught the Plan of Salvation first. We had drawn it out with colored permanent markers, and then cut it out into pieces for her to walk on. We had her literally walk through the Plan of Salvation. My companion had a sweater like mine, so she dirtied hers to represent before baptism. Then we gave the girls tools to use in life:
Faith—Flash Light
Repentance—First Aid Kit
Baptism—Bar of Soap (with clean sweater)
Gift of the Holy Ghost—Umbrella

Then when she was resurrected we gave her a white sweater to wear. The sweaters represented her body. She took the sweater off for death when she stepped onto the spirit world.

Elder Larsen—Email Excerpts

I love media referrals. I do. I really do. Give your friends a card for a free video, and make the day for a nice missionary. =]

I’m going to have some baptisms coming up. One for sure is Antonio. He did everything for baptism many months ago, but was on parole. We had to get permission from Salt Lake to baptize him, and we finally got it. So now all he has got to do is get a baptismal interview from President Hobbs.

We committed our next door neighbor to baptism and he accepted. It’s always in the place you least expect it! Oh well, the work is slower than it was. There is a lot more, “What should we do now Elder?” But the lessons that we do have are quality stuff.

We taught a lady the other day and the trinity came up. The lesson started out, “This is how it is,” then turned into “This is what they tell me,” then turned into “You're right, I don't believe it either.” It was funny. We are teaching them again tomorrow. I’ve got some sweet scriptures about becoming gods. (John 10:34, Psalms 82:6, Romans 8:16-17, and John 17:11)

I know this entry is kind of random, but I thought I’d write a longer entry. So stream of consciousness it is. It just so happens that the stream in my head has many turns and bends.

I met a man the other day. He was a homeless man that sat with me, and we talked. He said that he knew that drinking was bad, but that it wouldn’t be right to change until he was ready. I tried to convince him that repentance was his own choice. But he was one of those, “You’re young. What do you know?” kind of people. In the book of Timothy, I believe, it states, "Let no man despise you for your youth."
(1 Timothy 4:12 —Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. )

So I gave the old man a dollar, and told him to go to McDonalds.

I’m kind of loopy because I’m tired. My companion tells me I’m crazy, but when I start to teach I get in a teaching mode and I am completely different. So that’s good at least.

Beware of Golfing Turtles

Last P-day we went down to Rock Hill, South Carolina to the District Leader’s area. We hunted for turtles on the golf course at the country club where they live....no joke. Anyways, I found a turtle and picked it up. It scratched me and launched all kinds of excrement at me. It was madness. I wanted my revenge. I was going to eat it, but the DL said to get a bigger one because there wasn't that much meat on the one I had. So I let him go, but then we ran out of time before we found another one. TURTLES!!

Giving Service Can Be Amazing!

There is a less active member in the word I’m serving in who has many challenges. She is from Taiwan, and does not have an expert mastery of the English language. She is a single mother who battles with depression. She has two children, and they are living off of alimony and child support. The oldest child is a boy with Asperger’s or high functioning autism. He also has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, and about everything else you can think of, but he has an enormous I.Q. This makes things more difficult because it makes him more capable of finding ways out of doing his homework. She also has a daughter that started talking when she was one.

Over the past few months we have stopped by, and mostly just listened. Our understanding and love for her grew, as well as her trust for us. She eventually answered our phone calls and the front door more consistently, which is a privilege not all are granted. It came to a point when I felt prompted to extend service to clean up her overgrown yard. After insisting, and rescheduling a couple times, the day finally came. My companion and I, along with her home teacher, went to serve. We pruned, and picked up scores and scores of seed pods that had fallen from her magnolia trees. Halfway through the yard clean up she invited us inside, and showed us her rather large rock collection. As she picked up a small unimpressive stone she said, "I am rock." She dipped it in water, washing off the dust, revealing a beautiful display of color. She then said, "The world only sees rock. Heavenly Father sees beauty."

She asked for help putting some boxes in the attic, so we formed a relay. I stood at the bottom, my companion stood on the middle of the ladder leading to the attic, and her home teacher was at the top. In a matter of seconds all of her boxes of Christmas decorations were neatly stacked in her attic. Tears came to her eyes as she said, "It took me four hours to get it all down." Her home teacher pointed to the smile on my face and said, "See how much we love to serve."Then she said something that I will never forget, "He’s a little cute cupcake." She said in her thick accent. I couldn't help laughing a little, but her thanks was touching just the same. It’s amazing the affect service can bring.

Elder Larsen-Email Excerpt

I’ve biked hills way harder then El Camino Real, but I don't do a whole lot of biking in this area mostly because my headlight and rear reflector broke. I also have another reason not to bike. I didn't mention it earlier because I didn't want to worry y’all. A couple of weeks ago I passed out, and woke up on the ground with a sore nose. I have been getting headaches, and I have been really tired. I was worried I had a brain tumor, but nope I have asthma. Well the doctor thinks it is asthma. I don't get enough air when I breathe. I went to the doctor, and he had me breathe into a machine that calculated things like air volume, muscle strength, and how much air I get in, as opposed to how much air I get out. On Thursday I’ll do the Methacholine bronchial provocation test which goes as follows: There is a chemical that will give anyone an asthma attack. They will dilute it with saline solution, and give me different doses. If I react at a lower does than a normal person would, then it is official, I have asthma. As of right now, I just have a respiratory problem.

Oh, and I also have an intestinal parasite that I most likely got in my last area because the doctor who was treating me got the same parasite. Don't drink well water in the hills. LOL…ha, ha, ha, good times! Currently, I also caught a virus that’s going around, and I can't talk without a stabbing, horrible pain in my throat, which is probably not good for my already reduced respiratory function. LOL…I’m loving life. =] It’s not every day you get a friend that hangs out in your intestine. I think I’ll name him Steve. That’s short for Stevie Wonder because I wonder whose well I got it from. LOL.

Email Excerpts from Elder Larsen

We had another baptism on Saturday. It was the first time I actually got to perform the ordinance. It was the experience of a lifetime. You mentioned your studying the adversity of the sons of Mosiah. I have not suffered everything they did, but I have experienced days full of closed doors and lots of walking, days full of rejection and blind people, days full of frustration and dropped investigators, and I see it is for my good. I thank Heavenly Father for the opportunity to see that I am not enough. It is only when I see that clearly that I can sufficiently lean on the Lord in faith. With those hard days come beautiful ones when lives change, testimonies grow, and everything falls into place. The way I look at is, the hard days are for me, and the beautiful days are for them. I’m glad I can do all I can when those days come.

I didn't get to watch the inauguration, but it was on in the background during a lesson we taught.

I’m staying in this area for three more months. I’ve been here 4½ months, so that’s a total of 7½ months in this area. That is a total of 11 months out before my third area. Ask me how I know it will be three more months? I’ll tell you. My companion is going home at the end of this transfer. I’ll have to show the next Elder the area the transfer after that. A transfer is six weeks. Two transfers are three months. So I’m going to know this ward real well before I get moved again.

Elder Isaac Larsen—Email excerpt

I had an experience with following the spirit. It was getting late. It was around 8:00pm, an hour before curfew. Virginia Wall, a less active member, came to my mind, but instead of going to her house I thought about how little success I’ve had with less active members. Though honestly I had mostly only dealt with her non-member husband. Instead of visiting the Wall family, we went to visit an investigator that wasn’t home, and then some potential investigators who also were not home. Then her name came to my mind again, so we went by her home. When she came to the door she looked both touched and surprised. She was very ill, and was almost ready to drive to the hospital. Her member ex-husband was not available to give her a blessing. She prayed and then we showed up. Afterwards she said, "I’m coming to church on Sunday. Where is it?" She even said she would bear her testimony on Fast Sunday.

I have learned that miracles are not wrought just by faith, but also by faithfulness in following the promptings of the Holy Ghost.