Dear Family and Friends,

I know I say this a lot, but missionary work is simply the best! The Lord is blessing us with so many miracles and I couldn't be happier :)

Monday after dinner we went to go try our Spanish speaking referral named Salvador and he was home! I've lost a lot of my spanish vocab and teaching skills but hopefully he understood a little of what we taught him. His Mom lives in Mexico and she converted to the church and referred him to us. Pretty cool. After that we went with a member in the ward to teach a lady named Shawna and we had a pretty sweet lesson. We asked what she was looking for and she said she wants to center her home more on Christ. So we taught and bore testimony about the power of daily family scripture study and prayer and family home evening. We're going back again tonight to do a family home evening with her and her daughters. So exciting!

Tuesday was great! In the morning we helped a part-member family haul some firewood since the dad is in California and their oldest child is sick. They live out in the booneys so we tried to visit some other members while we were out there. In the afternoon we finished organizing our member area book and it feels great to be totally organized again :) After dinner with the Elders Quorum president we went out on true splits for the first time on my mission! It was a cool experience and we made contact with a less-active family. 

Wednesday was perfect weather for biking and we hadn't had an opportunity to bike in Tahlequah so we were pretty pumped to bike around and talk to people. But then my bike had a deflated tire :( #SerenityNow But it still worked out and we got it pumped up later in the day :) For our lunch hour we got to go to institute at NSU (Northeastern State University) and it was a blast! I love institute and they feed us lunch each week too so it's definitely a win-win. After that we went with our ward mission leader to go teach our one progressing investigator, Kaylin. She has so many good questions and she is so much fun to teach. I'm pretty convinced that once she does some more studying she'll eventually get baptized. So excited for her! After we got back from that we went with one of the ward missionaries to teach another investigator named Erik. We committed him to come to church on Sunday since he believes in the Book of Mormon and says he has a strong desire to be baptized (Unfortunately he wasn't able to make it because he got sick). After dinner our appointment fell through and so we were on our way to try a less-active when the spirit reminded us of an investigator that we visited with the Arkansas Missionaries a couple of weeks ago. His name is Mark and we stopped by a had a good lesson with him. We did a lot of asking questions and listening and he seems to trust us a lot more now. Hopefully he'll be able to make it to church one of these weeks.

Thursday we had district meeting because there was supposed to be a huge ice storm on Friday. After that we had a lesson with a part-member family and had to drop them because of lack of desire. Then we had a lesson with a 12 year old boy who is slightly autistic and whose Mom and Grandma are members of the church. He came to church on Sunday and wants to get involved with Boy Scouts so we'll see how that goes, he might not need to get baptized if he's not accountable. In the evening we dropped another eternal investigator named Fred.

Friday we did weekly planning and then had a lesson with a less-active. Most of the lesson was just us trying to help this poor man figure out what he even believes about God. Then we had a good lesson with a less-active who came to church last Sunday wants to strengthen his faith so that was cool :) After that we went with a couple in the ward to visit an elderly lady and her granddaughter who got baptized a couple months ago and live out in the middle of nowhere. 

Saturday morning we had a coordination meeting with our ward mission leader and then he took us out to lunch afterwards :) In the afternoon we tried to visit a less-active part-member family and they invited us in. We got to know them and they said they were planning on coming to church in Tahlequah for the first time since moving here. They also offered to feed us dinner the next day #Miracle #TenderMercy Our return appointment with Salvador fell through but we were able to make some good contact with some other investigators. After dinner we tried to visit a lot of people and no one answered. At 7:50 we started tracting an apartment complex by our place and by 8 we had had no luck. But on our way back to the apartment to do 12 week, we remembered a potential investigator named Jerron who might be home. We knocked on his door and he invited us in. He said he read through the Restoration pamphlet and that it intrigued his curiosity. He's a Muslim who was born Christian but he's still open to truth. He then started asking us about the purpose of life, the afterlife, forgiveness, and some other questions of the soul. So we were able to give him some answers and he wants us to come back this week and teach him more. It's so cool how God leads us to people who have those questions. He said he started really pondering and thinking about that stuff about a week ago, right before we tracted into him. Definitely a miracle! :)

Sunday the part-member family, Chyna, John, and their son, Nile, came to church and fed us dinner! It was so cool and hopefully someday we'll be able to start teaching the non-member dad, John. After church we went on splits with the Bishop and one of his counselors and we were able to make some good visits. Bishop and I made contact with a less-active and did a stop by lesson with Salvador (Bishop served in Chile so he was able to speak a lot of spanish to him). Elder Hanks and Bro White had a lesson with a part-member family and ended up dropping them due to lack of desire. In the evening we visited some less-actives who weren't interested.

I was studying chapter 3 of the new Gordon B. Hinckley manual and came across this gem in D&C 19:38-39.

38 Pray always, and I will pour out my Spirit upon you, and great shall be your blessing—yea, even more than if you should obtain treasures of earth and corruptibleness to the extent thereof.
39 Behold, canst thou read this without rejoicing and lifting up thy heart for gladness?

How can we have this glorious gospel in our lives and not rejoice?! I love Gordon B. Hinckley's example of optimism, joy, laughter, and fun. Let us all wake up every morning with a smile on our faces and an attitude of "Life is good. Today will be a great day!"

Thank y'all so much for your examples of faith and light. It makes me smile to think about how wonderful y'all are :) Happy MLK day!

Love, Elder Larsen

D&C 128:19-23

1. Driving to our lesson with Kaylin

2. Who knew Oklahoma could be so beautiful!? Eastern Oklahoma is so pretty :)