Chapter 58: "Endure to the End" Days

Hi everyone!

Well this week had its ups and its downs, as do most weeks. But I definitely learned a lot, as you always tend to do on missions. This week we had a great lesson with Mandy - oh man, she's just so cute. And I love her because she's got things figured out. She was talking with me before the lesson officially started and she was like, "You know, my life has just been so much better since I got baptised! Is that normal?" And I said yes. And she continued: "I'm just happier and things are going well with my family and their business is going well and my school work is all going well." And so I told her that Heavenly Father was blessing her for being faithful and obedient and reminded her to keep being obedient so she can continue to enjoy these blessings. And she said, "Oh, of course I will do that!" Love her.

Then this week we also found Li, one of our investigators from a while back! He had gone to China and we had lost contact so it was sad because it was so golden. But we saw him on the street this week! And he agreed to meet with us! Yay! So that was awesome since the rest of our week was less than stellar.

As for the subject of this letter, there were definitely a few days this week that really tried my patience. In one of those days, I honestly stood still for like two minutes straight just thinking, "Am I going to cry, or should I just laugh about this?" You know those days, where it seems like you're trying so hard to be good and then something goes wrong, so you try to be positive, and then another thing goes wrong, and then you get a bit annoyed, and then another thing goes wrong, and then you just want to punch a wall. I had a few of those days this week. I call them "endure to the end" days. Because sometimes, not everything goes the way I want. Sometimes life is hard. But that's just part of being alive and being a human. It's part of our mortal experience. And so we just have to endure to the end and pray for help and then go to work. So I learned that lesson this week, and I'm grateful that I did.

Well I hope you all learned something this week and had a good week! Remember to do something nice for someone else! You never know, they might be having one of those "endure to the end" days and you just might help them get through it. :) Love you all!

Love,

Sister Larson

A waiting for the bus selfie.

More delicious food (that i made this time).

I still love dolphins.

Here's that one Darth Vader guy playing the piano
 I talked about a few weeks ago. He's real. I promise.

Chapter 57: A Good Week to Eat Good Food

Hiya everyone!

So this week was the first full week with my new companion, Sister Xie. I discovered that she has this great talent of cooking really amazing, beautiful food. So we have eaten very well this week. I haven't eaten this well since I lived at home basically, so this week has definitely been a good one. :)

Just some of the amazing food I've had this week!!

We also had something totally wonderful happen on Sunday! It was our Stake Conference in Sunderland and it was really great. The best part happened after the conference though. 4 of our Chinese boys received the Melchizedek Priesthood and were ordained Elders. It was so amazing. I feel like I've seen these boys like grow up in the gospel, since I got here when they were all recently baptised. It's the coolest thing to be involved with someone who is progressing in the gospel and continuing to make and keep sacred covenants. I just love it!

A really not so attractive picture of me and my companion
coming back from stake conference. We were at the front
of the metro so we were feeling pretty fly. Haha.

This week we also went on exchange with Sister Holland and her companion, Sister Schmidt! It was short but good and we had an awesome finding blitz in the city trying to talk to as many Chinese people as we could! We met one really solid potential who is Christian and whose family is also Christian, which is quite uncommon. But hopefully we will see him this next week and start the work of building up our area again!

As I've been on my mission, I've seen how missionary work is not only finding people to teach about the gospel. It's also about strengthening each other as members and working with people who have lost sight of the gospel path they once walked on. At our Stake Conference, a lot of the talks were about the Europe Area Plan for this year, which emphasises spiritual and temporal self-reliance. As we work together, we can help to bolster our individual spirituality and strengthen our testimonies. 

Some of the gorgeous flowers starting to poke out after a long winter!!

It's been a good but tiring week, as usual! I hope you all are doing well and having fun! The flowers are finally starting to bloom here and the weather is slightly warmer! Yay for spring! Have a good week, love you all!

Love,

Sister Larson

A picture of our shadows

Chapter 56: Slow but steady and still in Newcastle

Hi everyone,

So this week seemed to be a bit slow in our area. Probably because it felt like the week didn't even start until Thursday. On Wednesday I went to Leeds to go get my new companion. It was fun going to transfer meeting and seeing all the new missionaries, as well as the ones going home. Plus, driving through the English countryside gives plenty of gorgeous views! So that night Sister Xie came to Newcastle! She's pretty great and we've had lots of fun together so far. She really likes to talk and her Chinese isn't bad... Hahaha it's pretty good having a native speaker for a companion again. 

My new companion, Sister Xie (pronounced shee-eh), striking a model pose. 

Let's see, this week we did quite a bit of finding and taught a few lessons. I think the highlight for me was when we taught Mandy. She is doing so well! We were reviewing some of the lessons with her and she knew all the answers. She is just too cute. I also had one of those really awesome moments on my mission. She gave me and Sister Chee little paper cut bookmarks from China as a thank-you gift for teaching her about the gospel and introducing her to this religion. It just melted my heart. Sometimes it's hard when you have to go out street contacting in the rain and no one wants to talk to you or you go knocking from door to door and no one bothers to answer or hear what you have to say. It's hard to stay motivated. But when I saw Mandy and Crystal at church on Sunday, when I teach our investigators or recent converts and they say, "I really liked this scripture that I read the other day...", I feel like what I'm doing is actually worth something. I'm not here to get paid. I'm not here to go on an adventure. I'm here because what I have is worth more than money or experiences or anything in the world really. This gospel is what I love the most, and so I'm here to share it with people. And when people accept it and they start to love it too... There's no way to describe the kind of joy you get when that happens.

Our really yummy Sunday dinner we had yesterday.
Dinner always tastes better on Fast Sunday. :)

So that was mostly our week. Sorry it's a bit of a shorter letter, but I'm sure there will be more miracle stories to tell next week! I hope you all are doing well wherever you are in the world and that you remember to SMILE and have fun!!! Love you all!

Love,

Sister Larson

Sister Chee hid in the pantry.  I don't really remember why at the moment.
But it was funny.