Happy New Years!

January 03, 2023

Howdy yall! I hope everybody had a fantastic holiday weekend. So crazy that it is already 2023. 2022 felt like the longest but also the shortest year of my life. I don't know how to describe it.

Anyways, the work was a lot better this week than in the past couple of weeks. We finally found somebody for the first time in 3 weeks. Now that the holidays are over, the work should start to get a lot better. We refound our friend Jeremiah, yall have probably heard that name before from these emails. He's the really funny alcoholic. He is a piece of work let me tell you. He calls himself the Iron Kidney because he drinks 10 beers a day and says that he isn't going to die. I beg to differ but hey that's just my opinion. He tried to tell us this week that beer was healthy because it has 1 gram of protein in it. That's just 1 of the many blasphemous claims that he has haha. Got to love him tho. He always gets us food and will talk about the Bible or something. So, there is a ton of work to be done with that guy.

Fun story for the week. I had a half naked grandpa try to fight me this week. It was the weirdest experience of my life. So, we were knocking in Douglass, and nobody was really interested. We get to a door, and we knocked and we hear some guy yelling from inside as he comes to the door. He tries opening the door and he literally couldn’t open it. It was like stuck or something. So, he yells “what do you want?” I say “we’re the missionaries.” He still couldn’t hear. He finally gets the door open and the dud is shirtless with pajama bottoms on. He’s super mad. Then he said, “get over here, what are you scared of me?” I walk up to the door and said, “No sir, would you like to hear a message or do you need any service?” Then he just slammed the door. Super awkward!

I finally have a miracle to share this week which I'm super hyped about. It was definitely the highlight of the week. Anyways, about 6 weeks ago, me and my comp were knocking in Douglass, and we asked this guy if he needed any service. This guy's name is Jess, and he said that he didn't need any because he can do it himself, so he told us about an old man that lives down the street that needed some raking. So, for about a week we spent a couple hours every day raking this old man's lawn. We finished that and the old man wasn't interested in a message. So, we went back to Jess a couple of days later to see if he knew anybody else that we could serve. He gave us some names. So for a while we would just go to him for service referrals. None of these ever led to a lesson sadly. But, this last week, we went to do that again, and he didn't have anybody else. But, i felt prompted that I should ask him if he would like to learn a little about our church. He said yes. Which was already great. We go on to teach him the resto and it went great, he was super involved and listened the whole time. Then, we gave him the BOM and asked him to read and pray about it. Which is nothing unusual. But after all of it he said something that just hit straight to my soul. After we gave him the book, he said "I was already sold on it just because yall are good people". I have never felt the spirit that strong in my life. At that moment I realized that all the weeks and hours of hard work and service weren't for nothing. After this rough past month that we have had with mission work, this made up for it all. I felt like Ammon after he had protected king Lamoni's sheep. Such a cool experience. Which leads me to my spiritual thought.

This week's spiritual thought is on service. Which i know is always talked about and some people get sick of hearing the same thing. But it is so important. These days, there are very few people that will go out of their way to serve a neighbor or a friend, or even a stranger. Which we need a whole lot more of. This world would be a whole lot better of a place if we all just looked outside of ourselves. Which reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures.

47 But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.

48 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.

It is important to obviously remember the first great commandment but to also remember the second great commandment. And that is to love your neighbor. The best way that you can show love to a friend or a stranger is to simply serve them. Because that is the pure love of christ. So, go find somebody to serve this week!

Elder Larson

Me and Elder Lassche in a road in the middle of nowhere.