Yesterday was so great!! We attended the baptism of an eight year old boy in our ward named Steven. Sister F and I have been teaching him to prepare to be baptized and he's awesome we helped a lot with the baptism and it turned out great! A lot of his family came into town who are not members, so it was a good missionary opportunity for us. They are all Italian. Steven was baptized by his uncle, who served his mission in Italy, the Sicily area. He got to serve where his ancestors had lived which I'm sure was really cool. I told him how Dad served in Italy too and how I want to learn to speak Italian. We went to a dinner after that with everyone and it was so much fun.
In the evening last night, we did some tracting and mostly got turned away. At one house though, the cutest old lady answered the door and was so sweet to us. She said she was embarrassed because she had already got into her pajamas and said maybe we could come back another time, but then she said "all right you ladies can come in." She is seriously the SWEETEST person. Her husband passed away recently so she is struggling to deal with that, and is very lonely. We taught her the restoration and gave her a Book of Mormon, which she said she didn't know if she could handle reading. But we marked a chapter for her to read about what happens to us after we die and said if she ends up wanting to, she can read it. She said she will look at it so that's promising. My heart aches for her because I can't imagine what she's going through and she is so incredibly kind! I can't wait to go see her again. She said that we came on the perfect night actually, it was a particularly lonely day for her. It is amazing how Heavenly Father guided us to her that night when she needed someone to talk to. I know it was no coincidence that we knocked on her door. Even if she doesn't accept the gospel in this life and nothing comes from us teaching the restoration, God loves all his children and guided us there to keep her company during this hard time in her life.
A lot of the people I mentioned in my last email have been impossible to catch this week... Like Greg who we had an appointment with... He ended up not being there when we went for the appointment. It's a bit frustrating when people don't keep appointments!
We also contacted a referral (a family, who was referred to us by their neighbors). We met the dad outside his house (he was in the yard talking to a friend) who goes skiing in Utah and was very open. He said to come back during the day sometime to meet his wife. His friend then told us where he lived and said to go talk to his wife someday too! So that was exciting!
On Saturday we got to do service. Brother Ollivetti in our ward has a non member friend who needed help painting, so us and 2 elders in our district got to go paint the bottom outside of her house and the porch and deck. It was so much fun!! It reminded me of painting with Dad, which made me really happy and also a little bit sad. But I really enjoyed it and it's always fun when people let us serve them
We are also meeting with the mayor of Clark's Summit tomorrow... We're meeting her for brunch and are going to see how we can get involved in the community with service and stuff, so we'll see how that goes!
I love you all so much and hope you have an amazing week!!
Sister Larsen
