Elder Larson Serving it up in Maryland: FIREFLIES (&dragqueens)

What's up!!!

Walkersville so far has been pretty dang good! We have been working aka thrusting in our sickle super hard! We installed this finding idea called Mini Zion where we go to the same area at the same time every day and talk to everyone there everyday(not about the gospel). We counsel with the Lord on where and when we should do it and then go and make a bunch of friends in that area! After talking to the people there ideally every day and getting to know them, on Sunday we go around and knock on the doors of the people that we know and then it changes from two 19 and 20 year old strangers to some friends that share a message that can help them out. This week was the first week that we have done it but we already found an investigator from it! His name is Carlos and he is from Mexico. I'll tell you a little more about him later haha;) We have also been trying a bunch of different ideas on getting member referrals and working through members, hopefully the member missionary work will take off here! Also the members feed us pretty much every day here, it is a good thing we are on bikes a lot of the time because I don't want to get fat again!! (I've lost almost 20 pounds since I left Antietam ward hahaha). Also the fireflies are out and they are dope!!

We had some pretty sweet experiences this week. We were walking around and contacting on the street and this older lady was struggling to fix the lamp on the front of her house so we offered to help and she went into shock! "Do you really want to help?????" "Yes ma'am how can we help you?" She then started venting to us about how good God is and how she had prayed not even minutes before then for help and then we showed up asking her to help. After we helped her fix it we started talking to her about the Book of Mormon but she was not into it and wouldn't even accept a copy of it because she is Muslim. We both felt inspired to keep trying and explain a little more and finally she accepted a copy and as soon as she was holding it her jaw dropped... She said that she had goosebumps on her arms just from holding it and she expressed to us that it was what she has been looking for for a long time, apparently a while ago somebody told her about how there were prophets in America but she had no idea who or when they were there. It's amazing how the Spirit can change situations so much!!! Then Carlos... Haha.. So we were walking around in our Mini Zion and we talked to this guy named Carlos. He was super nice and invited us in and offered water bottles to us and all that good stuff so we were pretty pumped! We taught him about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon and he felt the Spirit testify of it and he promised us that he would read the whole book before the end of the transfer!! While talking to him we found out that Carlos is gay, and that as a side job he does entertainment at the local gay bar as a drag queen...... But so far he is super solid!! We will see what happens!!

Other than that, Howard is still doing good, we'll probably go with him to the temple sometime soon so that should be fun! I hope y'all have a good week!!!

-Elder Larson