Elder Larson Serving it up in Maryland: ADVERSITY=MONEY$$$ & HALLELUJAH's!!!

What's good?

This week was filled with adversity and tender mercies and miracles! I have a few gray hairs after this one, but it was definitely a good one! To start out, we had zone training and it was cash money #3hunna!!! The theme of the zone training was discipleship and after the first training we had a break out where we had the missionaries teach about the Atonement and midway through we stopped everyone. We had them all complete step 1 in the addiction recovery program booklet and then have a chance to pray on their own and ask for forgiveness. We then brought everyone back in and restarted teaching about the Atonement again after they just experienced it themselves. It was amazing to feel the difference of the teaching after the missionaries took a chance to repent and invite the Spirit back in. You could feel a huge difference just walking into the room, it was a special thing to be a part of.

On Saturday we had the opportunity to see Troy and Katrina get baptized, but the process was a whole lot more complicated than you would think! Troy is Renee's son (Renee was baptized a month ago) and they have been doing awesome in the gospel but have been struggling financially and their electricity went off for all of last week. Because of those circumstances their family divided up and was living with different family members around the city. On top of that, all of their minutes on their phone (except for Renee's) ran out so we couldn't get a hold of anyone but Renee. The day before the baptism we couldn't get a hold of Renee at all because she left her phone in the car of someone that she works with. So then we didn't even have a middle-man to communicate with. The day of the baptism we got a call from Troy on his brand new phone saying that he is still looking forward to being baptized, thankfully! Then when it came to going to the baptism everything in the world was coming at Troy, including while he was getting into the car to go to the baptism his phone dropped and shattered. Amidst all that he still got to the baptism! Katrina, to remind you, the day of her baptism 3 weeks ago woke up with a high fever and was unable to attend that day. She was in good health and at the baptism on Saturday but afterwards she lost her taxi card which would result in her being late to sacrament meeting the next day to get confirmed so she will have to get confirmed in 2 weeks (stake conference is this week). Troy was confirmed and everything and is already talking about going on a mission! There are many more things that happened but I don't have enough time to type them right now haha...

In the midst of the craziness that happened this week, we were able to pick up 3 new investigators, Myron, Lola and Lee and we had some solid lessons with them! We also got to throw down on Sebastian's less active family that is preventing him from going to church because they are too tired to stay for all 3 hours of church! Missionary work is fun! In the end, I think Katrina said it best when she got out of the waters of baptism on Saturday: "HALLELUJAH!!!!!!"

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson