Yielding Our Hearts to God

Dear friends and family,

I hit my 5 month mark and time is flying!! It was one of our tougher weeks, and we don't have any progressing investigators in our teaching pool again, but found a lot of potential investigators this week so that was awesome!

There is a man in town named Porter Rockwell, (named after his great-great grandfather, Porter Rockwell, Joseph Smith's body guard!). We came to a stop sign in town when we saw Porter running up to our car window. He told us we'd crossed his mind the other day and that he had been thinking about coming up to the Priesthood Restoration Site to take a tour from us! We haven't seen him yet, but it's interesting to think that the Lord is slowly preparing people everywhere to hear the message of the gospel through little experiences here and there.

"At the Visitor's Center -- finally a picture where I'm taller than Sis. Robison.  Haha!" 

One day this week we had planned to stop by to see a potential investigator, and long story short, she really wasn't interested in hearing anything we had to say, so we kept on moving. As a back up we had planned to talk to the next person we saw... Nobody was outside. Not a soul!! So we walked up the street and stood on the corner by our house, thinking of where we might be able to catch someone outside when a man on a motorcycle pulled up to the stop sign next to us. We said hello, introduced ourselves and asked if we could stop by his house to share a message about how we can find purpose in this life through Jesus Christ with him and his family. He told us his name and address right then and there! It was the first time anyone has ever given me their actual house number, and not a, "The yellow house up on Elm Street across from the people with the loud dog," kind of answer, or having me get it out of them! It was so cool to have someone put right in our path, in the very minute we needed it. We are excited to stop by this week!

Another stop sign story! All our appointments and back up plans fell through, so after trying our last back up house, we got in our car and drove down the road. We stopped at the stop sign at the end of the street and said a little prayer of where we needed to be and decided to go to the next town over and see if Jenn was home because we haven't been able to schedule an appointment in a while... And what do you know? She was home! Busy at the time, but we were able to set up a time to see her and her family in the upcoming week! 

I love the talk, "Yielding Our Hearts to God," by Sister Neill F. Marriott, available here:  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/yielding-our-hearts-to-god?lang=eng. In it she says, "How do we, a modern, busy, competitive people, become yielded and still? How do we make the Lord’s ways our ways?... When we open ourselves to the Spirit, we learn God’s way and feel His will." With the new year, our mission has changed the recitation we say in companionships everyday before we study. Something interesting that we've added an addition to the missionary purpose statement in Preach My Gospel so we now say, "Our purpose is to do the will of the Father, by inviting others to come into Christ, by helping them receive the restored gospel..." As we understand that even Jesus Christ who did so many things for us, was "about his Father's business," and said, "not My will, but Thine be done," we come to recognize that all we do should be to please our Heavenly Father and be obedient to His will too. Yielding our hearts to God, and yielding to the promptings of the Spirit help us be where our Heavenly Father wants us to be both physically and spiritually! So whether it's yielding to the spirit, or literally yielding at a stop sign, if we are obedient, we will see miracles as we strive to do the will of the Father!

Enjoy your week and look for little ways to bring your will in closer harmony with the Lord's so you can become more like Him! Hurrah for Israel!

Love,

Sister Larsen