Bye Bye Bus Season 🚌 🚌 🚌

Dear friends and family,

How I love fall!  The leaves started turning this week! 

We have officially kissed summer goodbye this past week with it being our last busy scheduled week of the year (299 guests just yesterday), largely due to multiple buses coming in everyday of the week to see the sites and fall colors. It's funny to look back on how we've changed... In the beginning if a bus came in it would require all hands on deck, everyone having to be given a little card with a rotation assigned so we would know where to go, and lots of scrambling to get everyone where they needed to be. Now a bus comes in with 56 guests and we just have 2 companionships handle it!

Earlier in the week I was with a group from a bus tour walking to the Hale home when I discovered two of the women in my group were good friends with my grandparents when they lived in Stockton, CA. They hadn't ever met me, but remembered seeing my baby pictures! They were with a fantastic group who gave so many great insights and discussion. Almost everyone in the group was teary by the end of the tour, and with the Spirit being so strong, I felt prompted to remind everyone of their opportunity to be a missionary and leave the name of a loved one on the referral card we offer. After the tour, one of the women came up to me and handed me her referral card. She said she had taken a card, not knowing whose name to write down, but surprised herself when she found herself writing down the name of her less-active son, who I now have the privilege to reach out to. As we talked about her family, she had also recently been able to do her husband's temple work, and I am so grateful for her example of missionary work. As members of the church, many of us feel that we have to meet someone who could really use the gospel in their lives in order to have missionary experiences, when so often, we can be missionary within our own families! 

Leaves changing and a rainbow:  this was taken at the beginning

of the week and it already looks much different!

With one of our bus tours yesterday, we sang to them as usual, but after our song Elder Walker asked if they would like an encore and they did, and on the spot we chose to sing "Come Thou Fount." Both Sister Walker and I felt like that was the one we needed to sing and the group loved it. As the group was headed back to their bus, the tour guide, who I had visited with earlier, approached me and told me how grateful he was for us sisters, and wanted us to know just how special we were. He said that his daughter had unexpectedly passed away four weeks ago, and one of her very favorite songs was "Come Thou Fount." It was a blessing for him and his wife to hear her favorite song in the place where the priesthood was restored which allows their family to be eternal, and binds their daughter to them forever. 

Another amazing man I was able to meet on a bus was Brother Glen Nelson, a spry nearly-100-year-old man. He has personally known every prophet of the church since Heber J. Grant!! He has been involved with printing copies of the Book of Mormon and other church materials for a very, very long time. He told me when we was a young man on a mission, while he served in a part of Oregon for a time, he did his weekly wash in the home of Oliver Cowdery's great grandson which was also crazy to me! As we talked about life and living it to its fullest, he gave me just one piece of advice. He said, "You always need to keep the Holy Ghost with you. The Holy Ghost will be your greatest companion." From someone who has lived almost five times as long as me, I love that his advice was so simple, and that's the way it should be. The gospel brings happiness, and the gospel is simple. If we follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost and choose the right, Heavenly Father will guide and help us all along our way.

Choose the right. Follow the Spirit. Look for missionary opportunities! 

Love you all! Have a good week!

Love,

Sister Larsen

Love her!!

Mutual with the Young Women:  learning about "inner beauty"

and then doing hair and nails

I painted flowers on nails and everyone loved it!

Even the leaders!  Sis. Slocum was excited to work

the cash register at work with her new nails.  :)