Silver and GOLD

Sister Young and me

Dear friends and family,

My mind keeps going back to a little song I remember from the 1 year I spent in Girl Scouts years ago, "Make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other gold."

Dinner the night before picking up the new sisters

I've made the best of friends with sisters and senior couples who have just left, but I'm also so lucky to be making friends with a fresh new bunch of sisters coming in to be trained. And my golden, Sister Young, is seriously the cutest!! We have already had a wonderful first week together!

The returning VC sisters and our goldens!

It's been kind of a crazy week with all the traveling and changes, but we've had some awesome experiences. It's so fun to see everything through a fresh set of eyes as I've been able to show Sister Young around, have her meet our investigators, take her on a tour, etc. I'd forgotten how exciting, and sometimes a little scary, it is to be a new missionary. But she is so optimistic and ready to work and loves the site almost as much as I do :) We get along great and will definitely see success this transfer!

Sister Young officially joined the Mae fan club with me! This weekend we had our branch Christmas party, and Mae and Dalton came... And LOVED it! It was a great chance for them to meet the members and just have a good time. They will fit right in to our sweet, little branch. We were talking to Dalton and asked what plans he and Mae had for Christmas. He told us they didn't have any, so we were sure to invite them to church. Later in the evening someone asked Dalton what he was doing for Christmas and he told them he was coming to the church service on Sunday morning. It was so cute, and they are both so open and ready to learn... the trick is just having consistent lessons and church attendance!

We also visited Crystal (Mae's mom), and at the exact time we were knocking on Brother Powers' door where she was, Carl came out of his door across the hall also on his way to Brother Powers'.... so naturally we invited him to join us for our discussion. We got to know more about Crystal and Carl which was great, and as we talked Crystal asked us if we would start coming over to study with her which we agreed to in a heartbeat! During the lesson a friend of hers called and as they were on the phone she told them that she was talking with us and that she was a Mormon, so now it's just a matter of making her a Mormon. We also asked Carl about his Book of Mormon reading and he was a quarter of the way through Alma!!!! 😮 He is full of surprises. 

Dressed for cold nights!

In the past week I've been extra aware of just how much we need the Savior in our lives. None of us are perfect, but with the Savior's grace we can become more like Him. We've all been given agency, room to grow and people and experiences to learn from, and without Jesus Christ we wouldn't be able to learn or change. This Christmas season I am particularly grateful for the gift of grace-- that divine help and strength that our Savior offers us. "Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God." The invitation is there, His gift is waiting, all we have to do is reach out, open it and use it! 

I'm grateful for the birth of our Savior, an event which changed the world forever. I know He lives and loves us. He truly is, "Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." May we keep him in our hearts this week and always! Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

Love,

Sister Larsen