He's a teenager! Weird! I hope you guys partied like crazy over there! I know we did! Haha, not....
This has been the longest week of my whole entire life! I was reading over my journal to remember what to write you guys about and there was stuff that I read about and I thought, that was THIS week?! It felt like ages ago! And yet at the same time I feel like nothing happened this week. Weird. The mission has messed with my head :)
I guess to begin with, we had exchanges this week! Yay! We did exchanges with the Soeurs up in Liege, so I went up there with Soeur Turney (MTC reunion!) and Soeur Judd stayed here in Strombeek with Soeur Cope. It was fun, I fell in love with the Liege apartment, it's the cutest thing ever. They live up on the 10th floor and have this whole wall of floor to ceiling windows and I got to fall asleep looking out over the city... I know it's really not important, but I was just charmed and I like thinking about it :) Exchanges are always fun, learning from the other sisters and seeing how they do things and all that. Oh also I ate a gaufre de Liege, which is like a giant sugary belgian waffle with sticks of chocolate inside. Oh baby.
And yes, I weigh like 300 pounds now. That's why I stopped sending pictures home.
Haha.
Oh speaking of what I eat, (fascinating, I know) I got a lesson in Belge hospitality this week. We have an inactive member who lives down the street from us and we go visit her a couple times a week and she gives us French lessons. This last time we went she got talking about food until finally I said, stop! I'm starving now! And she said, oh, would you like some toast? I thought, perfect, I like toast. She comes back bearing this tray just overflowing with goodness. Apparently when Belge people have toast, they're not talking about bread with butter. She came back with a whole loaf of bread, dark chocolate spread, some other chocolate spread, nutella, white chocolate spread, four different kinds of jam, two different kinds of juice, and chocolate milk. And then she kept insisting that we hadn't eaten enough. Oy.
On a random note, I have to tell you about David! David is the best. Ever. So on Wednesday we had a dinner appointment with the RS pres and her family and we got there early so we decided to do some contacting. We said a prayer and started along and the first person to come along was David. He's 20 years old, and Belge and atheist, and was smoking a cigarette. He was very much not interested when we started talking and then I told him about how the gospel has made me free from addictions and from guilt. We kept talking and he opened up about questions that he had. We finally gave him a book of mormon and got his number. It's hard to explain, but it felt like a very guided contact. We were just a lot more persistent than usual.
Fast forward, the next day we were contacting again (I don't think we had a single rendezvous that went through this week) and the phone starts to ring. It's David. Pause for explanation: people never call us. Ever. I just kind of stared at the phone in shock until Sr. J had the presence of mind to actually answer it. He starts out, "I just wanted to say that I tried really, really, really hard to read this book. I just don't really understand it." Never fear, David dear, we shall come explain. He asked if we had time right then and we zipped on over.
And had the most golden lesson ever.
First nice thing about it, turns out part of the problem is that we gave him a Book of Mormon in French, which is only his 3rd language. He prefers English and Dutch, so we taught him in English. Hooray!
Also he just had all the perfect questions and he is willing to experiment on what we say to find out the answers. He asked about guilt and how it can be overcome, about how we can know truth, about what happens after this life and about why there are so many bad things going on in the world. He would take what we would say and really think about it, and then slowly nod. And you could tell when some things really hit him. One of my favorite moments was when he asked about what would happen to people like him who tried to be good people but didn't have faith in God. I felt like the Lord let me feel a little bit of the love he has for David and it washed over me as I answered. We told him that the Lord would happily bless him for every single good thing he has ever done, but that all the Lord wants is to give him MORE. To let him know that he is there and that he loves him, to teach him to grow through faith.
My other favorite moment was when we asked him to pray at the end. I was surprised by the humility of a 20 year old boy who was willing to ask 4 times, "how do I start again?" and who was willing to act on our word and what he had felt and ask his Creator, whom he has never talked to before, to teach him the answers. I was humbled by the sincerity of his prayer and also by the way he treated the Book of Mormon. He seemed like he couldn't wait to read it. He held it like it was glass and as we walked away he asked if it would be ok if he put it in his bag.
I still just can't get over it. Every time I think about him I smile. I'm excited to hear about how his reading is going.
Other golden moment of the week, we had an FHE with this totally adorable family with five little kids and we talked about the plan of salvation and families being together forever. At the end we gave each of the kids a pass-along card with a picture of the temple and they just couldn't stop oohing and aahing. Leo, sitting next to me, just kept looking from me to the card and back again with his mouth wide open. We had them all promise that they would be good so they could go there someday :) And the oldest daughter and the mother (who is an absolute angel) are getting baptized! Now we just need to get the husband off his hiney... Pas de problem.
In other news, yesterday was awesome. It was fast sunday for us, since next week is stake conference, and during testimony meeting I just bawled like a baby. It was kind of a downer week (I realize after the stories of David and the family that I really can't complain, but sometimes I do anyway) and I felt so frustrated by how much addiction and pain and suffering and confusion there is here and how little I seem to be doing to help. And then as I thought about my testimony, I realized that no matter what else happens, it has been a privilege to be here and to realize how much my testimony means to me. The more it is rejected, the more people refuse to believe or try to believe, the more I can't fathom how blessed I have been to have been given this gospel. Because who knows if I would've listened to two random people on the street...
Well I must be off. I LOVE you all! Thank you for everything! I hope your week was awesome and that the next is even better!
love love love love,
Soeur Larsen
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