Week 21 Dear Winter

Hey Everyone!

Life in the city is going well. My companion and I have been assigned by our mission president to spend most of our time contacting, so it's hard work but really rewarding. A lot of the people we meet are studying internationally so I've started to make a little contact book of all the countries I a place to stay in one day. For example, this past weekend we met these guys from Greece. They said they didn't want to learn about our church right now but they added us on Facebook and insisted that we visit their home after our missions. This scenario happens quite a bit so that's a little perk of serving in the captiol! This week we also made new friends from Dubai and Australia. Hopefully these people will remember our church and one day be willing to accept the gospel. When we can, we also refer their contact to the missionaries serving in their home countries. Anyways, something super funny happened last week. My companion and I went to visit this referral someone had given us. When we got there, the man was absolutely hammered. He said he had been drinking all day and it looked like a tornado went through his house. Anyways, he grabbed a liter of milk from his cupboard and started to chug it straight from the bottle. I just sat there, watching half of his drink go from his mouth back into the bottle. I genuinely had never seen anyone backwash so effectively before. After that, he handed the bottle straight to me and told me to drink it. By the way, Armenians are really aggressive about their hospitality. After I said no, he got mad so I just took the bottle from him and decided to take one for the team. It was my worst nightmare. It smelled like rotten potatoes and tasted like warm, old, Armenian goat milk. Having no choice, I went bottoms up and threw a few gulps back. The rest of the meeting, I sat there with full-body chills while this man yelled at us about how he is the only one who has God's cell phone number. Pretty interesting day!

Some Highlights:

•Playing volleyball 

•Visit from Elder Kearon of the Seventy

•Organizing youth activities

•The first sunny day in 3 weeks

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT

This week I have been studying a lot about receiving answers to our prayers. We will all have times when it feels like our prayers are going unanswered, which is totally normal. The Lord promises that, "Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it." (Enos 1:15) I've been thinking about this verse a lot. Faith is asking for something and expecting that your prayer will be answered, not asking for something and stressing about it afterwards. We don't need to pray to Heavenly Father the same way we used to timidly ask our parents for sleepovers when we were little. Faith is confidence in God's plan. We have to be smart, do all that we can do, then be assured that the Lord will provide. This week I have tried to express my faith to this extent, and I have noticed a big change in my mindset. As I did this, I had zero feelings of fear, anxiety, or self-doubt. Instead, I was filled with patience, hope, and gratitude because I was absolutely confident that God was going to guide me every step I took.

Elder Brennan Larsen

Vratsakan # 5

0051 Yerevan

Armenia