Moving into December!!!

Hey family!!

Dad, Thank you for not falling off the roof completely!! I would have been very upset with you! I am very upset with you for playing bball!! I swear you weren't supposed to be doing that anymore?! Be careful!

Mom, I am glad to hear that you are busy as ever, and that someone will make you rest for a few weeks! I am excited to hear about your trip after you get back.

Brynn, Congrats on all of your feats this last week! I have been telling stories about the two of us together and have been thinking about you a lot, especially today. I was thinking about our drive back from Vegas after the Alicia Keys concert and singing Wicked as loud as possible to stay awake. We have had a lot of fun these last few years. I think Ben would really like the gift you suggested! Tell him Hi and congrats to both of you for 1 year!

Chase and Ashley, It is good to hear that you two are having fun and that everything is going well. Pass on a congrats to Gordy and Allen and their wives. That is nuts!!! I can't believe that they are pregers ha. Thanks for the details on the game too! I have been dying since Friday to know what happened. I have to confess that yesterday in church my mind started to wander because the teacher was speaking in only Ukrainian and I couldn't understand a thing.

It was so good to hear from all of you this morning!! I am so happy that you all had an amazing Thanksgiving, even though some things weren't the same as we are used to. We have been talking a lot about Thanksgiving this last week in both our English lessons and with our investigators. I am always reminded that I need to be more thankful every day. I have been blessed with so much and I really need to remember that. We also talked a lot about Football because nothing goes better with Thanksgiving than family, pie and Football!! For Thanksgiving Day we got together with our district and had a very large lunch! We had a lot of pie to top it all off, but it wasn't as good as at home with mom's homemade rolls.

Other than that our week has been filled with work. We found a few new investigators who are going to be really fun to work with and who seem to really interested in knowing truth. We have been struggling with one of our main investigators this week. She is scared to come to church because she thinks she will have to change everything about her life, even not being able to exercise. We might have to drop her next week and focus on those who are keeping their commitments. That will be really hard. I don't want to just leave her but she is not really making much of an effort anymore. We will see what happens.

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So more about life here. Our apartment is actually really nice inside, it was just remodeled and it has kind of an Asian feel to the inside. I sent pictures of it. Most of the apartments here are really, really small. One, maybe two rooms and a kitchen. I realized about 2 weeks after being here that every couch or chair that we sit on usually turns into their beds. I am amazed how they fit more than one family into one apartment. We are really blessed with our apartments here.

Also my companion and I get along really well. We have a lot of fun together and we teach well together. Mostly she teaches and I teach a little part or testify with everything that I have. She helps me a lot with the language and we try and speak only Russian when we are on the streets, at night when we are going home I get really lazy. The Language is coming. I am able to say a lot more then I could when I got here and I know a lot of it is because the Lord is really helping me. I am still struggling with a lot of the vocab because there is so much to learn in so little time. I am understanding more everyday and I find myself being able to know when someone is speaking to me in Russian or Ukrainian which helps a lot, because it happens a lot. I am also learning a few words in Ukrainian here and there. Here people tend to mix the two languages so it is good to know both. I am not trying to learn Ukrainian yet!!!! I am understanding a lot more of what I read which is really nice because then I can know what they are talking about in a lesson if I get lost. I am still carrying around both of my scriptures so when I am really lost I resort to my English set. I know that eventually I will be able to function as a normal person here but it will take time.

Well I should get going! I love you all and thanks for the emails and updates! I hope all is well! Have an amazing week!

Sister Larsen