With Charity, You Have Everything

So. A stellar week. It was Sister Searle's last week in the WVCM and she really wanted to hit the standard of excellence. So we set off to hit it. The standard is hard to hit. It is REALLY hard to hit when you have MLC, Zone Meeting Planning, Zone Meeting, District Meeting, a Doctor's visit, 4 sessions of General Conference, and one final interview. (That was about 24 hours of meetings). Dear Friends. If your goal is embraced by the Lord, He will help you accomplish it. Actually, He will just do it for you. You have to work as hard as you possibly can, but He will accomplish it. This week, despite the DAY-worth of meetings this week, the Lord provided a way for us to have 2 people on date, 3 people come to church, 4 lessons with active members present, 7 lessons without members present, and 4 new investigators. What. A. Week. It is hard to say which one of these numbers represents the best miracle to report on. The Lord is not only in the work with us. He does the work for us -- when we give all we have.

I will tell the story of Traci. She was on date for Easter. At our lesson at the end of the week, we took her off date. She didn't want to get married for a year, and either marriage or moving out will be necessary for her to be baptized. Us missionaries were a little heart broken. She has been making such incredible progress. But Sister Searle was not going to give up. In our next lesson later in the week, Sister Herring was prompted to change our lesson plan to the Restoration of the Gospel -- something she definitely has learned before. Afterwards, Sister Searle proclaimed boldly that Traci needed to keep the law of chastity. It was the boldest and most loving commitment I have ever seen extended. We asked her to take her concerns to conference the next day and promised that through the living prophet and apostles, the Lord would answer her concern. She loved conference more than anyone else alive. She's back on date for Easter. Never give up, if there is even a spark of interest left. Be bold. True Christ-like love is more than being nice. It is caring enough to say the hard things. The Lord accomplishes all things through love, and this is what we need to do, too.

I love YOU!

Sister Larrabee