Week 34

What's good,

Things are slowly starting to pickup in my area, was definitely an above average week.

Last Wednesday we had a lesson with Grzegorz, the Polish dude that I talked about last week that randomly came to church when we were watching conference. We had it in his house, which is really rare for us here, especially for the first lesson. He is kinda a weird dude in terms of like his mannnerisms and the way he communicates with us. It honestly just always feels a little awkward with him, but like not in the sense that he is socially awkward, idk😂. But anyways, that combined with the language barrier makes him pretty hard to read in terms of how interested he is. We taught all about the Restoration, and he seemed generally receptive to all of it, but I'm not sure how much he got as any time we double checked to clarify if he understood a word, he did not understand it. He was also sipping a beer at 2 in the afternoon during our whole lesson lol.

All of Thursday and Friday we were traveling and at zone conference. Even though we are in the very north of the country, we are for some reason in the Oslo zone, which is not anywhere close to us. So we travel by plane down for zone conferences, which always makes for a good few days and just good to have a change of pace.

We had our branch conference over the weekend, which our mission president, as well as a set of missionaries from Oslo traveled up for. I served with one of them in my last area, so it was really good to have all of them up here. Our days have not been very busy since I have been here, so to have a couple of really busy days was a good change of pace. On Saturday we had a branch "party", dinner type thing. I really don't want to be negative at all, but man, some of the people in the branch here are very interesting. We had to go early to set up, and we were cutting up some very questionable fruit. The main dish was a modge podge of random vegetables with hot dogs, which I obviously did not take much of. Despite all the weird antics though, it was really really good to get a glimpse of what this branch could actually be. There were some members that came to the dinner as well as church the next day that have not come since I have been here, and even just a few extra people makes such a huge difference in a tiny branch like this. 

Another main highlight from the week was our friend Florin from Romania came to church. We had met with him last week andn give him an English Book of Mormon, as we didn't have a romanian one and couldn't get one until we went down to Oslo for zone conference. Well, he came to church as I said, and I was just asking him if he's had the chance to read yet. We did send him the romanian version electronically too. He said he had, and I asked him his thoughts. He told me he hadn't finished yet, but that it was interesting and he liked it. I asked him where he had read to, and he showed me on his phone, and he had already read to Words of Mormon, which is like 166 pages in...in one week. Pretty crazy. It made me so happy to see his smile and excitement when we handed him the Book of Mormon in his language and he began flipping through.

If you have read a decent amount of my emails, I'm sure you know that I really loved my last area. One thing that was awesome about it, was that we were teaching very often, especially compared to other areas here in Norway. Finding joy within missionary work has been a process for me throughout my whole mission, but teaching is one thing that I could/can for sure say is joyful for me. Being in my new area, we have taught less the whole time I've been here than what we would teach in one week in my last area, which has been an adjustment for sure. The joy that I get from teaching won't change, but it obviously is not a consistent source so it's been a process finding new ways to find joy within the work. As we were at zone conference last week, I had some conversations with some other missionaries on how they themselves find joy through the work. One of them is someone who has served in a tiny area (very minimal teaching) for a long time, yet even he said that actually teaching has been his greatest joy in the work. Which I obviously agreed with but didn't help me much. In my interview with my mission president, I asked the same question but framed in a way more referring to just life in general, and he answered by just saying that you have to find joy within, through, the effort and the work in life, that that is how it has been for him in his life. To be honest with you, that is not the answer I wanted to hear, but it has made me think about ways that I can do that. I think one thing that has been a huge joy for me over the last few weeks has been the sciptures, to an extent that I haven't ever experienced before. I read a verse this week that relates really well to my conversation with my mission president, as well as studying the scriptures.

Alma 33:23 And now, my brethren, I desire that ye shall plant this word in your hearts, and as it beginneth to swell even so nourish it by your faith. And behold, it will become a tree, springing up in you unto everlasting life. And then may God grant unto you that your burdens may be light, through the joy of his Son. And even all this can ye do if ye will. Amen.

It's pretty simple, but I thought this verse was really powerful in pointing out that even with our burdens in life, we can have joy, through Jesus Christ. And this verse points out that that comes after we "plant" and "nourish" God's word. I can definitely say that as I have taken additional time to study the scriptures the last few weeks, I have found more joy within the scriptures, but also just overall. I honestly think that despite the work being a lot different and not being able to teach much, that these last few weeks have been some of the most joyful thus far (which I think is for a number of reasons, but the scriptures being one of them). Going away from a missionary perspective, when I read this verse this week I thought a lot about many of my family members. The last year has been super difficult for many people in my extended family, with "burdens" that don't seem very fair. But once again, I love this verse in that it is "through the joy" of Jesus Christ that our burdens can be light, and that we can have joy despite our circumstances. What it doesn't say is that our burdens will go away, but they will be light. Which, a light burden is still a burden. But the assurance that, within any burden, we can find joy through Christ, gives me a lot of comfort. 

Lyric- "But some find happiness while others find sorrow" -Gang Starr 

Week 34

Friday, April 19, 2024

Week 33

What's up,

Hope everyone had a good week. Things are starting to slightly pick up here; we actually had some cool stuff happen this week. 

Firstly a quick update on Franklin (who's on baptismal date in my last area) for anyone who cares, also just because it is a crazy story. After not replying for a few weeks, he has been replying more consistently over the last week or so. I have been trying to get a chance to get on a call with him to see what happened and what is going on, but we haven't been able to get a time to talk. With that being said, I called the Elders who are down in that area and they gave me the run down. Basically there were some guys that lived with Franklin in his apartment complex that just randomly left, without paying rent or giving any notice. For some reason the landlord put the blame on Franklin, and he was expected to cover for their rent. He made plans to move into a different place, but the landlord didn't think that he'd pay the rent before leaving, so wanted collateral, and took his phone as the collateral...for 8 days. Not sure how that even happened or how true all of that is, but all that matter is that Franklin is all good now. He also is recommitted to doing what is needed for his baptism. 

A few weeks ago we had this guy from Romania come to our language cafe (which we hold in the same place we have church). It really naturally came up that he believed in God, and he told us that he actually came to our church a few months ago, but ended up leaving right as he walked in the doors because he felt a little timid. Anyways, he ended up coming to church last week, and this week we were able to meet with him before the language cafe and talk about the church service, as well as the Book of Mormon. When we explained what the Book of Mormon was, he wasn't skeptical or hesitant at all, his only question being if he could get it in his language on his phone (we didn't have copy in his language then). So that was pretty cool. His english isn't great though, as he kept using 'she' instead of 'he'. He was telling us how he had two boys, and then kept saying 'she', so we asked if he actually has a daughter. He got kind of mad and said that he has 2 boys. Then when we asked him how God has helped his life, he said, "Ohhh, she has helped me so much", so we finally realized his english just isn't great😂.

On Friday we were able to get an appointment with a guy in one of the weirder ways I've got an appointment on my mission. I do a lot of Facebook work where I'm basically just messaging random people, getting conversations going, and then eventually seeing if they'd be willing to meetup. I had only sent like one or two messsages to this guy when I then just asked him what he likes to do. He replied by saying he likes cycling and being with his dog, and then sent a picture of his dog. I of course said that his dog was very cute, and then starting asking about his dog. After a few questions about his dog, I asked if I could meet him and his dog sometime, which he agreed to😂. When we met with him we explained what we do as missionaries, and he said he's not interested as he already believes in Christ. Despite that, he repeatedly asked what the Church of Jesus Christ really is. We eventually explained the restoration of the church, and were able to give him a Book of Mormon. He was definitely an interesting guy as his pants literally fell almost all the way down when he was trying to pull off a branch for his dog lol. He seemed interested to meet again, but hasn't been super responsive since so not sure if we'll meet with him again. But nonethless was a funny way to meet someone. 

For general conference, we played it in our church building for members to watch together. Well, as it's been lately, only one member showed up. The senior missionaries were sick, and the sister missionaries were out of the area, so it was literally just us and this one member. Which I honestly didn't mind for conference. Well about halfway in a guy who is also from our language cafe walked in. We explained how it was a bit of different service, and he then just sat down and watched. His English is even worse than the Romanian guy, so not sure how much of it he caught. But afterwards we asked him what his questions were, and he of course asked what the Book of Mormon is. We explained, and we were also able to have the member that was there share her testimony of the Book of Mormon. That member had also totally randomly had 2 seperate occasions where she had talked to this guy on the bus. It's cool to see how the Lord works. So we are planning to drop off the Book of Mormon to him tomorrow, as we did not have the Polish copy that we have with us at the time. The cool part about him coming, the member being there, and us setting up the meeting to give him the Book of Mormon, is that in one way or another, all of those things filled in and completed all of our goals for the week with the exact amount. It was a cool testament to me that the Lord provides as we do what we can. 

I think I've maybe already talked about this in a spiritual thought on here, but I've been thinking a lot this week about what diligence means and how I can be a more diligent missionary and follower of Christ. I've been reading more than usual in the Book of Mormon these last few weeks, and the word diligent is used very often to describe efforts and people in the stories, which is what caused me to further ponder and think about what diligence really is. Flipping back through my scriptures, here are a few that stood out to me:

Jacob 5:75-"And blessed art thou; for because ye have been diligent in laboring with me in my vineyard,...behold ye shall have joy with me..."

Enos 1:12-"...after I had prayed and labored with all diligence, the Lord said unto me: I will grant unto thee according to thy desires, because of thy faith."

Mosiah 4:27: "...And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize;

I feel like these verses do a very good job at explaining what comes as a result of being diligent--joy, fulfillment of your desires, "the prize"--but it doesn't give a lot of explanation of what diligence means. The surrounding verses of some of these give a pretty good idea, but nothing that is super clear. Because I've been thinking a lot about this, one of the many questions I wrote down in preparation for conference was how I can be more diligent. The word diligent/diligence, as far as I wrote down, was only mentioned 2 or 3 times, but I still got a lot of thoughts about what it means to be diligent. Elder Holland's description of how he felt after his health miraculously improved gives a pretty good definition of what I see diligence to be: "I received an admonition to return to my ministry with more urgency, more consecration, more focus on the savior, more faith in His word." I think urgency, consecration, faith, and focus on the savior are all diligent actions. One thing President Eyring said when speaking of temple covenants also stood out to me, "...is not a one time effort, but a lifetime pattern. The lord has said, it will take our full heart, might, mind, and strength." Keeping promises with God throughout our lives, in that manner, is also a good example of diligence to me. There were a few other things that gave examples of what diligence is throughout conference, but I still didn't feel like my question was fully answered. A few hours after watching one of the sessions, I went to put a conference talk on while I got ready, and didn't really know what to listen to. I just clicked general conference in the gospel library app, and then saw President Eyring's picture, and thought to relisten to one of my favorite talks from him. I didn't remember the name but remembered when it was, so I scrolled down to 2010 when it was given. The name of the talk, which I somehow forgot, is "Act in All Diligence". I thought it was cool how God directed me to this talk as I had some inadequate feelings of the answers I got in this years conference. He gives many examples of diligent service, but I really like this part of the talk as he relates diligence to Christ, "We are to learn our duty from the Lord, and then we are to act in all diligence, never being lazy or slothful. The pattern is simple but not easy to follow. We are so easily distracted. Studying the daily news can appear more interesting than the priesthood lesson manual. Sitting down to rest can be more attractive than making appointments to visit those who need our priesthood service. When I find myself drawn away from my priesthood duties by other interests and when my body begs for rest, I give to myself this rallying cry: "Remember Him." The Lord is our perfect example of diligence in priesthood service."

Ultimately, diligence boils down to choosing the things of God over the things of the world and choosing to effortlessly try to be like Jesus. When stated like that, it seems like an undoable task, which I think is when those examples in the scriptures, and in the modern day, of people being diligent in following God can be helpful to make Christlike diligence seem more attainable. Which as we try to attain, only makes us better people and brings us closer to the Savior. 

Lyric-"Not perfect, persistent, keep it more pure than the purest" -Nas

Week 33

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Week 32

Heisann,

Hope everyone had a good Easter 🙂.

Norway takes Thursday to Monday all as holiday for Easter, where basically everyone has the day off work besides essential workers. Which is ironic considering no one is really religious here. But anyways, it naturally made the week pretty slow so not a lot happened. 

On Friday we were invited over by 2 seperate members, which is pretty crazy considering how small our branch is up here. The first was an invite from one of the members named Inger (the one who told me to move seats in church last sunday lol). Apparently she has a yearly tradition of having missionaries come over and do an egg hunt (in norway they give out big cardboard eggs with a lot of candy in them rather than the smaller plastic eggs). So we went over to her house, and she basically just sat there and said no at me anytime I went to look someplace that was apparently off limits haha. We all found our eggs and they were filled with a random assortment of chips, gummy worms, and cookies that were baked at Christmas time, none of which was eaten lol. After our egg hunt she had the sister missionaries help her take out her earrings that she hadn't taken out in years. All of it combined made for one of the more interesting member visits of my mission hahaha. Picture is included. The other member visit was a lot more normal, and we just ate dinner and were able to play some card games and stuff. Grateful to both of them for their support of the missionaires.

The senior missionaries I'm serving with thought of the idea to pass out flowers in the city for easter, which we decided to do as we did not have much else better to do. Because we are on the team that is in charge of running our mission's facebook page, we thought we may as well film it while we did it. I'll include a link of the post on facebook if anyone wants to see it. But basically all we did was just buy some tulips, print out some notes that just said happy easter from the church and our service time, and then tied them to the flowers and passed them out. I was really surprised how hesitant people were to take a literal free flower. Literally all we were doing was walking up to people and saying happy easter, and reaching out with the flower. With that I'd say under 50% of the people took the flower which was kind of annoying, but the people that did take it seemed very surprised and appreciative which made it worth it. 

I somehow made it all the way up to this point in my mission without having to give a talk in church, which I finally had to do on Sunday. Our entire meeting was basically just missionary ran, which we are all happy to do but makes us nervous for what will happen when the missionaries leave the area. That night we had a call with some members that live on an island off of Norway, and we watched a movie that consisted of a bunch of videos of Christ's week leading up to Easter, which the member compiled from a bunch of different movies about Christ. Just because I'm a missionary did not mean that it wasn't pretty boring, but it was still probably one of the better parts of my week. 

Holy this email is so boring but literally nothing else happened besides what I wrote.

Obviously with this last weekend being Easter, I tried to think about the significance of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection for each. I would say I pondered it more than an average year, but I still did not think enough about what it really means as I should have. I think Christ's atonement, especially in our church's culture, is something that is often way oversimplified. Which, it is good to simplify to a certain extent to get a basic understanding of what Christ's atonement actually consisted of, but I think to a certain point we'd all benefit from deeper teachings and just deeper thinking about what Christ's atonement is an means for us. The point is, that is what I tried to do this week, even if it wasn't super successful for me. I think just simply taking time to think and ponder about what Christ's atonement really is goes a long way. I know I was just hating on how it is often oversimplified, but I feel like I'm someone who likes simple scriptures and thinking more deeply about what they mean. I really like these two verses in relation to Christ's atonement and resurrection. 

1 Nephi 19:9- 9 And the world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught; wherefore they scourge him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him, and he suffereth it. Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it, because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men

2 Nephi 25:13- 13 Behold, they will crucify him; and after he is laid in a sepulchre for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings; and all those who shall believe on his name shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Wherefore, my soul delighteth to prophesy concerning him, for I have seen his day, and my heart doth magnify his holy name.

There's a few reasons I really like these verses. Firstly, the first one lists multiple things that Christ "suffereth". And rather than just telling us what happens, it tells us why he suffered these things. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like a verse like this would normally say it's because it gave mankind salvation. Which is of course significant, but I really like how this verse says that he suffered all of these things because He loves us. It is so simple, but that is really what Christ's atonement, resurrection, and even the Plan of Salvation come down to. Christ suffered everything because of His love for us. 

For the second verse, I really like how it actually gives a required action. It describes how Christ was crucified and then rose from the dead, but rather than just saying that he saved all, it says, "all those who shall believe on his name shall be". The sacrifice has already been made, death has already been conquered, but it is our decision to believe in it and choose to receive that salvation. I also like the emphasis on "all those". No one is exempt from the fruits of Christ's sacrifice; each person who chooses to believe in Christ and do what is necessary to follow Him can receive salvation, no matter who they are or what they look like. 

The last thing that stood out to me because I'm a missionary right now is how Nephi ends the second verse that I shared. He describes how, "my soul delighteth to prophecy concerning him". I actually shared this scripture in my talk this week. As I have reread the beginning of the Book of Mormon the last couple of weeks, you can tell by reading Nephi's words that that statement is true. And I think that is something that each of us should strive for, even if it is just in the sense of speaking of Christ rather than prophesying of Him, as that is not something that we do in our everyday lives. There are a lot of things in missionary work that I don't enjoy, and there have been things on my mission that I haven't liked, but, I can confidently say that I find joy in speaking and teaching of Christ. I was asked to share in my talk why I decided to serve a mission, which I didn't really have a good answer for, but I said that that is one of the reasons that I continue to serve every day. 

Facebook video:

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/bbP9V16gSwL4zQJN/

Lyric- "All we need is a little more love" 

-Al Green

Week 32

Thursday, April 4, 2024