Heisann,
The work was definitely a little bit slower this week because of the holidays, and probably will be this week as well, but we still had some good things happen as well. And it has also been a great opportunity to spend some more time with the members and build relationships with them.
We had a lesson with our friend Grzegorz (who brought the Book of Mormon cake to one of our activities) that went well. As a reminder, he is from Poland. Unfortunately he does not speak very good English or Norwegian, so it makes our lessons a little bit difficult. But luckily, we have a member in our ward who is from Poland, and we were able to get him to help us with the lesson. I think I've talked about him before; his name is Piotr and he is so so awesome. He was only baptized around 5 months ago and has such a strong testimony of the gospel and has completely changed his life with no hesitation. Not only was it super helpful to have him there to translate, he also shared some really strong testimony. He told us how since he has joined the church, every day people question why he is a member and tell him to leave the church, as well as send him Anti-LDS movies and material. Despite this, his faith in God and Jesus Christ is unwavering. He talked about how much better his life is in every way since he joined the church. It's always refreshing to hear from recent converts like Piotr because I think we commonly forget how life changing the gospel is.
We had our regular lesson with Rafael (who is on baptismal date) this week before institute. He normally expresses his agreement to basically everything we say, and this week he was a little more honest. Not that he was disagreeing with what we were teaching, he was just expressing some of his thoughts and things that are a little bit harder for him to process. We talked about prayer, and as we started the lesson and asked his thoughts on prayer, he expressed that he liked the idea, but that he didn't feel like he had been getting much out of it and that his prayers weren't being heard. Which I think is something that every single believer has felt before. We had Piotr in on this lesson as well, and he shared that sometimes prayers take a long time to be answered, and that if we keep praying faithfully that God will answer our prayers in time. Which is a great reminder to each of us.
Saturday wasn't a very productive day for work, but it was a really fun day haha. The Redford's (the couple in our ward that the guy is from Scotland and the wife Sweden) had us over for like 3 hours. They made us hot chocolate and some traditional swedish buns/rolls, and then after we were finished with that we made pepperkaker ( essentially gingerbread) cookies and decorated them. Straight from there we headed to the church and this Mexican guy in our ward made tacos for everyone for his birthday. Definitely the best food I've had since I've been in Norway lol. But Rafael came to that as well which was good to talk to him and have him continue to develop relationships with the ward.
On Monday the new Ukrainian family in our ward had us over for dinner. They made us a traditional Ukrainian soup that was pretty good. Everytime I'm around them they always make me happy with how positive they are, and I also always just feel so bad for them for their current situation. Being in their house definitely makes me feel for my mom raising twins, because as I mentioned last week they have triplet girls and their house was just crazy and there was just so much going on haha. As I said before the mom is the only one who speaks English or Norwegian so it is a little difficult to communicate with them but it makes it fun. Straight from there we went to the senior couple's apartment, where we all watched a mission wide Christmas devotional we had online. We had our friend Idar there, Rafael, Piotr, and some other young adults from our ward which was awesome. I was able to sit and talk to Idar and Rafael both for a while which I enjoyed. Since I've been on my mission one of the things I've enjoyed most is having actual conversations outside lessons with the people that we teach.
Our lesson with Rafael as well as both lessons that were accompanied by Piotr this week made me think a lot about faith. Piotr's ability to have faith and continue to be diligent despite what he hears from others about the gospel is super admirable. The ability to have strong faith makes all of our problems manageable. When we're going through a rough trial, when we feel like our prayers are one sided, when we have doubts about certain gospel teachings/principles, or even if we're just feeling discouraged for no apparent reason-faith, in time, can solve it. Diligent faithfulness makes our highs in life even higher, while also make our lows not seem so low. My friend Piotr's life is full of hard things just like the rest of us, yet there is never a moment where he isn't smiling. One time I asked him how he is always so happy, to which he simply replied that he focuses on his faith and how much the gospel has blessed his life rather than the difficult things that happen to him--which I think is a perfect formula for each of us to follow. But sometimes it is very difficult to continue in faith, obviously. I was reading some verses in Ether this week that helped remind me the reason it is important for us to have our faith tested. Verse 19 says, "19 And because of the knowledge of this man he could not be kept from beholding within the veil; and he saw the finger of Jesus, which, when he saw, he fell with fear; for he knew that it was the finger of the Lord; and he had faith no longer, for he knew, nothing doubting." If we had a perfect knowledge of Jesus Christ like the Brother of Jared receives here, our whole purpose of being on earth would be diminished. We are here to exercise faith in Jesus Christ and to become more like him. As we lean on God and Jesus Christ within our trials, trust in Them, and have faith in Them, our faith will grow as will our relationship with Them. And as these things grow, we will gain extra strength to continue our lives with faith and be ready for any difficulties that arise.
Lyric:
Trained up my body and soul, you can't derail me
Trust, between God and myself, they'll never fail me
-Denzel Curry
God Jul!! Hope everyone has a good Christmas :)
-Eldste Winegar
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