Hva skjer,
Hope everyone is doing well. Busy week for me.
Last Wednesday we had zone conference, which was in our city this time. So all of the Elders and Sisters in our zone came to Stavanger for Tuesday and Wednesday, and all the Elders crammed into our tiny apartment. It was pretty decent, nothing too crazy or too fun but it was good to be around a lot of other missionaries. We also went on a pretty cool hike as a zone on Tuesday so that was good.
We got another crazy referral this week. His name is Jan Erik. We got a message on facebook from a member that said that we were going to receive a golden referral and to make sure we contact him. When we got it, we called him and he explained that he wanted his family to be Christian, and wanted a Book of Mormon. We told him that we could, and also told him that we are missionaries if he wanted to learn more, which we accepted. We met with him at a coffee shop on Thursday, and he told us that he had met with missionaries a few years prior, but had stopped attending church. But he said that looking back on the experience, he knew that it was the right thing and he wanted to start attending church again. He told us that anytime he is around missionaries he feels a really peaceful aura about them, and said he knew that was the spirit. He ended up coming to church on Sunday too which was awesome.
On Friday we helped a family in the ward who is moving. They were super unprepared. But this Scottish guy in our ward who was in the military showed up and just took the lead and led the whole ordeal so that was good. One funny thing is that all the Norwegian ward members kept coming up to me and asking if I could understand him because he has a super strong Scottish accent haha.
On Saturday we had a ward Trunk or treat, which is pretty uncommon here in Norway. I will include pictures, but my costume is supposed to be a monkey lol, it was just some random costume that was in our apartment. It was really fun though. We have a bunch of little kids in our ward so it made it pretty fun. And some of the members went all out on their cars which I was surprised by.
On Sunday we had a baptism! It was for a 10 year old girl named Fiona and her 8 year old younger sister Kirsten. Their mom is a member, but their dad is not. It was a super cool experience though and there was a really nice spirit. One of the members in the ward named Jon was the one who baptized them so that was awesome. Their mom said the closing prayer and got really emotional and the spirit was super strong. Overall it was a really nice day.
The Elders from Haugesund (which is about 2 hours from us) came down on Monday to have splits/exchanges with us and to spend Pday in Stavanger. The splits were meh but our Pday was pretty fun. We went on a super cool hike (which I hate hiking so that is saying a lot) and walked around the city a bit as well. We also went to our weekly monday night basketball with all of us which was fun as well.
On Sunday night we had a lesson with a dude from Congo named James. Though he is not a member of our faith, he has one of the strongest testimonies of Jesus of anyone I have met. This does make it a little bit difficult for us to try and teach him about our church and how our beliefs differ because he just talks about Jesus and his testimony of Him the whole time. But, it does make for enjoyable meetings. We (mostly just him) basically just talked about Jesus and the state of the world for like an hour haha. Within his--for lack of a better word--rambling, he talked about how we all have the choice to be led by the spirit of God or the Spirit of the Devil. My companion agreed and talked about how good Satan is at deception, especially in the world today. This conversation stuck with me and I have thought about it more since. It's so so easy to fall into unrighteous things in the world today, especially when most of the world doesn't share our beliefs and promotes + practices things that are completely opposite to what we believe. This oftentimes makes it really hard to try our best to be disciples, but we are promised as we try our best to follow Christ's example we can receive lasting joy, contrary to the joy that comes from worldly things. I really like Matthew 4 in relation to this. Satan continually tries to tempt Jesus, to which Jesus replies: "Get thee hence, Satan..."(verse 10). Right after Jesus says this, the opposition eased and he received extra help from heaven, "Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him" (verse 11). My hope is that we can all strive to say "get thee hence" anytime when we have the thought to do something contrary to that of Jesus Christ, and that we can all receive extra help as we do this. I love Elder Soares' promise of this as well, "I invite all of us to "hear Him" in every thought and follow Him with all our heart in order to obtain the strength and courage to say, "No" and "Get thee hence" to all the things that might bring unhappiness into our life. If we do so, I promise that the Lord will send an added measure of His Holy Spirit to strengthen and comfort us and we may become individuals after the Lord's own heart." Just as my friend James told me in our lesson this week, I know that the world can be a better place if we all choose to follow Christ.
Lyrics-
"Seems that life is just a constant war between good and evil" -Gang Starr
"Thankful I got through the day and all the evil I prayed off" -Nas
❤Elder Winegar
Lots of pics this week sorry lol
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