Week 22

What's up,

Hope that everyone is holding up okay. It was an alright week for me.

Last week we had zone conference, as well as a zone P-day. So essentially all the missionaries from our zone just came down a day early for zone conference to have P-day all together. There was literally 11 Elders sleeping in our tiny apartment which was kind of annoying but whatever. For P-day, they had planned to play soccer all together, and then Stavanger got the most snow it has gotten in many years....and we still played soccer😃. Definitely not my definition of fun, but I think most everyone else loved it so that's all that matters I guess. Zone conference itself was pretty decent, it is always very spiritual and just a good break from regular day to day missionary work.

After all of our zone conference activities were done on Wednesday, all the missionaries were still in the church, but kind of just all doing their own thing, doing studies and such. When we were doing studies, the Sisters came in and told us to come help them with some guy. Which I didn't know what that meant but we followed them. Basically this random Ukrainian guy just saw the lights on in our church and just walked in. We walked in there and greeted him, and found out quickly that he does not speak Norwegian or English, so we pulled out our phones and started talking to him through google translate. After talking with him for a few minutes, he kind of started staring at me specifically, and then types in his phone and asks if I'm from Ireland lol. And then he walks up to me, pushes back my shoulders, and motions for me to fix my posture. At this point my companion and the sisters are just dying haha. I feel like random stuff like this only happens to me lol. Anyways, we ended up calling the Ukrainian lady in the ward, and she was able to find out what was going on. So we got his phone number, and he actually ended up coming to church on Sunday so that was cool. And first thing he did when he saw me in church was motion for me to pull back my shoulders 😂.

On Thursday we had lunch with this random dude that I found on Facebook. His name is Franklin and he is from Nigeria. He was a very serious dude, and honestly seemed pretty, just, unhappy. Which was sad. It sounds like he has lived through a lot of hard things, and still isn't in a spot that he is experiencing joy, as he doesn't really like living in Norway either. We asked him if he plans to live in Norway long term, and he kind of just sat there for a second, and then said something on the lines of, "If I had the money for a ticket, I'd be on a flight to the US right now"😂. But we were able to have a really good conversation with him, a lot of it about God. He explained to us that he grew up catholic and many of the churches he went to were pretty corrupt and took a lot of money from the people who attended. Because of that, he hasn't attended church for many years, but said that he said he never lost his faith in God. He is super open to coming to our church and trying something new, so he definitely has a lot of potential and I'm hoping he can have an open mind so we can end up teaching him. He wasn't able to come to church this Sunday because of his work schedule, but he is going to try to come to our Bible Study class tonight as well as hopefully church on Sunday. 

That night we had a lesson with Rafael, which is our first since he has been baptized. He once again just seemed really happy and doing really well. He told us that when we first taught him about the gift of the Holy Ghost, he didn't really think much of it or that it could make much of an impact. But he told us that this week, since having been baptized and received the HG, that he has felt a big difference, and that he has overall just felt a lot happier and like a better person. Which that was really good to hear, and really strengthened my testimony of the Holy Ghost. It is a good reminder that the Holy Ghost is always with us, influencing the types of people we are, even if we aren't receiving promptings.

Our lesson with my guy Idar wasn't the greatest this week, but we're going to keep trying with him. He struggles to comprehend prophets, so we had a whole lesson about that. In the end he still had the same conclusion, that he understands WHY we need prophets, but doesn't really comprehend HOW we really have a prophet today. Which is fair, I can't expect our words to change his mind, I just have to have faith that whatever is meant to happen will I guess. But it is just frustrating when I care so much about him and want him to be happy. One funny and cool thing that happened during the lesson though: we handed him a Bible because we were about to read a verse from the Bible a few minutes later. He just randomly placed it down and had it opened to a random page. A few minutes later, he looked down, and the chapter heading of the page that the Bible was opened to was talking about prophets. He looked really shocked, and then just looked at me and said, "did you open it to this page" to which I said no, and then he asked my companion the same thing. He then went on about how crazy it was and how it was also scary😂. We told him it was God and he agreed. This didn't accomplish anything in terms of him receiving a confirmation that a prophet is on Earth today, but I think experiences like this are really good for Idar to show him that God is there. 

The only other thing we did this week was have a lesson with our guy Grzegorz. He is the guy from Poland that brought a Book of Mormon cake to our language cafe a while ago. We had a really good lesson with him. We had our good friend Piotr from the ward to also help on the lesson, because he is also from Poland and there is a bit of a language barrier. He translated a lot of stuff for us so we were able to teach a lot to him. He was at Rafael's baptism last week, and he said that he thought it was really cool, and that he wants to do it in the future he just wants to learn more. So that is really exciting. It's honestly just a matter of time for him he is awesome. 

Sorry if that was all a bit boring, we haven't really been doing anything exciting outside of teaching so that's all I really have to talk about. 

We've been teaching a lot this week, but it was honestly still a pretty frustrating week for me. Me and my companion have still been struggling to unite. We disagree on almost everything, whether it be something small like what a certain emoji means, or just like the way we would go about teaching. Not that we are always contentious when we disagree, but it is just difficult. During the second hour of church this week, a lady in the ward came up to me and asked me something, and because she speaks with very very thick dialect, I didn't really understand what she said. She was asking for something, and I went to go hand her something else, and then she repeated herself, and I was able to understand her. When I went to go hand her the wrong thing, these two dudes in the ward sitting next to me were just laughing and giggling at me because I couldn't understand. I was already in a pretty bad mood, and this just piled on my frustration. I ended up just standing up and going to sit in another room by myself for a second. I just sat and prayed, asking how I could/can overcome my frustration. The thought, "get up and keep going" just popped in my head. It felt like it was just my own thoughts but I trust that it was from God. So after a few minutes I did get up and went back into the class. That thought has been in my mind over the last few days since that happened. Sometimes we go through things, and feel things, that just seem like they don't change no matter what you try to do or what advice you get. I think sometimes the only thing we really can do is keep going. I stumbled on this quote from the great Harriet Tubman today that I really like, ""If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there's shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going." Obviously Harriet Tubman experienced things and accomplished things far beyond what any of us have or will. But I think it is a great reminder to us to keep going within any circumstance. You can sub in any word for freedom in that quote, and it can be applied to our own lives. Anything we are striving after, whether that be joy, peace, happiness, etc, can be received as we faithfully press forward. As the Come Follow Me was focused on Lehi's vision of the tree of life this week, I also really liked this lyric in relation to this. "And it came to pass that I beheld others pressing forward, and they came forth and caught hold of the end of the rod of iron; and they did press forward through the mist of darkness, clinging to the rod of iron, even until they did come forth and partake of the fruit of the tree (1Ne8:24)" As we press forward through the darkness in our lives, we too can receive the joy that can come from the end goal. 

Lyric: 

"Now I got back up man every time I slipped

Never ever quit, I just kept on pursuing"

-Danny Brown

Ha det bra

-Eldste Winegar