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.
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Lyric- "All we need is a little more love"
-Al Green
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