What's good,
Hope everyone is good. Pretty insane week for me. Basically everything we did was super out of the ordinary, which made for a great change of pace and probably one of the better weeks of my whole mission.
One of the few members in our branch out here lives on a farm that she recently purchased within the last few years. We try to get out there and help her out for a few hours as much as possible. This week when we went out there she had us change the tires on both of her cars from winter to summer. Her and her son are definitely very interesting people, but it is good to get some switch up in our schedule and I'm glad to help her in any way we can as they are struggling in many aspects. One of the guys we are teaching also lives on a farm--of mostly sheep--that is out in the same direction as her (about an hour away), so anytime we go to visit one of them we try to visit both. We did visit him as well this week. He has been a challenge, in a good way, to teach. He really likes everything about the church and the Book of Mormon, but struggles to say he "believes" in it or "knows" it is true. Well, this week we had a member from the branch join the lesson via zoom, and it was awesome. This member is kinda a goofy guy, but it was so cool to see him in the lesson. Apparently he almost left the church a few months ago, but you never would've been able to tell that during the lesson. When Torbjørn (the guy we're teaching) began to ramble about his doubts, the member just interrupted him and bore his testimony of the Book of Mormon and told Torbjørn to read what it says in Moroni 10:3-5 (pray openly about the BOM), and promised him that he would receive an answer as it says. It was really powerful; definitely one of the best member involved lessons I've had.
On Thursday we had gone through a pretty much average day up until 3 oclock, when the Sister missionaries told us that there was someone that they were in contact with that wanted a priesthood blessing. We obviously agreed. They then told us that she had been in the hospital a few days prior, so we'd need to go to her house. We were fine with that, but then asked where she lived and they said 3 hours away. That means that if we were to leave right then at around 3:30, the 6 hours of driving (3 each way) would already put us getting home late. We would've gone the next day as it wasn't incredibly urgent, but we were leaving the next day and were not going to be in the area for a few days. We called our mission President to see what he thought we should do, and he said we had no choice. So we quickly ran back to our apartment to grab some food to eat on the way, and then headed out. It was obviously a lot of driving and we got home really late, but it ended up being a really really cool experience. This lady is a lady that was recently baptized down in the south of Norway, but is up visiting her husband up here--who is a priest in the state church here, and we had heard had been very supportive of her getting baptized in our church. Our mission president, as well as us, was very excited about the opportunity to talk to him. Upon arriving we quickly remembered that they are Swedish, which we had been told but forgotten. The conversations I have had with Cole where he speaks Swedish and I speak Norwegian actually came in handy because there were some words that I was able to pick out that were different. But right as we arrived, they were both incredibly nice and warm towards us. We had brought her a Swedish Book of Mormon because she didn't have one, and one we gave it to her she started crying and thanking us over and over. She then asked if we could sit down and read together, which we obviously agreed to. They have 2 cats and 3 chihuahuas so it was a little hectic to try and stay focused haha. They insisted on giving us food, but because the stores were closed that day in Norway due to it being a holiday, the only food they had to give us was mashed potatoes and vegetarian hot dogs haha. They were completely fine though besides a few cat hairs I had to pick out which was probably just my fault for petting them. Her husband is honestly like top 3 nicest people I've met on my entire mission. During the dinner he was so excited to talk to us about all he knows about our church, and kept apologizing that he was talking too much haha. After the dinner we had already been there for way too long so we then gave her the priesthood blessing, which we explained to her before because she is recent convert as I mentioned. After giving the blessing, she sat and was motioning with her hands around her face and trying to describe how she was feeling, and was struggling to do so. She called over her husband to ask him how to say the words in norwegian. She began to just say that she was feeling so much peace and calm all over and asking us what was happening. We told her that that is what a priesthood blessing is meant to do, and that it was from God. Some minutes later she was walking around, and straightened our her back and stretched her arms in the air and said that she felt strength that she hadn't felt in a long time. Anyways, when we were leaving, they were insisting to send us home with a bunch of food and stuff, including a ceramic water pitcher lol, which we declined. When we walked out the door she shook each of our hands for multiple minutes and just thanked us over and over, as well as her husband. I apologize for the very long explanation of the experience, but it was just a super cool experience. I feel like you always hear about stories like that in terms of the reality of the priesthood, but I had never personally experienced anything like that before. It was really cool and a strong testament to me that God's power really is on the on the earth today and has been restored to Christ's church.
As I said, the next day we left out of our area. We flew to Bergen, a city on the west coast of Norway, to attend a baptism of someone that my companion had taught while he served there. My companion was the one who performed the baptism so that is why we were able to go. It was a super super fun weekend. Probably shouldn't be proud to admit but much of the weekend felt like I was not a missionary, at least not to the extent that I normally am haha. There are a lot of missionaries that serve in Bergen so I think most of all it was just really fun to be around the other missionaries there. The baptism itself was also really cool. It is probably the most that I have felt the spirit at any baptism I have ever attended, and I had only met this lady 1 time before this weekend. I won't go into details, but she had some incredibly difficult things happen in the last few weeks, so it was really cool to see her faith to continue with the baptism and how awesome of a service it was.
I've been reading President Nelson's relatively new book "Heart of the Matter" recently. Many things that he says in the book are things he has also taught in general conference. One of the things I read in the book this week that really stood out to me is referring to President Nelson's call for each of us to become "peacemakers". His message in the book about it is very similar to his conference talk about it. More specifically, this is the quote that stood out to me: "Charity is the spiritual gift that helps us to cast off the natural man, who is selfish, defensive, prideful, and jealous...Charity defines a peacemaker". Even more specifically, when I read this sentence, the words prideful and jealous stood out to me. I think when we think of someone that is not a peacemaker, we quickly think of someone that is openly unkind or contenious, but I think much of being a peacemaker is how we think about those around us. Even if we aren't actually harming them, if we have negative feelings towards them that is not fostering peace. Me and my current companion get a long really well, but in the moments when we aren't feeling super connected I've noticed it's because either one of pride or jealousy is present. I'm probably (hopefully) not actually saying anything harmful, but when I have hateful or negative thoughts towards him or things he does, that builds contention rather than peace. I think pride and jealousy are things that are hard because if you are acting with either of them, it's unlikely you are humble enough to see it and try and be better. I also think it is difficult because literally everything that the media and the world teaches us today promotes those things: "And now we call the proud happy;...(3 Nephi 24:15)". Despite that, we learn from President Nelson and also just from Christ himself that we need to strive to eliminate those things in our lives. President Nelson references it in his talk, but I, too, find the description of charity in Moroni 7 very useful and applicable, especially when talking about jealousy, pride, and being a peacemaker. Verse 45:
"45 And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."
All in all, I think if we can all try to eliminate pride and jealousy, among other things, that could bring more peace in each of our lives, which I think we all want. I really like President Nelson's call to do so: "At this point you may be thinking that this message would really help someone you know... I also hope that you will look deeply into your heart to see if there are shards of pride or jealousy that prevent you from becoming a peacemaker."
Lyric:
"And if you're wrong, and you're too proud to hear correction
Walk into the whole you dug yourself, f--- a projection"
-Lauryn Hill
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