SOCIAL MEDIA

Week 41

Tuesday, June 4, 2024



What's good,

Another week that was super out of the ordinary. The last like month or so has all been very chaotic and we have not had many days that are our average missionary work days. Which has been a good change of pace, but worries me a little bit for when everything slows down and goes back to normal.

We were down in Oslo (capital) for Zone conference for most of the first part of the week. Because we have to fly for zone conferences in the current zone I'm in, anytime we have zone conference it is always at least a few days away from our area. Which is always a good break from regular day to day. The zone conference was really good, probably one of my favorites of my mission so far, but not really anything that is worth writing. I did get the chance to play some basketball with my mission president on Thursday morning which was fun. I joked to him a couple months ago that we needed to play basketball together sometime before he leaves, and since then he has been determined to actually make it happen. He leaves in less than a month, so I was glad to get to do it. He is literally 65 but was still playing perfectly fine with all us missionaries. He, and everyone else that played, woke up earlier than normal to go over and play, so I was very grateful to get to play, even though I didn't play very good๐Ÿ™ƒ.

The two days that we were actually in our area this week were pretty uneventful, outside of having a really long lesson with our friend Daniel preparing him for his baptism this week. It was close to 3 hours long, definitely the longest lesson of my mission. It probably seems like we are just doing a lot of cramming to get him baptized this week, which to a certain extent, we are, but he is going to be traveling back to the states for the summer and really wants to get baptized before he leaves. I think I've mentioned before, but he literally has no knowledge at all of God or just how religion works in general, so that is the main reason all of our lessons with him have been really long. We've had to explain everything from scratch and in as much detail as possible without making it too much. It's crazy to me how quick the process has been teaching him up to his baptism, but it has been really enjoyable and one of the overall highlights of my mission for sure. As I've said, he's a pretty goofy guy which makes for a lot of funny lines and moments. I can only think of 2 this week that were funny, at least in the moment. The first was when we were going through some of the questions with him for the baptismal interview. I told him that I would just read through all of them first, that he didn't need to answer, and then we could discuss them after. I was reading through and when I read the question that asks if you've ever committed a serious crime (you can still get baptized if you have) he just interrupted me and said "ABsolutely not; never in my life"๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚. Me and my comp got a good chuckle out of that one. The other was yesterday after his baptismal interview was done. He just turned to us and said, "wait.. so do you guys think the fjord is going to be cold?". He was the one who decided he wanted to get baptized in the fjord (the ocean), so I'm not sure why it is just processing to him now that it's going to be cold๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚. We have taught him about baptism and that we do it by immersion multiple times, but he still asked, "I don't have to go like all the way under the water, right?". Right now it's supposed to rain on Thursday so I hope we get a few minutes of sun for it or it's going to be even more cold for him haha.

Early saturday morning we got on a boat to travel down to a city called Harstad that is about 3 hours south of us for our mission conference. It is basically just a conference for all of the members who live in the north of Norway, kinda like a stake conference, but since there isn't a stake in the north it's just called mission conference. On Saturday afternoon we had an activity with all of the youth, where we just went to a beach and did some weird relay race type of thing where we had different "tasks" we had to complete. Was honestly really dumb but it was fun to be with and meet a lot of the youth. Our area does not have any youth so all the youth there I had not met before which was fun. We then had meetings both Saturday night and Sunday morning which were both good. Honestly the main highlight was meeting this 60 year old guy who lives with the missionaries that are north of us, who has some sort of special needs, not sure what. Nothing I can say to describe him does him justice but he is just a legend. Overall the conference just a had a really cool spirit and feeling of unity. It was just powerful, at least to me, to have all of these super faithful members in all of these tiny branches in the North of Norway gathered together. 

There were a few different experiences/ moments this week that made me think a lot about gratitude and how important that is for us in our lives, and more specifically for the enjoyment of our lives. The first was from an interview I was listening to of a member of the church that grew up in Haiti. His overall perspective on life was really interesting to me as well as powerful. Here's a quote from the video:
"We live day by day...whatever happens, it happens. When things go bad in Haiti, everyone always says we leave it in God's hands...I enjoy my bad days just as much as my good days. My bad days are what makes things go slower. I live a longer life, and kinda just enjoy the little things more. Makes me appreciate what we have more...Theres nothing you can do, you just gotta leave it in God's hands; gotta pray,  and just enjoy that bad day..You just gotta keep going...When you having fun, life goes by faster, but when you having a boring day, it goes by a little slower, you get to enjoy that moment a little bit more."
I'm not sure why, but his perspective really resonated with me. Obviously it's a lot easier said than done, but his mindset on life is something that I think could help anyone feel more joy. It hasn't really applied to me recently because our last few weeks have been super busy, but the times when I have felt frustrated in the last few days I have tried to take a second mentally to try and think of the little things that I've had the opportunity to do so far in the day and let that make me happy. During zone conference there were also 2 presentations/talks that talked about gratitude that also brought that to the front of my mind. One was from my current companion, and one from one of my previous companions. My current companion did a whole presentation on gratitude and shared the correlation between gratitude and joy, and how powerful it is if you can learn to control your mindset. My former companion gave his departing testimony in zone conference, and mentioned that one of the biggest things that he learned on his mission is that joy comes through gratitude. There's not much else for me to personally add, besides that I agree and I think it's something we can all try harder to work at. I can't talk about this and not mention Sister Purcell, the senior sister I served with for 6 months in my first area (basically an additional grandma ๐Ÿ™‚). Everytime she has written me a letter, email, or given me any sort of advice, she has mentioned to remember to be grateful, to choose to be grateful and receive the joy that comes from that. My former companion when talking about that in his testimony mentioned her as well, as a perfect example of choosing to be joyful and grateful. I think we can all take her advice, and in turn be a little bit more like her๐Ÿ˜.

Lyric-
"Life, I be takin for granted, capture the moments, the Canon" 
-Saba

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