What's good,
Pretty good week for me. For most of the last month or so, me and my companion have been able to have a lot of first lessons/meetups, but basically none of which ended up being someone who was genuinely interested in learning more about the gospel. Well, this week we had 3 that finally actually went pretty well. A bit about 2 of them:
-Probably about a week and half ago we were walking to our church building to get some stuff done and we walked past this guy and ended up having a short conversation with him. His name is Yang and is from Ethiopia, and said he wanted to go to church so he gave us his number. He ended up being busy during our church service, but we were able to get lunch with him last Wednesday. Leading up to the lesson he sent us a text that said something along the lines of, "You guys can tell me more about your church so I can take it back home to Ethopia". So already with that we were looking forward to it. Well the lesson went just as good. We taught him all about the restoration of the church through Joseph Smith, and he told us that he thought it sounded very plausible and he really wanted to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it so he could find out for himself. Basically exactly what you want to hear as a missionary😂. He even told us that he wants to take it back to his homeland and translate it into his mother tongue. Pretty crazy. The only downside about him is that he will only be here in Norway for another month, so we are going to try and teach him as much as possible before he leaves, but time is definitely not on our side. He also does not have a congregation near his hometown, so it may be very difficult once he leaves Norway. Nonetheless though, he is a super cool guy and it was honestly one of the better lessons of my entire mission.
-Later in the week we were able to meet with a guy from Eritrea (small country in Africa). The vast majority of people from Eritrea (at least the ones I've met) are Eastern Orthodox Christian, and are normally not super open in listening to what we have to say. Well the guy we met with, Teklit, has since converted away from Eastern Orthodox and now identifies as a more broad version of Protestant. After sitting with him for a few minutes he asked us to start telling him about our church and why it is different (which normally does not happen). We explained about the Book of Mormon, and he admitted that in the past he would not have accepted something like the Book of Mormon, but recently he has grown to have much more of an open heart and mind because we are all one in Christ. He seemed genuinely interested in reading it and trying it out so we will see. But he was honestly just one of the nicest and most wholesome guys I've met on my mission so it was nice to talk with him. He told us that next time he would bring 5-6 friends with him so that we could teach them as well...if that actually happened I would be extremely shocked, but it's a nice gesture regardless lol.
Two other things that were out of ordinary this week:
-On Friday we drove over 2.5 hours (each way) to go out and visit someone that sent in an online referral. We called him and he said he wanted to grow his relationship with Christ and wanted a new church so we were expecting it to go relatively well. Well, it definitely didn't lol. Within the first 5 minutes my companion mentioned something about baptism, basically just said the word (which is a good thing), and the guy instantly just started freaking out and saying that he did not want baptism. We tried to explain very briefly why we believe baptism is important in our church, and when that didn't work we tried describing a bit about the Book of Mormon. After a few more minutes, he eventually was just staring down at the table and told us that we needed to end the meeting. We asked him if he wanted us to leave, and he said yeah, so we left. So basically between 5 and 6 hours of driving for 10 minutes. Definitely did not feel like a great use of time, but it is what it is.
-While we were in an online morning one of the mornings, we received a text from the senior Elder that we served with saying that there was someone that needed a priesthood blessing in the University hospital, and the name was one that no one knew (which up here does not happen with the little amount of members we have). Basically what had happened was this guy had a friend in Utah that is a member of the church, and she messaged our mission president, who messaged the senior missionaries in our area, who messaged us. So we just walked into the hospital room and confirmed his name, to which he confirmed and asked who we were😂. We explained the situation and why we were there, and he was very kind and said that he would take all the blessings he could get. Him and his wife were here in Tromsø on vacation for what was supposed to be 9 days, but he was just walking in the street and randomly had a heart attack. After some complications with putting a pace maker in, they've been in the hospital for over 2 weeks. After giving him a priesthood blessing, he had tears streaming down his face and thanked us, telling us that he could feel a difference. Pretty cool. Him and his wife are both very spiritual peopl with different religious backgrounds. It was a pretty cool testament to me that God blesses people through his power no matter their religious affilitation or who they are.
In one of out meetings as missionaries this week we talked a lot about complacency, and how we can avoid and combat that through being intentional. I feel like becoming passive or complacent is something that is super common in all areas of life, including and especially as a missionary and as members of the church. It's very easy to go through our days, weeks, months, and even years, living our lives without thinking very deeply about what we are actually doing. Is what we do in a day because it has some sort of intention to improve something or help someone? Or is it just because we have been accustomed or told to do whatever we are doing? I've realized, at least as a missionary, you have to be constantly asking yourself those type of questions or you fall into just doing what those around you are doing, or what you've been taught or told to do, failing to think about the actual intention or purpose for what you are doing or how you are going about each hour of your day. It aplies for how we live our lives day to day, but the same also applies in our relationship with God, our relationship with Christ, and our overall testimony of the restored gospel. I love Elder Soares's talk In Awe of Jesus Christ and His Gospel in relation to this topic. I reccommend listening to the whole talk, but here are some parts that I really liked from it. Firstly, I really like his description of complacency in relation to our spiritual health:
"Such apathy is characterized by the gradual loss of our excitement to engage fully in the Lord's gospel... This complacency, so to speak, causes us to take the gospel gifts for granted, and from then on, we run the risk of neglecting both our regular immersion in the essentials of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the covenants we have made."
And what he said directly before on how we can avoid the spirtual apathy he is speaking of:
"My brothers and sisters, when we truly are in awe of Jesus Christ and His gospel, we are happier, we have more enthusiasm for God's work, and we recognize the Lord's hand in all things. Additionally, our study of God's words is more meaningful; our prayers, more intentional; our worship, more reverent; our service in God's kingdom, more diligent"
Maybe surprisingly, I feel like conciousness of spiritual growth is something that is also hard on a mission. Obviously there are less distractions, but it's been very obvious to me on my mission that if you're not making a concious, intentional effort to have spiritual growth, you're not going to have it. It's really that simple. I hope the church can continue to foster a culture that emphasizes and encourages intentionality in all aspects of life, especially spiritually.
"[Stuff] got too complicated
Pace myself, the paper swells
I'm patient, not complacent"
-Saba
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