Week 58

What's good,

Sorry for the poorly spaced out emails..but, We had another week that had a lot of break ups in it with random things which made it a lot more tolerable and made the days we were in our area slightly more busy. Things in this area are still not going very good at all, but within that there have been some small moments that bring joy. Hope all of you are doing okay. 

As I mentioned in my email last week, we had zone conference down in Oslo (capitol) which we flew down to on Wednesday. But our day Tuesday was probably one of my busier since I've been in this area:

-Had the opportunity to interview another person that is being taught by someone in the district that I'm in for baptism. This time is was a 19 year old girl so it was a lot more manageable than a little kid like last week lol. Besides her not remembering Joseph Smith's name at first though, it as a really cool experience. I don't even know how else to describe it but it was just a really nice experience and I'm glad I got to do it. 

-We went to the language cafe that is held in the library here again, which as I said before is led by a bunch of old Norwegian ladies. They basically just split you into groups based off of how much Norwegian you can speak, and this week me and my companion were put with this American lady. It's pretty rare to see Americans here, so it was good to talk to an american, kind of lol. It's always interesting for me to see Americans living here though because it honestly just doesn't make a lot of sense in my opinion. But I was reminded how much Americans talk because she literally would not let anyone else get a word in the whole time 😂.

-Later that night met with another American guy that I had talked to a few weeks ago on the street from New York. That meetup followed a very similar pattern to the conversation earlier in the day with the american lady, as the guy literally would not stop talking so we did not even really get to talk very much at all which was frustrating but he is pretty against the idea of being a God regardless. He was just raging to us about all the things that suck in Norway on the educational side of things as he is a professor, which was actually interesting to hear.

Our zone conference was honestly a bit frustrating for a number of reasons. It's been difficult for me as well as a lot of other missionaries to adjust to getting a new mission President and in turn having a lot of things ran differently. But there are a lot of people in my zone that I enjoy being around so that was good, and it's always good to have a break from the regular day to day as well.

Getting back into our area on Friday I was back with my regular companion, and we just won't be able to drive for the next week or so until we have transfers. Like I said though, there's not really much happening here, but there were a few smaller things that happened that were cool:

-On Friday we were about to take the bus out to some neighborhoods to knock some doors, but my companion forgot his bus card back at our apartment so we had to walk back and go get it. I was a little frustrated, but I kept having the thought come into my head that everything is meant to happen for some purpose. After we got his card and we were walking back into the city, I realized that I had walked past the guy that runs the only basketball program here. I turned back around and started talking to him, and after talking for a few minutes he said he would love extra help and told us to meet him at the gym the next day. We went the next day and didn't do much besides grab him a few things and watched the game (kids game), but we afterwards discussed the possibility of helping with the basketball and maybe going around to do tours at schools in the area, so we will see what happens. 

-Another day in the week when we were also about to go and knock some doors after getting cancelled on by one of our friends, we called one of our other friends that we were planning to have a lesson with earlier that day but had also fallen through. She answered that time and we were able to have a long call lesson with her. This is the same lady I talked about last week from Rwanda who very strongly believes only in the Bible at the moment, but we had some things said that I hope were some small steps forward. Just talking with her for like 20 minutes about Rwanda and how she likes being here in Norway before we taught her anything was probably one of my favorite parts of my week. 

-Something else small that happened yesterday. We were finishing up some studies we were doing in a bus station and about to leave, and then one of our friends that has canceled on us the previous 2 times we have planned to play basketball with him walked in and sat with us and we were able to have a long conversation with him and teach him a little bit. He is a bit of an interesting guy, and I honestly thought he may have been high or something because he just kept repeating everything we said before he replied back to us, but my companion said that's normal for him lol. But he is from Congo and is a really nice guy, we were able to talk about a lot of different stuff with him. 

Only other thing that really happened was an interesting (or maybe funny?) exchange with one of the other friends we are teaching. She is a girl that is around our age, but she is, for lack of a better explanation, pretty weird, and all of the lessons we have with her are always really awkward (at least they feel awkward to me). It's hard to tell how much she really even cares about wanting to grow a relationship with God. Well after planning a lesson with her yesterday, she sent a text a few minutes later saying that she was wondering something, and then asked if there are rules in the church against having feelings for someone in the church or leaders in the church. And then of course went on to say that she has feelings for one of us bruh. Was pretty frustrating as she has been one of our only people showing interest (kinda I guess), but she said she still is interested in learning about God and will "hold herserlf serious" when we meet together. My companion thought it was hilarious and I was kinda just raging about it but yeah that happened lol. 

In our zone conference I gave a small presentation on how we can be better listeners, which I really enjoyed planning for and pondering more about. It was of course partly in context to how we can do that teaching as missionaries, but I also tried to focus it on how we can just be better listeners. When I decided on that topic, the first thing that came to my mind was how listening is an essential part in us fulfilling the baptismal convenant to, "bear one another's burdens, that they may be light; 9 Yea...to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort"(Mosiah 18:8-9). We cannot provide succor or support for each other if we do not learn how to first be good listeners. I feel like it's become normalized to judge others actions before doing anything else, so it makes sense that it is also common to not follow the urge to, "be swift to hear, slow to speak"(James 1:19). But to fullfill our baptismal covenants, or even simply try to be like Christ, each of us has to work on how we can provide a listening ear rather than judgement, even when it's rooted in love. It doesn't directly say anything about listening, but I think this quote from Elder Ballard demonstrates what it means to really be a good listener,

"Surely good neighbors should put forth every effort to understand each other and to be kind to one another regardless of religion, nationality, race, or culture..."