Week 62

Hallo,

Hope everyone is good. For those who read my last email, last week we met a lot of really cool people and had a few really good first lessons, so I was pretty hopeful that this week would go really well, but it is not often that it does as a missionary when you are counting on people you have met to reply or meet, lol. And it unfortunately was not great, at least in terms of any sort of follow up from people we met or met up with last week. Most the week was really slow, but we had some cool moments and miracles.

Outside of a few smaller things we had/needed to get done, Monday night, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were days that were mostly just knocking doors and talking to people on the streets. WIth how things are in Norway, it was natural that the days where we were able to street contact (when it wasn't raining, which was not much this week) were a lot more successful and also just enjoyable. I met 2 really cool people on Thursday while talking to people on the street. One of them I will get to later in the email, but the first was an older lady from Eritrea. I'm not sure if she is a crazy old lady or if she actually just has an insane life 😂. She has lived in Norway for 26 years if I remember correctly, in 5 or so cities in her time here. When I was talking to her she told me that she had just barely had a baby 4 days prior, which was at the hospital still and she was going to take him home tomorrow. She looked older than someone who should be having a baby, so that was a surprise lol. But she also said that she has 8 other kids, which span all the way up to the oldest being 30 years old. Throughout our long conversation, it sounds like that over her life she has been an actor, a nurse, and now a veternarian, as well as her and her husband owning a gas station. She said that she met her husband, who is American, while they were acting on something together. And as of now, she lives alone with her newborn baby in the city I'm in, while the rest of her 8 kids and husband live in Oslo. Typing this out this is sounding a lot crazier and unbelievable than it was in the moment 😂. But I gave her a Book of Mormon and when I texted her later that night, she gave me the 2 days she is available this upcoming week without me asking. So we will see what happens lol.

On Friday we headed back out to Kristiansund (one of the 2 other cities we cover, about an hour north of us). We were there last week and lessons with 3 different people. We tried to meet with all of them again this week, but only one was free. We thought it was still worth it to go up there because it was the lesson of the 3 that went the best last week. For anyone that read my last email it was the girl that said she thought it could be 99% that our message could be true. Well, naturally, she did not remember basically anything from the message we had taught😂. But she is one of the first people I've taught in a long, long time that has actually read the Book of Mormon when we invited them to do so. Like honestly thinking about it, I could count on my hands the amount of people that have actually read the Book of Mormon when we invited them to on my mission. So that was really cool. She had also watched part of our church service online. But this time, we went over the Restoration of the Church through Joseph Smith again, and why that was necessary. After reading through some stuff, she seemed to understand it really well and is pretty receptive to it. This is one of like 2 people that I've met with more than once in this area, so I'm pretty hopeful for her. 

Saturday was the busiest day I've had in this area, which felt really nice. We met with 2 lessons that were both pretty big miracles:

-     The first guy we met with was a guy that I had messaged on facebook. The first day I messaged him he literally offered to try and get me free tickets to the game of the local soccer team, which was crazy. And then earlier in the week this week he literally randomly texted and asked if I was a missionary for my church. When I replied yes, he replied and said he would like to invite us over to his house for lunch on the weekend, if that was okay for us. That was the first time that something like that has happened on my mission from facebook, at least that quickly. So that was for sure a miracle. We went over to his house on Saturday and had a really long and good conversation with him. He has lived in Norway for about 20 years now after marrying a norwegian lady, and is originally from Kenya. He has family that lives in the US and knows a lot about it so we talked a lot about American stuff including the election, sports, etc. He's a super nice guy. When we started talking about the Book of Mormon and such, he was pretty apprehensive as he is a very strong reader of the Bible and doesn't see the need for anything else, but by the end of the visit he agreed to read the Book of Mormon as long as he has his Bible open at the same time, so I guess I'll take that as a win lol. He was just a super nice guy though and was even trying to give us many suggestions how we could get the work going more in this city. 

-     The second appointment on Saturday was honestly probably one of the best of my whole mission. I mentioned earlier in the email that I met a really cool guy on the street on Thursday. He is form Tanzania and is doing an exchange for his job (special education😊) here. His English wasn't the best so when I met him I basically just gave him a Book of Mormon and explained a little bit about it and asked if we could talk again. Well, on Saturday he said it would be best to meet at his place because his friend agreed to join the discussion. We walked into their place, and there were 4 others from Tanzania also there with him. We sat down and instantly started a great conversation with each of them. After talking for maybe 5 or so minutes, one of the guys paused and said, "Ok, we are ready to here your message now" 😂. We went on explaining about the Church, and how we believe it to be Jesus Christ's church restored on the earth today. Because their English isn't the best, we were going pretty slowly to try and make sure they were understanding it. After finishing a general outline of our message, we asked if they understood and if they thought it would be possible that the Church really is Christ's, restored. The same guy replied and basically said something along the lines of saying that it made perfect sense and that it was definitely necessary as there are many churches that interperet the same Bible, and many wrongly. Maybe for those that haven't served a mission, or honeslty even those that served in a place much more successful, it may be difficult to realize how crazy this is, butttt on my mission I'm not sure if that has ever happened. I basically just started chuckling and looked at him baffled, and then turned to the rest of them and asked if they understood and heard what he just said😂. They were all very excited about the idea of the Book of Mormon and of the new knowledge that Christ's church could exist on the earth. There were many other cooler moments from the lessons, but I'll just leave it like that because I could write a whole email about it. But they were also just some of the nicest people I've met in a really long time, saying how excited they were that they have American friends now, and feeding us some Tanzanian food. Huuuuuge miracle for sure. 

This present week we're in now has unfortunately been pretty frustrating for me for a few reasons, which I'll talk more about next week. Yesterday I was on an elevator just staring at the ceiling pretty frustrated with how the day was going, and then had the thought come questioning if I was actively choosing to be joyful, or if I was being passive in my mindset, causing me to be discouraged and frustrated. It got me pondering a lot about choices. God has given each of us children, whether they believe in Him or not, the precious gift of agency: "ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free"(Hel 14:30). That gives us the ability to make hundreds--probably thousands--of decisions every day, both big and small. We get to choose, "whether to do evil or to do good"(Alm 12:31), "whom [we] will serve"(Jos 24:15), and even whether or not we are happy here on earth and in the life to come (Msh 2:41). I think sometimes we all need a reminder that we have more control over our lives than we tend to think. No, we can't choose our circumstances. But, we are able to choose how we handle them, how much we learn from them, and our mindset and outlook throughout them. Writing the experience with the Tanzanians in this email made me reflect that good things are happening, but I may not be making the effort to focus on them. Going back to my thought on the elevator, I think Elder Uchtdorf puts it best: 

"If we seek reasons to be angry, to doubt, to be bitter or alone, we will find them too. 

However, if we seek joy—if we look for reasons to rejoice and to happily follow the Savior, we will find them. 

We rarely find something we are not looking for. 

Are you looking for joy? 

Seek, and ye shall find."

"Even when it's dark outside, yeah

And seems like there's no light, yeah

When I can't seem to find my way, yeah

He will always be there to brighten up my day"

-Keke Wyatt