April 21, 2014

Helloooo!

Its been a fast week and next week will be even faster. The spring weather has been unreal. Super warm, blue skies, bright until about 9pm, etc. I love it. Pretty soon all the trees will start blooming so I'm pretty stoked to see everything come back to life. We've had a great week here in our zone. We've been really pushing and coming up with ideas to get the work moving forward. I'm learning quickly about how important it is to have a sense of urgency with the work. I'm going to be home in no time and there's all sorts of things I want to get done. Missionary work is a lot different than I imagined. Sometimes I feel like I'm running a little business or commanding a little army up here in the north. There's a huge problem-solving aspect to the work which keeps me constantly studying and thinking about how I can help out Heavenly Father and his work up here. Luckily he's the boss and I'm just his hands. We were really blessed this week even though it was kind of expected that it'd be tough to find people to teach because of easter. We just didn't see the need to make excuses, so we set a plan and worked like crazy and it all worked out. Super blessed. As the days keep on flying by I sometimes forget to stop think and even look back on how much I've grown and learned. I keep learning knew things but it sucks knowing that I still won't know it all by the time my mission is over. Oh well . Just gotta keep going.. no sleeping through the restoration. 

I went on splits with Elder Halverson this week and we had a pretty sweet experience as we tried out some knocking on doors. We were at these apartment like complexes that are indoor where you have to ring their number, wait for them to answer, and then hope that they let you in.. hooked up to a phone and camera and what not. We kept trying a bunch of those but weren't having too much luck. After ringing pretty much all 20 or so buttons, we start heading for the next one. I'm pretty good at making work fun so we were happy even though it was raining and lame. We go to say a prayer and as we're about to pray, this lady was chilling on her porch and asked us who we were looking for. We just said that we were looking for her and then she sorta laughed and said that she thought we were trying to doorbell ditch her. Then she said something like, "well I should probably let you guys in then" but then seemed a little bit hesitant. Earlier that morning I was thinking about how lame it is that sometimes we as missionaries aren't as bold or persistant as we should be. Although I wanted to be really nice and respectful and maybe felt like i didnt really want to intrude, I realized that that was a dumb thing to be thinking. She let us in. And I feel like she let us in because of what  I remembered and learned that same morning. It's important for us as missionaries, and even members, to be bold about what we believe in and be persistant about sharing it. This lady was really nice and ended up feeling the spirit and liking us enough to come back. She's not technically in my area because we were on splits but now halverson and his companion are teaching her and she's thinking about baptism. Pretty sweet. The guidance of the spirit was also a cool lesson I learned there but thats a whole other story. Being guided by the spirit is always the focus for me from now on. I want cool stories like tony samuelson with all of  his different promptings 

Easter here was sweet. Got an easter egg from the senior couple here in Trondheim so you dont need to stress out about my easter basket. I plan on living at home the rest of my life so you can just hook me up with one next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that...

haha. thanks for keeping me posted on everything back at home. Always makes me happy. Have a great week.. i'm gonna go and get back out in this wonderful sunshine!

Love you!

Eldste Skinner