June 23, 2014

Sorry. coming at you guys a little late. Yesterday was the mid summer holiday and so my Pday was packed.  We helped a member move all of stuff out of her apartment including refrigerators, ovens washing machine, all that fun stuff. I'm determined to be a minimalist. I hate junk. Not just with houses but with anything including my area's that I serve in. I like to be organized and in control of everyone i'm teaching, can be teaching, who I should stop teaching, etc. Obviously its not that fun and requires some time to sit down and think and plan but it feels great afterwards knowing that you have more control of what's going on, especially in a city like drammen where we have a lot going on. We also played some softball yesterday with our mission leaders family. His wife just had a baby but they still invited us to grill and play with them. It was basically 4 on 4 or something like that and only about 3 and a half of us knew how to play. It was kinda frustrating but luckily it was just for fun so i kept it pretty cool. I learned that there is a major difference between playing softball and just being in the game. Likewise, there is a difference between being a missionary and just going on a mission. I don't want to see other missionaries just go on missions and never actually become missionaries. Its equally as frustrating as being on a softball team without anyone who really has the needed skills (or even knows the rules). It does get me pretty stoked though to go on splits or have training meetings or just talk with other missionaries to try and help them with their missionary work. I'm learning all sorts of ways to be a missionary and I think that's because I need to use them and share these ideas with everyone else. 

  We got a lot of work done this past week and saw some cool little miracles happen. Its always weird to look back on the week and think about what I can write you guys about. So much happens in a week and, of course, time flies by. When you are effectively planning out your schedule its amazing to see how much you can do with your time. Making time count is way more fun and worth while than counting time. This especially applies with missionary work. This is my mission and my chance to give it my all and I'm super grateful for all cool things that went down. 

We went to Porsgrunn this week to go on splits and follow up on how things are going in the district down there. We're still trying to be persistent with this whole hastening the work with the members. Summer's is trying to stop us though but we'll keep at that and here in Drammen I feel like we really need to do some solid activities with the youth as a way to build them up and it will also be  great way for them to come and invite their friends. It will also be fun so its a win, win, win. We found this awesome family this week from Lithuania and they seem super excited to come to church this week. We're going back to teach them this week on thursday with a member who can speak some russian. So we've just been really blessed with investigators and we should hopefully be baptizing in these next couple of weeks. The more we try to work hard and get things done the more we realize how hard it is for us to have full control over everything. I guess that's why we just need to lose ourselves in this work and trust in the grace of heavenly father and pray that His will happens. 

Thanks for the email! have a great week:)

Love you!

Eldste Skinner