August 25, 2014

Another Crazy week here in D-city. I love being here in Drammen and I feel at home here. I'm grateful that I was needed to come here. This ward never gets old and the cities big enough for me to keep exploring and finding people. This definitely is the place to be on the mission. Yesterday there were a lot of changes made and our bishopric got even younger. Our homie Daniel got called to be the second counselor and he's like 24 years old. Heavenly Father is hastening his work and I'm grateful to be in a ward that's completely on board to help us out here. 

My mission leader asked me this week if I could do some service this week. He needed me to be a starting pitcher on Tuesday. That was pretty fun and a lot of good missionary opportunities came out of that. It was funny because I ended up just wearing some ghetto nikes, some sweat pants and a snap back. Brought some heat. It was fun. But not as much fun as teaching and being led by the spirit.  

One of the highlights form this week was meeting with James, who was baptized earlier this month. I was blown away with how solid this guy is! He's loving life and really wants to share the gospel with others. We read a little bit from Preach My Gospel chapter 1 about how hard Satan is trying to destroy the family. Its something that is so easy to see in this world today. I'm grateful that the gospel has helped us stay happy and together. 

We had our workshop in Tønsberg this week and I think it went pretty well. I really got a lot out of it and I've improved a lot in my abilities to set goals and make plans to make more things happen. The day after the meeting, Elder Halvorsen and I had one of our most productive planning sessions ever. Consequently, we'll be way busy this week and we're getting excited to see our friends progress closer and closer to baptism. We got another baptismal date with one of our investigators and he came to church. The portuguese speaking mom is still looking good for her baptismal date. We also had a really awesome teach with this family of four as well. So we ended up having a bunch in church this week. Its so awesome to see hard work pay off. We've been going like crazy to stay organized and on top of things. 

Elder Halvorsen and I went crazy this weekend. There was a huge river festival so we pretty much were contacting people in a carnival/swapmeet type of environment. Lot of distractions but we were led to all sorts of people we needed to find. Our ward also had its own stand, so we got to have some people come up to us with some questions although most of the people came for the free waffles we were making. 

It's sad to see summer go but I'm sure fall will be a lot of fun as well. Hope you guys have an awesome week with work and school and what not. Love you!

Eldste Skinner