December 8, 2014

Good to hear that you guys made it home safely and had a fun trip in Dallas and Oklahoma! You only have a couple weeks of grindmode and then it'll be another relaxing break for christmas. Hurray for opposition. I remember feeling frustrated and stressed out this week but right now I feel great looking back at an awesome week. Elder Childs and I had all sorts of fun chores and adventures this week.

Our incredible stake president ended up in the hospital for a day or two so we took the opportunity to ask his wife if there was anything we could do to serve him and the family. On monday, we got the opportunity to help out a little bit with the trim/molding in their entry hallway. They have such a beautiful house and they always feed us super fancy soups with oyster and cod and all sorts of seafood stuff. Their soup, which I initially thought would be gross, ended up being delicious. Their house, which I originally thought to be spotless, ended up having some imperfections. Heavenly Father can teach us in interesting ways if we are observant and willing to learn. The stake president was grateful that we could come and help him out and he's totally fine now. 

I conducted my last MLC on wednesday. 15th one! I think it went really well so we should keep things rolling over here in Norway. We talked about some things we could do to help all the young missionaries including some ideas for training in the month of december. Exciting time of the year. 

We're focusing a lot of that HE IS THE GIFT initiative and its been a lot of fun so far. The Christmas season is a great time to be a missionary but the cliche about people being distracted and focused on the wrong things is totally true. Make sure to check out the christmas.mormon.org website and share it with the world. Christ truly is The Gift to us all and its fun to help Him with His great work. 

We spent a ton of time on wednesday after the meeting driving to the airport and down to tønsberg in our mission "creeper" van. I was super pumped though because I got to go see this Luis guy get baptized in Drammen. He even remembered me even though I stopped him and got his number like 4 months ago. So that plus seeing the members in drammen made for an awesome night. ¨

On friday, we spent the day in Oslo with the zoneleaders and it was a lot of fun to be with them. They're super diligent and obedient so it was cool to see what else we could focus on so that we could improve. I feel like we learned alot about the importance of having a pure love for others, as well as being natural and personable in the ways that we teach the gospel. 

Lots of good things happening but I would say the best of all this week happened last night when we taught this norwegian single mother. She's positive and super open to learning about the church and acting upon the answers she recieves from God. She's already read a little in The Book of Mormon and she's working towards baptism in January. Heavenly Father's been challenging us this week but he's also blessing us and keeping us happy at the same time.  

We'll be heading up to trondheim tonight for splits all day tomorrow. Should be fun but our flight leaves soon so I gotta go! Ha det bra! Hope you guys have a great week! Keep working hard and enjoy the christmas season:)

Eldste Skinner