This week has blown by. On Tuesday I finished up the stressful, expensive and never ending process of obtaining a Norwegian drivers license. I drove pretty horribly in my test, but it was good enough to get the license! CERTIFIED.
I don't think I have mentioned this, but Elder Skøien's bike is now in the shop, so we have been on foot or bus the last two weeks. The busses work pretty good, but on the weekends they do not go at all. We are hoping to get his bike back before it starts snowing! Or else we have seen some pretty cool snow bikes in the stores. That'd be cool too.
Elder Skøien has been a big help with the Norwegian. We have been speaking just Norsk outside of the apartment and have dedicated two days a week to speaking it the whole day. I had gotten a little lazy with that in the past so it is good to recommit. Language skills are so important, even if everyone here speaks better english than me.
We continue to be blessed with people to teach and share the gospel with. On Saturday we had a really cool experience when we were out banking. There was a guy early in the evening that quickly told us we could try back later in the evening and slammed the door. We were not sure how serious to take him and already had to plan for a 45 minute walk home. We continued banking and found nothing. Everybody seemed to be watching the same TV show and were annoyed that we were interrupting them. We were about to head home before deciding to try back that man we had found earlier in the evening. He happily let us in and we had an awesome lesson! The spirit was strong. He had doubts, but wholeheartedly committed to pray and read from the book of mormon. He even said the prayer to close the lesson. It's cool how often the miracles don't come until after we have done all that we can.
Earlier in the week we were blessed to find and teach a norwegian family. It has been humbling to find all these people that are willing to hear, but the problem we have been having is getting them to progress towards baptism. It is one thing to hear the message and feel the spirit, but it is another to act and really commit to find out if the message is true. The spirit takes the message unto people's hearts, but they have to choose to really let it in. It makes you realize how important member work is, especially as it relates to finding and teaching those that will progress towards baptism. The mission is putting a greater focus on member work; less active, new convert AND active members. It is going to take a real change in how we do missionary work for the full potential to be reached here, but getting everyone to really commit to that change is not easy.
We have been having trouble getting investigators and members to church due to a shortage of members with cars. We may need to find and baptize a bus driver.
Thanks for the notes and your support! Have a great week!
Love,
Eldste Parkinson
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| We helped one of our investigators clean out his house this week! |
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More Rainbows
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