HEY
This week has been a blast! God blessed us with quite a few new investigators this week! The cool thing was that a lot of them were found as back up plans! Appointments would fall through, we'd show faith that there was someone else we were supposed to find, and God would always bless us with a miracle! I thought I just share a couple cool finding experiences we had:
On a bitter cold day last Monday, we had all our appointments fall through in the evening and decided to go out and try some less-active members! Most of them were not home, but we made a focus of contacting and finding people on the way. I stopped this lady and asked her what God meant to her. She said it meant everything and proceeded to tell us about how her faith has helped her and her son through very hard times. Elder Årsnes asked how old her son was and she just started crying as she told us 7 and a half. We started bearing testimony of the power the restored gospel has to bless families and she told us that she had prayed earlier that day for God to send someone to her that could help her family. We said a prayer with her right there on the street and she took a pamphlet to read. She has since told us that she needs some time to process things, which doesn't bother me at all considering how delicate and precious of a soul that she is. That was a way powerful experience for me.
During the week we were out street contacting at a very busy time right in the center of Oslo. It was weird because nobody was even looking at us when we tried to stop them. Elder Årsnes would keep pinching me to make sure I wasn't wearing an invisibility cloak. I suggested that it might be the new deodrant I got. There came a point that We both felt strongly that we needed to get out of there. I suggested we just get on a TBane and we felt good about going to a place called Tøyen. After a few minutes of contacting we stopped a guy who is totally prepared, from Bolivia, has a family, looking for a church, and we got tons of spanish members! Now we're teaching the guy!
One last one. Yesterday we were on our way to a middag appointment and we were crossing a street. I felt this urge to talk with a certain guy and stopped him right in the middle of the street. Turns out he is a new member that moved here a few months ago from Italy, but hadn't yet found the church here in Oslo! He had just been through the temple for the first time right before he left! He even lives with a non-member cousin that he is going to introduce to us today!!
I was thinking about what Mom said about Ministering angels and how people are being prepared from both sides of the veil! This week testified to me that this is true! This is God's work to save HIS children. By living worthy of the spirit we can be led to those that are prepared to receive the restored gospel and take the next steps towards eternal life! What's so cool is that we all have the opportunity to have these kind of finding experiences and spread those ripples of goodness throughout the world.
On Thursday I hit the one year mark! I didn't burn anything, but I may need to throw away some white shirts pretty soon. I talked to the Crabtree's on the phone the other day and Tromsø is on fire right now! I'm always reminded that there is nowhere I would rather be serving a mission than right here in Norway!
Love,
Eldste Parkinson
