Tender Mercies

HEY FAM,

I've been thinking a lot this week about how lucky I am to have such an awesome family! Thanks for your letters, updates, and love. It lifts me.

This week was full of travel. We were in Trondheim, Stavanger, and Tønsberg this week, which completed the tour of the mission! It was cool to see all the missionaries, a lot of whom I hadn't seen for awhile. I love being a missionary, and I love being around missionaries.

We had a bunch of time to talk to the Hills as we waited for planes drove to the airport etc. and I found out that we have a lot of connections. They have a son that served in Hungary as a missionary, so, Erik, you'll have to see if you can find and Elder Hill in any of your area books :) I also found out that Sister Hill's family comes from Minnesota of all places! When I told them that my middle name was Hales, I found out that President knows A LOT of my family tree. He started naming people and one of the names was Robert Hales (Grandpa). Not only did President know him, but he was one of the doctors that cared for him as he was dying from cancer. It's interesting because it's a story I have heard Mom tell a hundred times, about when Grandpa was a experiencing a cough and went to check his x ray results with someone and saw immediately that there was cancer all over his lungs. Turns out, President Hill was that someone that checked the results with Grandpa. My mind was blown and my heart was touched when I learned that. Because Grandpa died so long before I was born it can be hard sometimes to picture who he was and what he was like, which made it really special to be able to talk to someone who knew him and admired him. "Robert Hales was a kind Man." I remember when I was set apart as a missionary one of the things I remember that was said in the blessing is that my ancestors would play an important role in my mission. Since I have no ancestors from Norway I wasn't really sure what that would mean. Over the last few days, though, I have felt a closeness to my ancestors that I have never felt before. The phrase that keeps coming to my mind when I think about this experience is "Tender Mercy."

We had a cool experience yesterday after church! After trying back someone that wasn't home we hopped in the Wan and said a prayer for some direction. We thought of a name of a former that neither of us even knew, but had heard about from some other missionaries. They had told us that he left and wouldn't be coming back to Norway, but we thought we'd give him a try anyways. As we were getting out of the car a man was walking out of the driveway with his dog to go on a walk and it turned out to be him! He immediately invited us in and we went on to teach him and answer a lot of questions he had. We told him him right at the beginning that we came because of a prayer we had said about 20 minutes earlier. He became quiet before eventually telling us that he had also been praying to God for help in understanding more about Jesus Christ. We will be meeting with him again on Wednesday!

We met a cool guy at a school on Friday. We were expecting him to be alone, but he ended having about 8 friends with him. 1 of them was a big basketball player and so I started playing with him on this way ghetto (probably not the right choice of word considering we are in Norway) court. It turned into a 1 on 1 H-O-R-S-E dunk contest and it was way fun. Best of all, my pants didn't rip.

This is a work of Love. I love the Norwegian people. I love the people we are teaching, my companion, my Mission President and his wife, the members, the non-members, and my savior Jesus Christ. Love leads to service. Service leads to happiness. It's that simple. Kjærlighet.

Have a great week! Jeg er glad i dere :)

Love,

Eldste Parkinson