This week has been awesome! It's finally starting to feel like summer and people are starting to come back from vacation!
The miracle of B. continued this week. When we found him he had the intentions of moving here, but hadn't been able to find a house yet. On Tueday night I got a phone call from him with the good news that they had found a house in Asker (right outside of Sandvika and still part of our area)! The next day we were over at the house helping him unload all their belongings from a storage container and on Friday we were putting together their new Ikea furniture. We have gotten to know the wife as well and have established a way chill and friendly relationship with them. Another tender mercy happened with them that goes back to my time in Drammen. Remember how I was always talking about our network? Well, there was this member in Drammen named E. from Congo. He was there short term while I was there looking for work while his family was back in northern Norway. I became fairly close with him over those 6 weeks and he left back to northern Norway about the same time I left for Sandvika having not had much success with the job hunt. Anyways, I was pretty sure E. was from Harstad so I asked B. if he happened to know him...and... they lived in the same apartment complex!! Way tight buddies. They even went and sang in the Baptist church there and never knew that they were both Mormons! It gets crazier, E. finally got a job and moved down to Drammen this month! B. sent him a pick of me on facebook or something and I think we'll all be having a reunion this evening at B's house :) It's such a reminder to me of "who is at the helm" like Erik said in his letter. It made me think of this scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 100:
4 Therefore, I, the Lord, have suffered you to come unto this place; for thus it was expedient in me for the salvation of souls.
We don't always understand why we are sent certain places or why we were supposed to talk to certain people right away. But I know with certainty that God calls us where are needed and that when we open our mouths and be ourselves that we will find those people that it was expedient for us to find. It's been a blessing to witness a lot of the fruits of this promise as a missionary, but I am also confident that a lot of the fruits may not be seen until after this life. Either way, what a privilege it is to be a tool in the Lord's hands in this great work!
In other news, the office is moving to Oslo this week. The institute center will be cut in half and the mission office will be taking that space. It's going to be interesting because we will keep prostelyting in Sandvika, but will have to commute back and forth to the office pretty regularly. It will be fun to be back in the capital city, though.
Also, in about a week and a half we will be visited by a General Authority! Elder Paul V. Johnson of the Seventy is coming. He was just put in the area presidency and what makes it even cooler is that he served a mission in Norway! We'll be having a conference here in Oslo and then another one out in Bergen. I'm way stoked!
One last thing. We got to go down to Drammen to help out with a big youth conference about missionary work. We taught a class about the Book of Mormon (my favorite subject)! It was fun to be back with a lot of youth that I had gotten to know from earlier in the mission. I enjoyed talking to them during lunch as much as the teaching. It was kind of emotional to sit there and look out the youth and remember back to when I was 16/17. I love those guys and would do anything for them to get on a mission!
I love you all and LOVE being a missionary.
Med Vennlig Hilsen,
Eldste Parkinson
PS I forgot to tell you one thing. On Sunday D. (the Croatian new convert) came to church with his wife! His family is here and it was so cool to see them together again. Now we just need to figure out a way to communicate with the wife. Skype with the Croatian missionaries may be the best option.
