The transfer comes to an end this week and....my good friend Elder Osguthorpe is going to be headed up north to Tromsø on Wednesday! He is going to kill it and it's been a blast being able to serve with him. His replacement is named Elder Hailes! He came in the same group as Osguthorpe and has spent the first 4 months of his mission up in Narvik. It's going to be exciting to work with another young stud in the mission. 6 more weeks and we're headed into OT!
We had a ZLT and interviews this week in Stavanger. Always good to see President and Sister Hill as well as the other missionaries in the zone. The meeting focused in on two important principles/commitments that we give to investigators: prayer and baptism. After the meeting I was surprised by my main man Elder Holden (AKA Christopher)! He is living in Stavanger with his wife and they are expecting a baby. It was just one year ago that he finished his mission. Crazy. Nice to talk to him, get some wisdom and a bunch of protein bars and drinks. He's the man.
The day after ZLT we were able to apply a lot of the things we learned in a lesson we had with B. We had the Zone Leaders with us on splits so I was able to teach with Elder Gingrich! We went into the teach with the gameplan to ask a lot of inspired questions and help him overcome his concern of being baptized again. It was cool to see that the more we asked questions and listened to what he said, the more he opened up to us. It was a way powerful teach and at the end we committed him to baptism in February! We said a kneeling prayer at the end of the lesson and we asked B. to say it. The prayer was humble and sincere and after we said "amen" there was complete silence for a legit 10 minutes! The spirit was so tangible and when B. finally got up and left he looked like Joseph Smith walking out of the grove of trees. It was incredible!
The language class kicked off on Wednesday and we had about 15 people there! We were hoping for more, but you can't complain with that.
I had a funny experience yesterday where I got on the bybane and started talking to this guy. Turns out he is from Ghana. After I sit down a bunch of other guys from Ghana start getting on, almost all of whom I already knew from previous contacts. "What's up Ernest, Moses, Gideon...!" We rode the whole way together and had a blast. They kept feeding me these deep fried things that were super good. "It's good, yeah???" Haha it was something else. Now I know when their church ends on Sundays and I committed them all to come to the language class.
As we continue to find people from all over I can feel the reality of the Gathering of Israel. Let's find those sheep!!
Have a great week!
Love,
Eldste Parkinson
Eldste Parkinson
