Drop the Mic

Honestly this has been one of the best weeks of my mission based off the success on all levels and all aspects of the work. I feel like the Lord is opening my eyes to what I can do on his behalf and what I can do to obtain my potential. It is truly humbling to see the Lord's hand in my life and in the work among the Danish people and I know he uses us as willing servants despite our circumstances. Elder Lee and I have really focused on what we call salvation steps, meaning we really try our best to really give others a chance to recieve at least some part of the gospel into their heart rather than any other motives (which there are haha)

Sometimes I have been eager to talk with people so I can help them take steps towards a second lesson, or coming to church, but it has really gone up for me that those things will fall naturally into place when your direct your efforts to simply teaching repentance and baptizing converts. It doesn't mean the former things are bad... church is a great thing and so is discussing the gospel in a follow up appointment, but it comes down to what is good, better and best. Thats not to say I've all the sudden figured everything out, but I do think the Lord has directed me gradually towards this transfer of my mission. The area is very much a gold mine now because we have really directed all our energies towards being servants worthy of hire and the reciprocating promise of sheaves being laden upon our backs is always fulfilled. Doctrine and Covenants 31 has really inspired me as you can tell haha. (if those references i just made went over your head, go read that section of the Doctrine AND covenants).

As far as the nectar of the week:

Monday:

We set up the slackline to unwind for pday but still try and make some new friends. unfortunantely this week came in monsoon style so the off and on dumping rain commenced at 3 o clock in the afternoon haha. Im hearing things about 110 degrees in california right now haha so i guess ill count the rain in this week to make up for the past 2 years of rain in california haha (what is sad is that isnt far off from not being an hyperbole)

Tuesday:

The main with Tuesday is that we are starting a Bible study in our church building next Monday. We thought, hey... we go to lots of Bible studies that other people invite us to so why not start our own? So we made up some sweet flyers and came together as a district to go hand them out. So that was a fun switch up! We are shooting for an open discussion type deal on what the Bible teaches and how we as a group can apply its teachings to our lives and so forth. It isn't a preaching thing on any one persons side (ideally haha). We just want to find out what Arhus thinks of the Bible:)

Wednesday:

We had a way great lesson with C*. She really opened up a lot to us and Nikali (an awesome member here in Århus). It is really neat to see her faith grow and she has a pretty strong desire to know what God has in store for her life. We invited her to ask Heavenly Father about being baptized and she was pretty stoked to do it with some great counsel from Nikali. Members attending lessons are super clutch! So we are excited with what comes out of that for her.

Thursday:

Thursday had some highlight moments for sure! I was on splits with Elder Tompkins from Florida her in Århus and it was just stellar. We went out to go knock on some doors for an Improved finding block. (that is how we do our finding in the mission. We find from anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour and a half, take 15 minutes to evaluate ourselves and take a short break to refocus, and then hit it hard again. It is always super effective and it improves every time if you have a mind for that)

But anyways, We knocked on probably 30 doors and basically just had a lot of insta-no's. I honestly was feeling that at all but then it went up for me that we hadn't asked the Lord where he thinks we should knock. So we in essence asked him for a referral to someone ready to listen to the gospel. We felt like building 8 but it turned out that we were in the odds of the complex and I didn't know where the evens where at all. So we tried another one i felt was good and there was something good that came out of that but not that original buidling 8. So after that we decided to leave the odds altogether and hey... we walked right into the evens:) Funny how that worked... But the first door to answer in building 8 was a super awesome woman named B' and she let us right in. It was basically every missionaries dream as cliche as it sounds. She was super kind and open and receptive to the message of the restored Gospel and it was just such a good experience! So in the end, she was exactly what we had asked the Lord to guide us to in order to help another learn of the restored gospel:)

Something that hit home as I sat in the bus stop was the thought of how the Lord had truly used us as His tools in order to do His work. Because we were willing to do the work, he was willing to make things work, despite us being tired and a little frustrated that we hadn't gotten a word in edgewise besides "godag" (that means good day if you didn't guess haha)

Once again, the gospel works wonderfully. I don't expect it to ever stop.

Friday:

Went hard, drank jordbær saft, lost to Elder Shuppy in chess... again.

Saturday:

I learned a cool lesson in another bus stop. We had just finished playing basketball and were waiting for the next bus. There was a guy sitting at the stop just rolling a joint and he looked pretty down. At first when I saw him I thought, "must be a rough day..." and then kinda moved on in my thoughts. But then I turned my train of thought around and it went "hey, if anyone needs the gospel it is probably him right now" so I went up and asked him what he knows about the olympics and the Danish atheletes competing. He didn't actually know but we struck up a nice conversation in the 3 minutes before the bus came and he asked if he could come play basketball sometime, so we exchanged numbers. On the bus I couldn't sit by him but as I reflected on it, I thought why wouldn't the Lord want us to talk to people with similar circumstances as this way awesome guy i had just talked to? He really was grateful that I had talked to him and to me it had not seemed that big of a deal. Just one more lesson I learned on not judging others and more importantly, loving them:)

Also, on Saturday Elder Lee and I decided that watching Inside out at Christmas with the zone was the hands down best movie experience of our lives.

Sunday:

I got asked to give a impromptu musical number in sacrament meeting. I am pretty sure it was revelation but the clutch thing was I knew this would happen so I was already prepared with a cool number of "Come thou Fount." The one pitfall though was that I had always skipped practicing a particularly hard part (sorry piano teachers), so I pretty much did a funky improv in the middle hahaha. I am pretty sure only I knew though so no worries.

Spiritual thought:

Since I am on the poem hype, here is another favorite:)

Champion

Author Unknown

The average runner runs

until the breath in him is gone,

But the champion has the iron will

that makes him carry on.

For the rest the average runner begs

when limp his muscles grow,

But the champion runs on leaden legs,

his courage makes him go.