August 15, 2011

Hello Family! How are things going? I got the letter from you on Thursday. It was great to hear from you and how the family is doing. I'm proud of my bro. Jakob for taking first in golf try outs. That is pretty cool! That is cool that Major is going to Dominican Republic, you will have to let me know where all of that age group is going on missions. That is so cool that Jordan is going to Mexico, he is going to love it. One thing that an apostle promised all the missionaries is that you will be safer serving a mission then staying at home, it doesn't matter where you serve God watches over his missionaries. Today i will most likely be going on a hike and then afterwards I'm playing basketball with Benjamin and his sisters who are all really tall and athletic and also Fredrik. Benjamin leaves in about two months to serve in the Norway Oslo mission haha. If he was my companion i could learn so much Norwegian.

Well a lot things happened this last week. I guess I'll start out from the beginning. The beginning of the week i went to a house and did service. I painted his entire fence, it was a lot of fun. On Wednesday i went to Arendal for a district meeting. Thursday night we drove down to Arendal and stayed the night with Elder Bichoff and Elder Strange. Elder Bichoff and i drove back to Kristiansand the next morning and he interviewed Seneth for baptism. That went really good and i got my second baptism yesterday. We try and get members to baptize investigators so they have more of a connection with the branch/ward. Fredrik who baptized her will be going to the Leeds England mission in about two weeks. He is really cool kid and is a convert himself. He was a foreign exchange student in Las Vegas and that's how he became familiar with the church. The first baptism i had i wasn't able to attend to. Her name is Anni, i think i told you a little about her(i''ll get a picture for you). She is an 18yr old Norwegian. She is the first member in her family and hopefully we will be able to start teaching the rest of her family. Seneth is the baptism we had yesterday and i sent you some pictures. She is a wonderful lady from Cambodia. The rest of her family still live in Cambodia. She has a strong testimony of Jesus Christ and the branch has been very welcoming towards her. So things were pretty good this week. We taught 34 lessons this week which is a record for Elder Tedrow so our numbers have been pretty good since i have arrived. I've felt a little discouraged this last week because i feel like were not finding any positive investigators. It's been really hard to get people to meet again. Our goal this week is to find lots of new investigators. I miss you all so much though, everything is starting to remind me of you guys haha.

Investigators:
We have two baptismal dates for this Saturday but both of them will most likely have to be moved back. I think i mentioned Christina the lady from Chile that came up to me in the city. She has been very positive and came to church and to the baptism yesterday. She only speaks Spanish but we have about 8 people in the branch that can speak Spanish so they have been translating for her. The branch has been extremely good to her. We will probably be getting a baptismal date with her this week. Christopher is a really cool guy that moved here 8 months ago from Nigeria. People had been telling him that church is not nice and that he shouldn't come but he came with us yesterday and loved it. He only speaks English so i translated a little bit of what i knew and elder Tedrow did the rest. We are probably going to start teaching him Norwegian as well because he wants to learn. After church he told me that he really liked it and he wants to come next Sunday. He has a cousin who is a member of the church in Nigeria as well.

One of things i studied this week is Ether 12:27. I broke down this one scripture and wrote several pages of notes. I broke it down into grace, humility, and faith. When we have a weakness we can know it is through the Lords grace that we have power to make that weakness a strength. Grace allows men and women to receive eternal life and exaltation but first we must put forth our best efforts. If we don't do our best, grace will not be sufficient enough. When we begin to realize what our weaknesses are we begin to humble ourselves before the Lord. Being humble is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength. In Mosiah 4:11-12 we know that if we humble ourselves and call upon the Lord daily our knowledge will grow of what we know as just and true. The opposite of humility is pride. Pride is a great stumbling block for many and progress of the knowledge of the Gospel will come to a halt. We must wash out the pride in our hearts and humble ourselves before the Lord. In 1Nephi 15, Nephi is interpreting the vision of the tree that Lehi had. Nephis brethren don't understand the vision because of the hardness of their hearts which is found in verses 7-11. Because of the pride of their hearts they didn't put their faith in the Lord by asking if the vision of the tree can be made known unto them. Those are just some thoughts that came to my mind.

The Norwegian is coming along pretty good. Elder Bichoff and Elder Tedrow said they've never seen a greenie that knows as much as me. I think they are just being nice but everyday I'm understanding more and more. It's pretty cool how much i understand now when people talk to me. I'm looking forward to the package this next week. Next time you send a package you should send some Cd's i can listen to in the car. I can listen to anything that doesn't disrupt the spirit, so that includes some Disney music etc. Thanks for everything you do and i love you all!!!

I forgot to tell you but about 9 days ago we got in a wreck haha. It wasn't to bad but it defiantly needs to be fixed haha. E. Tedrow was driving and it was raining really hard and when we were coming around the corner we ran into a side rail. But we are both OK and we should be getting the car fixed pretty soon. Please keep me updated with everything that is going on. I love you!

Eldste Godfrey