April 15, 2013

Adventure to Northern Norway

From the plane

From the plane

Hey everybody! 

I had incredible week as you can see from the pictures that I sent ha ha.  Northern Norway is amazing!  Elder Van Wagoner and I had a wonderful time in Alta, Tromsø, Bodø, and Narvik!  We were able to meet with a lot of amazing people.  They almost have a completely different culture up north.  The Norwegian people are very open and friendly but still closed to religion.  We had really good weather in the North which is a blessing because we were able to see a lot when we were flying from city to city.  On one of the plane rides I was just snapping away with my camera and the flight attendant came and sat next to me.  She said, "Isn't that beautiful?"  She later told me that it was Lofoten!  I feel so blessed that I was able to go on this amazing adventure up north. They had so much snow in Alta and Tromsø that they were taking dump trucks of snow to the ocean to clear out the city ha ha. 

Well... being able to experience all that was really neat but the experiences I had with missionary work was even better.  We have a standards of excellence in our mission that we implemented at the beginning of the year.  We are to get 3 new investigators per week, 2 people in church, and 1 baptismal date.  We knew it was going to be a hard this week because we were going to be gone for 3 out of the 7 days.  We also knew that if we exercised faith and did everything we could then the Lord would bless us. 

On Sunday we had 3 investigators in church and 2 new investigators.  We did everything we could to get one more new investigator.  We had time to visit one more person Sunday night so we decided to try this Indian family back.  They invited us in and we were able to teach them about families.  Before we left we got a return appointment and the couple became new investigators.  We ended the week with 4 new investigators which exceeded our goal.  I know that the Lord answers our prayers and that He provided a way for us to reach the standards of excellence.  I know that the Lord is on our right hand and on our left hand.  His spirit is in our hearts and his angels round about us to bear us up.  (D&C 84:88).  This is the Lords work and this work brings joy to my soul!  Thanks for all of your support!  Love you all and I look forward to hearing from you all next week!

Investigator update: A is still progressing towards baptism and we have a few others that we are close to getting baptismal dates with.  F (D's referral in Kenya) is progressing as well.  He has been reading in the Book of Mormon and coming to church.  I'm pretty sure he has a baptismal date now and is going to introduce the church to his brother. 

Eldste Godfrey