Monday, April 21st, 2014

It is so important for us to remember how precious each and every one of us is to Heavenly Father and Christ. Christ truly is the good Shepard, and He has asked us to feed His sheep, so it is our joy and privilege to be able to help and serve each other. The life that is given to us all because of Christ and the redemption of all those who will come to Him are really what Easter is all about. He bled and died so that we might live. I know that He loves us more than we can begin to comprehend. I also know that the Atonement is real. It redeems us, enables us, heals us and sanctifies us. There truly is no greater gift.

I do not think Easter in Norway is too different from Easter in the U.S. Linnea put together a little Easter egg hunt for Geir and us on Saturday after we came back from visiting some other members. We each got different clues that lead us around the house to others and eventually to our eggs, which were full of candy. Norwegians do not make chocolate bunnies as far as I know, but they do make these delicious chocolate eggs that are full with cream stuff inside that you eat with a spoon. They are really good. We will be going to Tromsø on Thursday for a training meeting, which will be a lot of fun. The Tromsø Elders also came on splits to Alta this week. They are both really wonderful and dedicated guys, and we learned a lot. One of the families in our branch is going to teach us how to make Nepali food on Saturday, which I am looking forward to. A lot of wonderful things are happening, and I feel so very blessed to be able to serve a mission.

President Evans asked us to be out knocking on doors as much as we could this weekend, and we were able to meet a lot of really wonderful people. It felt good to be out sharing the truly appropriate Easter message of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Most Norwegians go up into the mountains on vacation for Easter, so we were uncertain about how many people would be home, but they were actually about as many as normal, which was great. Nothing is more important than our families. Heavenly Father wants His children to come back to Him and to be as happy as He is. To enjoy the blessings of eternal life, to be together forever as families, we must have the gospel in our lives. The Norwegian word of the week is Å Store Gud, which means How Great Thou Art. We sang this song in sacrament meeting this week.

Love,
Elder Ankenman