Saturday, November 15, 2014

Monday, November 10th, 2014

We have been trying to take all the opportunities we can to teach people as we talk to them. This has really helped people to open up to us and has given us many more opportunities to teach. It has built my testimony that progress and miracles happen in the Lord's timetable and not ours, but our efforts to be diligent, ready and worthy to accomplish miracles enable us to be instruments in His hands. We spoke with one man for example about the Book of Mormon and then asked him if he believed that God could speak with him personally to tell him that something is true. He had never really thought about personal revelation before, and asking him questions to get him to think about a truth and what that truth could mean to him helped him to make a decision for himself and gave the Holy Ghost an opportunity to bear witness of what we were saying. He invited us to come in, and we were able to teach him about the restoration, which seemed to really touch him. I know that missionary work is all about sincerely loving and helping our brothers and sisters and because of that desiring their happiness. Our happiness is the intent and purpose of the gospel. Indeed when we lose ourselves for the Lord's sake we find ourselves. That is true.

We have also had some really cool experiences with doing more work with members. We had a cool experience teaching a woman with our branch president. She was somewhat open, though it seemed like she had a hard time understanding our message. It was so cool to really be able to work together with our branch president and see him teach and testify. He is a very caring and loving teacher, and I know that she felt that he truly cared about her. When people feel of our love as Elder Holland has said it makes it much easier for people to be able to begin to understand how God loves us all equally and perfectly. That is nearly impossible for one who has not felt love at all to believe, and how could we be the servants of a loving God who loves all men if we do not do our best to develop that kind of love?

I am so grateful for the loving examples you all have given me that have helped me to know that God loves me. I am grateful for Jesus Christ and his example of pure and perfect love. I know that He did all He did and that He does all He does for us. He desires to lift us up, to save, to redeem, to empower, to bless, and ultimately to perfect us. We must choose to follow Him so that we can accept and enjoy the gifts He is so anxious to give us. I hope and pray that we may all do so, and that we may know that we have a Father in Heaven, and a Savior who both desire to help and strengthen us. There are mindful of us and have given us the Holy Ghost to guide us.

We have talked about doing some stuff with family history, but it is still in very preliminary stages. We will be traveling to Trondheim again this week for another meeting, which will be fun. We will be having a baptism for a member's daughter on Saturday, and we will be singing with our branch President at sacrament meeting the next day. The Norwegian word of the week is frimodighet, which means boldness.


Love,
Elder Ankenman

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