Week 65; February 2,
2015 – A Birthday to Remember!
Wow this has been an
amazing week! There were some challenges along the way, but the Lord
really blessed us and some great things happened. Oh yeah, I guess I'm an official
adult to now… I’m 21 years old!
On Monday we met with
Jeff and heard his stories of when he used to work in a recording studio in Los
Angeles. We also got to hear his story about how he was married to David
Hasselhoff’s sister, so that was interesting. We also started talking about how
we could help him start preparing to attend the temple.
Tuesday was hard. A lot
of appointments cancelled on us, but we contacted a lot of others and just
worked hard, and it felt good!
On Wednesday, we had
the apartment inspection couple come by our place. They liked the job
we did cleaning it and then took us shopping for some new lamps and they got us
a fast boiling kettle for hot chocolate. Later, we provided some
service for a member and helped her take down her Christmas decorations. We
then visited with Ingvar again and gave her a message about the Plan of
Salvation with our ward mission leader.
Thursday was a really
cool day. We were going on splits, and we had a beautiful day planned that
just sort of feel apart. All three of our lessons called us and said
this week just wouldn't work for them, so a busy day turned into a pretty open
day. Elder George and I decided not to let it get the better of us and we
decided to go for it. We contacted about 30 people in the middle of a snow
storm, and the decided that wasn't going anywhere, so we started tracting
and doing swing-bys. The first door we knocked on was someone that Elders
Brown and Cushing contacted. He'd been kind of hard to get ahold of, but he
said we could come back on Saturday! Afterward, we tracted a little more
and we found a man that accepted a Book of Mormon and we taught him a lesson
about the restoration of the gospel. We stopped by another person’s home,
but she said she wasn't interested, but she asked us to try her neighbor up
stairs. Her neighbor let us in and we taught a lesson to her. It
turned-out that she wasn't too interested either, but it was allot better than
tracting in the cold. Otherwise, it turned out to be a great day that actually began
with nothing.
Friday was awesome!
Before we went back to our regular companions, Elder George and I taught one of
our investigators named Ann-Sofie. We had a “get to know you” lesson during
our first-time meeting with her, but this time we taught her a full lesson
about the restoration. She really enjoyed the message and accepted our challenge
of Reading the Book of Mormon. She also said if she knew it was true she
would be willing to take action, but wanted to read the book first, before she
made any bigger commitments. But, she is definitely embracing the idea of moving
forward!
On Saturday we taught
Stephan and we didn't really know what to expect. He's in his early 60's
and he’s had a lot of Snus out on his table (that's a Swedish tobacco product similar
to chewing tobacco. The lesson went really great though, and we had
answers to questions that he'd wondering about his whole life. He agreed with
nearly everything we taught him! He also said if the Book of Mormon felt
right and he continued to feel right, he would be open to baptism in the future
as well!
Later that night we met
a lady named Raine. She's probably one of the coolest people I've ever met
and she always teaches us how to cook a new dish every time we go over. This
time she taught us how to make Pasta Carbonara which was a lot simpler then I thought
it would be. Her birthday was the day after mine, so we had a little party
together!
Sunday was a Birthday to
remember… It started off Amazing! Elder Cushing, Senja, and my Mom
pulled-off the best present I've ever had for a Birthday! The three of
them planned a way to have emails sent from my home ward and from my relatives.
Then Senja printed them all off for me and I got an envelope with all of
the letters from everyone back home on Sunday! It was so awesome to read
all of those! Thank you to everyone that sent a letter!!!
Afterward, we went to
the first counselor, José's, home for dinner. An investigator ended-up a cancelling,
so we stayed at José's longer than we had planned. A member called and
said she was really sick. We told her we were at José's and she was
really thankful because his wife Tina is a nurse. She told us everything
she needed and then we bought her medicine and drinks to help her feel
better. Then we gave her a blessing. José dropped us off, and we had
planned on just calling it a night and making some phone calls, but we both
felt we needed to be out a little longer and that we'd find someone else that
night. We contacted people in town for a while and got some bad
rejections. We prayed again and felt even stronger that we needed to be
out. So, we got rejected six or seven more times and we decided to contact
a few more people down to the end of the street. There was hardly anyone out
and we got three more no's. At the very end of the street a man walked out
in front of us and we asked him if he'd be interested in talking about Jesus
Christ. He said he be happy to, and he gave us his number. It was an amazing
lesson in faith. I know we were guided by the Holy Ghost that night.
It was a great end to a
great week. A week like this would have crushed me in the past. Even
though we had ten cancelations, we worked our hardest and trusted the Lord and
we ended up finding almost as many new opportunities as we had originally planned
on. So, the Lord really did help us make this week count!
I hope everyone has a
great week… Thanks for Reading!!!
Aldste Stoeltzing
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