Hei Hei! God Jul! (Merry Christmas)
I love all of the gifts that you have sent me! They are awesome... and somewhat of a distraction haha. Haha thanks so much for the ties! Me and Eldste E love them!
I talked to my teachers and they said that the ecco high tops with Gortex would be perfect for boots. I can't think of anything that I need at the moment. Everything is perfect! the jackets are great and both work super well. We have had a lot of snow here the past week, I love it.
Language is coming great, everyone is really starting to pick up on it. I am starting to feel wierd saying prayers in english and what not, so there is definitely some progress haha. Investigators are coming well. We got two more, Remi and Mikal. They are both awesome. No commitments yet but they all love the Book of Mormon and just have some stuff that they need to work on and we have a lot of work to do to get them commited to baptism.
Here are some of the stories from this week. It has been such a good one!
This week had been full of ups and downs. We will start with the downs cause the ups are so freaking awesome! Anyways, so the tri-panionship of the the Norskies has been struggling. So Eldste E, Sister S, and me all teach together since we are the only Norwegian speakers here right now. We have really been struggling to teach the people and not teach lessons. It is a real abstract idea but it really makes you focus on the spirit during planning, studying, and teaching. We haven't really made any real headway with the people we have taught in the light of moving them toward baptism but we have definitely suceeded in bringing them closer to God and Jesus Christ. So this week after a particularily bad lesson we came together with our teachers and focused on solving the problem. I am proud to say that we are doing much better now and have had several great lessons. I love learning and growning, it really is a cool thing.
Now for my coolest story of the MTC yet. Over the past two weeks Eldste E, Aldste A, Aldste M, and I have been studying together how to become like Dan Jones, Wilford Woodruff, Alma, Amulek, and other very successful missionaries (Aldste A and Aldste M are our zone leaders that are going to Sweden). We have beeen pouring over the Book of Mormon looking for things to help us understand that better. This intially started when we read the Sweden mission dedicatory prayer and heard that the European dedicatory prayer as well as the Norwegian dedicatory prayer all have promised blessings of a second harvest. With the hastening of the work we decided now might be the time. When Elder Holland came on Thanksgiving he also said that our group of missionaries would be the ones to "hit it out of the park." Needless to say all of these things made us really excited. Two sundays ago we came together to meet after we were challenged by our district president in the MTC to be the missionaries that would baptize thousands. We began to read the scriptures, trying to understand what makes great missionaries. Each of us finding a piece of the puzzle that would help make us better. These scriptures include Ether 12, Moroni 7 and 10, and Alma 26:22, the stories of the stripling warriors and much more. At the end of these study sessions we would pray for the things that we would think would make us better, and I cannot describe the level of the spirit that would fill our souls. The Lord was telling us to continue.
We did continue, we have had several more meetings together and countless more witnesses to move forward with the challenge to baptize thousands. I believe that I can.
On tuesday Night we had a devotional. It was Elder C. Scott Grow of the Seventy. He began by saying that when he was preparing for his talk he started out with basing his remarks on Christmas, but the spirit prompted him to change his remarks. I know that this prompting was for me and for the other three elders that were studying with me. He then began his talk with a story of a missionary who changed his mission in which he was presiding by obtaining a baptismal number of 23 where the previous highest number was 11. The mission became alive and had soon baptized nearly quadrupled the previous mission statisics. He then described and used every single scripture that we had studied for the two weeks prior to that. He described how we need 4 things: faith, obedience, sacrifice, revelation. Each one of these topics used one of the scriptures above. The spirit remained with me the entire night. I knew that everything he said had personal importance to me. I know that I have a mission that will influence thousands. I know that through my sacrifice and obedience I can obtain the faith and revelation necessary to baptize thousands. When I met him after he looked me in the eye and said "people are going to tell you that baptisms do not happen in Norway. Do not believe them."
I love this witness that I have been blessed with. I know that the Lord has something that he is preparing me for. I believe that I can influence thousands and be the missionary the Lord would have me be. I know that we are blessed and we submit to the Lord and give him our will. It is really the only thing that we have to give to him. We give all that we have he will give us all that he has. This is our promise.
Jeg elsker deg! Jeg sier alt i Jesu Krist navn, amen.
Eldste Jones
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