Oh boy it's hard to believe that i will have already been here for a month tomorrow! it sure doesn't feel like it but at the same time it feels longer than a month too!
I think it is appropriate to address to elephant in the room which is General Conference! What a fantastic experience! this was the first conference that i have come to with questions and praying to find answers through the talks and what a miraculous event that was! During our district meeting on Saturday night we discussed conference and the talks there. It was real interesting to see how all of us listened to the same talks but each of us got something different out of them depending on our questions! i could feel the spirit working in me! But the real miracle is what happens when you ponder on the thoughts in your mind about conference and the even further personal revelation that comes from it! i learned so much from the spirit these past few days! And of course the calling of three new apostles! Was I the only one who felt a confirmation that they were God's chosen when they spoke? They gave such strong testimonies and bore it with such conviction! They are called of God! His church is on the earth now!
Now for the more fun things. Our district is great! It's cool because we are all so much different from each other! Given the choice I wouldn't want to hang out with any of them but I have to and i love them all! Our first cool night was fiesta night. Someones mom had sent him a lot of chips and salsa so we sat in the hall and had a fiesta with our district (minus the sisters because this was at our residence). The next night was sardine night... Someone else's parents sent them sardines and everyone took turns eating them, except for me. I sat in the lobby and wrote in my journal so i avoided the sardines, except for the smell because that filled the whole floor! Then someone got spray cheese and the Elders in my district wanted to have spray cheese night. So they decided to put spray cheese on every possible thing and eat it. Here are some examples, they put it on pretzels, mint chewing gum, twix, licorice, m&ms, fruit roll ups, rice crispies and more disgusting things. Then they had "sisu" night. 'Sisu" is something that the Finns have. It's like their Finnish pride i think? i'm not sure what it is but it's special to the Finns. So in order to obtain "sisu" they asked a Finn here how do you get 'sisu'? He said you stand outside all day in the dead of winter butt naked. He was obviously joking and good thing cause I'd never get sisu then. But our district decided the next best thing was to take cold cold showers for as long as they could! I didnt not participate in this one as well because i was already warm so why would I want to be cold? Anyways they did it and our residence hall sounded like a 5 year old girls birthday party, just screaming and screaming. It's safe to say that missionaries standards for fun drop a lot in the mission field, and it hasn't even been a month yet.. haha! but all good fun nonetheless!
I was enlightened this week on how the spirit works, particularly in our lessons. I had become frustrated because we would teach a lesson and he would always come out and say the spirit was so strong in there, but i would come out feeling the same as before, just normal. So i was wondering how the spirit works with me and how come i wasn't feeling the spirit when we where in the same lesson! Anyways it took some studying and a lot of pondering and even more prayer but i found my answer! I had had the spirit all along and i had actually felt it's prompting and acted on it without noticing! We were teaching Karina and she wanted to know if the Book of Mormon was worth more than the Bible, if it was the other way around or if they were worth the same. i started to bumble on about how they testify of each other and then a thought came to my mind to share Article of Faith #8. This was a weird thought because I hadn't read the articles of faith in forever but I was now thinking about them. I had completely forgotten them all but somehow managed to find them in the Finnish Book of Mormon. It answered her question and we moved on. I thought nothing about that until the other day, yesterday to be exact. It was the spirit that had put that thought into my mind and I acted on it. It was able to bring it to my mind because i had at one point studied it, even memorized it and the spirit was able to fulfill its promise and bring it back to my remembrance! Such a cool experience and now that I have learned how the spirit works with me I have begun to notice more and more promptings in lessons that i thought were just my thoughts but turns out to be the spirit. And since i act on them the spirit gives me more and more promptings! Such ad answer to prayer! God is there, he listens and he answers! All in all it has been a super wonderful week! The church is true and i love you all!
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