Hey family and friends! I hope this week was an uplifting and exciting week! I will start off my email this week with a story. This takes place here in Oulu on Friday morning. We had just arrived in Oulu only hours earlier on a plane that came from Helsinki. We were down there for exchanges with other missionaries. Anyways we decided to spend our morning following up with people from our area book that is not kept up with in terms of former investigators and potentials. So we went to follow up with people and some odd things kind of happened. First was that we talked to this guy, we tried to talk to him, he wasn't really listening or responding, and then he finally said: "You know, I just can't stop laughing, because you look like the Saunalahti missionaries." Now, these Saunalahti missionaries come from a commercial for this phone company here where two young men in shirts and ties walk around selling and advertising their phone company, basically acting like us. We would be annoyed or offended at this particular guy making this comment but unfortunately, it's not the first comment we've had like that haha. So we continue to follow up with our former investigators in this certain area and we come to a home. A man opened the door and let us in, we were super confused because there was no introduction and no questions asked on either side, but inside we went. We sat down and he preceded to speak telling us that he was a "dry Mormon". We were so shocked and confused. We hadn't reviewed his teaching record at all like we should have but turns out this man has investigated for a long time and that he was so close to being baptized but had only one concern and that was that he was afraid he wouldnät endure to the end. We had a good conversation about that but he still wasn't used in his worry. He agreed to let us come back but it won't be for a while because of other things that he needs to take care of. But yeah that was our unique experience of the week, pretty cool though that we were able to meet him.
After that, the week just continued the great work. We have finally been able to meet more regularly without investigators and one of them is so cool and sincere. We taught her about Fasting and How to donate fast offerings earlier in the week and challenged her to fast this Sunday (it was fast Sunday for us this week due to broadcast and she did it! We meet with her that night and she came up to us at the end of the lesson with a bag of food, enough for two meals and said "I don't have a bank account online yet for the church so I thought that I would pay my fast offerings this way" and gave us the food. It was not expected/I'm not sure what we were supposed to do so we took it and the Lord blessed us with an opportunity to put it towards its real use. Today we followed up with a former investigator and when we knocked on her door we realized that she was in a bad situation. She was in bad health and the elevator in her building has broken, leaving her unable to leave her apartment because she can not climb the 5 flights of stairs, and it turns out that she has been like this for a week now and as you could guess, the food is running scarce in her apartment. We told her we would figure something out for her and come back. As we left we realized that we had just yesterday received two meals of food from an investigator as their "fast offering" and that this was its real purpose. We scrambled home and bring the food back to her. Such joy filled our hearts as tears filled her eyes. I love how God gave us an opportunity to help someone in that way.
That is all I have to report this week, other than spring has hit it seems here! We reached positive temperatures today for the first time in a long time and the sun shined! My eyes can no longer tolerate the powerful rays of the sun but that's ok! Also, I felt the warmth of the sun for the first time since mid-fall. In the winter if the sun is out you can see it, but it literally has no warmth when itäs rays hit you, itäs weird, but I'm glad to have it's warmth back! I just fear the temperatures will plumb it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment