A night at the musical

August 14, 2018

A night at the musical

Hello again! Our P-days just got switched to Tuesdays, and so from now on I am going to be writing one day later than usual. The suspense! I know! This past week has been filled with finding more people to teach, working with the amazing members here in Drammen with missionary work, and Book of Mormon musical madness!

Here in Drammen, we have been focusing a lot on working with members with member missionary work. A talk by Russel M. Ballard has been coming up quite often that is called "creating a gospel sharing home". If you haven't read it already, I encourage you to. He describes how best we can do missionary work in our homes and how then we can use the example of our families to bring others into the gospel. He says that as we "focus on our love for the Lord, our testimony of his eternal reality, and our gratitude for all that he has done for us. If we are truly motivated by love and testimony and gratitude, we will quite naturally do all that we can to assist the Lord in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of our father's children. In fact, it would be impossible to keep us from doing it." How comforting is that? The members here are so willing to support us in every phase of missionary work and I am so grateful that their examples are radiating the love and testimony that they have of God and of Jesus Christ. The Carlberg family had us over for breakfast and they fed us American pancakes! They have such a cute family and I am excited for the plans that we have made with them to help the missionary work here in Drammen go forward.

We have also been so blessed to find three new people to teach! One lady has met with the missionaries before and they taught her all of the lessons and related it to what she already believes in dealing with Buddhism. The second person that we met with is Anette. She is so sweet and sincere. She had contact with the missionaries before and came to church a couple of years ago. She is so genuine in her desire to learn more about the church and to become closer to God. She texted us out of nowhere last week and said that she wanted to meet with us. She also came to church and brought her boyfriend with her who has also been taught. The last person that we came into contact with this past week is a norwegian man named Kenn. Søster Ogletree and I were banking after a dinner appointment at a members house. As soon as he opened the door, we knew that he was different. He had not one, but two crosses around his neck and he looked pleasantly surprised when he heard that we had a message about Jesus Christ. We visited him twice this past week and everything that we teach him he recites passages from the bible that confirm the truth of what we are saying. Elder Shanklin, who loves the bible with his entire soul and knows it backwards and forwards, was so happy knowing that a Norwegian was so well read. He may or may not have clapped for joy a couple of times! We talked to Kenn about getting baptised and he said that he really wants to get baptized after he comes back from Indonesia next month. He has an amazing story about how he turned his life around and came to know Jesus Christ and he has an earnest desire to follow him. He is so prepared and I am so grateful that Heavenly Father led us to him.

We also had the opportunity to stand outside the theater in Oslo and hand out Book of Mormons as people came out. It is always so funny seeing people's reactions as they come out and there are ACTUAL missionaries doing the thing that was just made fun of in the play. My first book that I gave out, the guy asked me to sign it and write down my phone number. Oh Sweet Mercy! It was a really great experience. We had President and Søster Tew with us and also Alex Eliassen and his dad. Søster Tew was able to talk to one of the cast members and find out that she has actually read the entire Book of Mormon. How amazing that Heavenly Father is slowly preparing the hearts of people in different ways? The main event of that night is that after we had finished, we were all heading back to the institute center and then Alex realized that he forgot his backpack with all of his school books that he had just bought. We went back to the Theater and it wasn't there. It was then that we remembered that there was a couple of gypsies that had been begging for money outside of the theater and that they had tried taking mine and Søster Ogletree's stuff. Søster Ogletree was luckily there to stop them. Elder Shanklin decided that the best way to locate where his backpack was was to walk down the main street in Oslo and try to spot the gypsies. Elder Shanklin had served in Oslo before and is very familiar with the city. Elder Shanklin and Elder Garlick went one way, while the rest of us started walking on the other end of the gå gate. We saw them right after we turned on the street and went up to go talk to them. Alex recognized immediately his backpack on this guy's back and started talking to him while his dad went around the back and ripped it off of him. The only problem was that all of the school books were missing and the only thing that was in there was a Norwegain copy of the Book of Mormon. I went over to talk to the police that were parked at the corner to tell them the situation while the rest of the group tried to figure out where the books went. The Police said that they would check it out, drove over,and said that they could park there?! After that they never came back... Luckily, a gypsy woman that was begging with this guy before led us to a trash can where the man had thrown them away. We were all so relieved and celebrated by eating huge hamburgers at a place called Texas Burger. I think that I will always remember this experience as a time where everything was so crazy and chaotic but everything worked out in the end. Everything fell into place with Elder Shanklin having that thought to check the gå gate, us finding the thief in hardly no time at all, and that woman showing us where the books were.

I love my mission and all the experiences that I am having! I hope that you all have a great week and look for the simple ways that Heavenly Father helps you in your life. Vi snakkes neste uke!

Love, Søster Starkie