No Place Like Norway: Spirit

We have been blessed with another solid week here in the Nordstrand area. Continuing to meet with some incredible people, having INCREDIBLE lessons packed with the spirit, and just loving every moment. I know I have said this before but seriously, being a missionary is an incredible experience.

Highlights for the week!

- Visited Anny Rødsand, a less active

- Wednesday- Powerful lessons with Svein, Øyvind, and Ivan

- Elisabeth: New Baptismal date!

- Dinner with the Carlsen family

- The Oslo Rap

- Church: Boguslaw and Elisabeth came!

- Light at the end of the tunnel: Ole Ander, new investigator

- Spiritual Thought: Become

We have visited Anny two times now and she is the sweetest thing. We always feeds us DELICIOUS food and she makes this incredible berry tea. Except for her and her daughter, her entire family has completely left the church. She does have a strong testimony and she always shares with us some powerful experiences about how she cannot deny that God has reached out to her to let her know what she has found is His true church and that she needs to stick with it. She also come to church this week! She is so great :)

Wednesday was an incredible teaching day. With each person we met, Sister House and I dove in and completely relied on the Lord to help us guide the lesson to what they needed to hear. Through the Spirit we helped Svein to recognize that God has been with him throughout his life, Øyvind to develop that desire that there is someone always looking out for him, and Ivan to realize that God's power is restored to bless his life. The Spirit truly does know the exact way that can reach people's hearts.

We met with Elisabeth on Friday and it was a powerful lesson about baptism. She began saying that she wanted to wait til the spring to be baptized because she feels she needs to be completely perfect and obedient to all of the commandments. Sister House and I then started sharing how much God knows what she is going through now and how the gift of the Holy Ghost is what helps us on your journey to become complete. While in the lesson, she picked the 11th of December. We then all got down on our knees to pray about it. After the prayer, each one of us had the biggest smile on our faces and felt so good.

We also got invited to have dinner with the Carlsen family. They are the sweetest and most hilarious people! As we talked, Brother Carlsen shared his conversion story and both he and Sister Carlsen shared some of their hardships from when they first got married. Oh my goodness, they are such incredible parents and powerful examples of being diligent in the gospel. I love them so much!

So Saturday we had a ward talent show. There were some really great talents with dancing, singing, magic tricks, and story telling! The relief society asked if we (all the missionaries) could do something and we put together a little rap.... Which went like this:

Oslo menighet dere må gjøre dere klar,

Idag skal vi fortelle dere hvordan det er,

Som misjonærer i Oslo vi har det så godt,

Vi vil gjerne dele noe av det vi har fått.

Chorus: Oslo misjonærer er de beste som finnes,

Vi gå ut på gaten og spør folk hva de synes,

Om Guds plan for Hans barn åpenbart på ny,

Vi kommer til å bringe sannheten til denne by.

(The elders had a verse here but I forgot the paper to write it....)

repeat chorus

Så kom og bli med siden nå dere vet,

vi har det kjempe moro i vår menighet,

med klasser og Gudstjeneste - kvart på et,

Vi lover at du ikke vil angre på det.

Yup. So moving on now.

At church we had a potential named Boguslaw take us by surprise. He didn't come to an appoinment we had earlier in the week but we still invited him to church. So when I walked in and saw him standing there I was like, "WHAT???" But of course, I was happy to see him there. Elisabeth took a great leap of faith. After she and Are (the member that referred her to us) had their really bad break up, she's been really scared to see Are at church. She came to sacrament meeting at the end and we slipped in right before the service started. During the meeting, I saw both Boguslaw and Elisabeth smiling and enjoying the spirit of the meeting. Afterwards, Sister House and I tried to slip out with Elisabeth quick so we could talk before she had to go, but then a member came up and started asking about her and Are. That got awkward REALLY quick. Afterwards, we went into a classroom and Elisabeth got to vent a bit. She's still very hurt but despite that and all the other things going on in her life, she has seen how much this gospel is changing her life for the better. She is so strong.

After church, Sister House and I went banking (Norwegian for tracting) for the first time together. What was really nice was all that day I was praying that the people we would talk with would be nice even if they wouldn't want to talk with us. And we met some really kind people. We had some good conversations with people about the Book of Mormon and living prophets. One thing that was really cool has on the last street we started going down, I see this insanely bright light at the end of the road. As we were getting closer to it, I was actually getting excited to try that house. When we finally got to it, we see these two 12 year old boys riding a lawnmower. It was priceless. One of them pointed that his dad was in the garage and we ended up talking with him for an hour about everything. His name is Ole Ander (Yup, very Norwegian name) and the short summary of our conversation was that he loves to learn and believes we need to be good to one another but he wonders what our actual purpose on earth is as people. He agreed to meet with us this Wednesday!

The two boys (Ruben, Ole's son, and Joakim) were a bit distracting while we chatted, but they were hilarious. It was a great way to end the day :)

Now for the spiritual thought: Sister House got a letter from her cousin who is also serving a mission. In the letter, he shared a something that his mission president shared with him after he had been called to be a district leader, "You have not been called to these positions for who you are, but rather for who you can become." The same goes for everyone. Whether you are a student, worker, parent, whatever role/position you are currently in, our Heavenly Father knows there's something that you need to learn from that in order to help you become the person you are meant to be.

Thank you all for your love and support! I hope you all know that I send love and prayers your way every day :)

Take care and remember you are wonderful to me!

Love,

Søster Buhler

the first two are from a fantastic hike we went on as a district two weeks

the last one is me with the new companion/missionary - Sister House :)