Another Busy Week

This week has been absolutely crazy and filled with teaches! we have been VERY busy this week and we have really worked hard this week in finding and teaching as many people as we have! i believe in my last email that i told you how much potential is here in Moss that its ridiculous how many could be baptized and we are only getting more investigators it is crazy to think! we got five new investigators just this week and things are just exploding here and its hard to keep up most of the time! its a great thing i have a companion who is always on top of things and can always manage everything  and even better can remember basically everything! he truly is a trainer and the best at that! thanks to elder Korey Sutton the work goes forward in moss and then i am at his side ha ha! he encourages me all the time and helps me strive to be the better missionary! so like a said last week we are using members more and more! this week we had 16 member teaches to investigators! only in moss! the members really try to help when they are able to and i have to thank them for that they are so great! we have been all over the place this week and i am so excited to tell you what has happened that has made this week a great week!

  well there is a member who is from fredriksted who was baptized not to long ago in June! He is a true convert already and strives to go on a mission and shows that by coming with us for two whole days this week and saw what it was like to be a missionary and he surely loved it! he has already seen how missionary work goes forward and has gotten to see at first hand what we do everyday and how missionary work is hard but we still have tons of fun while out doing it! he always added great testimony being a brand new member they always have some crazy strong testimonies that really help our investigators! As we struggle with some more than others having that witness to say "hey its OK I'm still not perfect and still make mistakes but through the atonement of Christ can we be made free from all those sins" is just different than us saying it since they don't believe that we are not perfect which is completely false i still mess up everyday! that witness is so amazing though and i love hearing conversion stories it just adds to my own testimony that this is the true church on the earth! thank you to him one of our investigators is starting to get back into baptism and trying to find her answer again!

  well we have been waiting for a member referral for while meaning my companion has been waiting for one for quite a while! there is a family in the ward and their daughter is dating a kid who is not a member but yet has been coming to church with out her even when she is not there for almost a year now! he is one bright kid and is very easy to talk to and just and all around chill type of kid! so we finally got the go ahead to teach and we met with him on Thursday and were able to commit him if he knew it was right to be baptized and he said yes! we met with him again yesterday and he had read and he said he felt great and really like ready Alma 32! we talked about it with him and we read a scripture with him and he told us that he really like that scripture when he had read it and said it was very interesting (21) that he didn't need a perfect knowledge of all things just a hope of things! the lesson went great and the spirit was strong and we had prayed about a date and also thought how cool it would be for him to be baptized on 11 11 11 so i hope that all works out its soon but with prayer and reading and with god on his side anything is the world is possible! i know form my own experience that the lord will always fulfill his part if we do his! the lord truly is on our side and is watching out for us everywhere! he is a merciful god if we humble our self before him!

  well we had an opportunity to go to Oslo this week on Friday for an institute with some of our investigators and they really loved it! had a great time and were having fun and learned a lot of new things! they had dance class afterwards to learn a type of salsa dancing and i wish i could have joined it look so fun,but one of our investigators really liked that and said she wants to go back next week and we had a member say that she would take anyone that wanted to go so that helps a lot! since we had a crazy journey trying to get home last time and what not so that will help us on our part a ton since driving in Oslo is horrible and could compare it to driving in new york i think! GPS don't work in Oslo at all!

  well we started teaching a family from Italy but originates from Nigeria and Liberia? something like that! she has lots of kids and we play football every Saturday and were able to take five of her kids and they are freaking good at football and they really enjoyed it and they all want to be baptized its so funny but its up to the mom in joining before they do since she is a... J.W.. so if anyone have good ideas in helping us with here please write and not in a bashing way we all know how to do that but just good ways in helping her understand that would be legit:)

  i also got to see the first baptism this week just for a boy in the ward but man it reminded me of how strong the spirit is at baptisms! the spirit is there and there is no denying the power of that! i gave the talk for it and it was amazing the lord filled my mouth with Norwegian and it made sense! i felt so great and i felt like i got across exactly what i wanted to say! great example of the gift of tongues for you right there! when you need it most he will give it to you!!

 

   well that's basically my week of course there is more but its not like i am going to say we contacted all day or drove around all day because we didn't but that's the goods:) so lately i am going through the book of Mormon with serious intent on learning and taking my time as a go through it and highlighting to the death of my book of Mormon! poor thing is starting to fall apart i guess in a way that's a good thing ( ill get new ones when i go home;)) second nephi is full of stuff that is just incredible even though i will admit there is some boring chapters but only because i just don't understand Isaiah all the time! but i have been reading chapter 26-27 today and they are full of incredible detail of the coming up of false churches and then 27 just has some incredible Revelation of the coming forth of the book of Mormon by a man who is unlearned and will be the one to bring forth the sealed book to people and then the testimony of the three witnesses and also of the other witnesses (8). As i have been reading the book of mormon is both languages even though it takes me alot longer to read it in Norsk since there are so many words i dont know and even if i know the general meaning of a word i will look it up so i know exactly what it means! i understand what i read and take my time in both to get a greater understanding everytime! the book of Mormon is truly gods words here on the earth today and i challenge you all to pick it up and read it and i promise you that you will always learn something new everytime you read it! its an incredible book and will and can help you with every problem that we have in life!! i hope everyone is well and its so great to  hear from you that do write me! i love you and have a great week!!

ELDER FARNSWORTH

 

Busy Week

hallo hallo family and friends! this week has deffinatly been a crazy busy week with teaching all over the place and just time flew by this week especially fast! for those that have served missions and know how hard it is to get member teaches and what not to show a little bit of how much we did this week we had 9 member teaches! three of which happend all in one day! so me and my comp were on our way home yesterday from dropping some people off at the church and we were talking about how much potential moss really has in investigators that really should be baptized and that are basically ready but just not willing to commit quite yet!... we have over 20 people that said they would be baptized... but yet just wont be baptized? its crazy! we dont even have enough time in a week to meet with all of them because no teaching appointment can only last for 15 minutes when investigators have so many questions! its good to see all of these people wanting to hear more and to learn more! as i pray everyday for a better understanding for all of these people you can see the lord bless me and my companion to decern the needs of others! he truely is the key to this work with the holy ghost they are the ones who convert the people not us! As i realize this it only makes me want to understand more and to teach to the needds of everone! its not always easy and at times you may not find the answer right away and have to wait to tell them! but no matter what the case is it will be for the better and people like to see that we dont know everything but we will try as hard as we can to find what they are looking for! as missionaries we are here for them to help and guide that and its great when people realize that we are here to represent the lord in his work to support his children here on earth!

  well i doubt this letter will be to long but a short little experiance happened this week and a great answer to our prayers! as we have been praying for this area outside of moss for awhile now and just trying to find time to get there has been difficult but we finally made it to the great college town of Ås! we actually met a member there and he showed us around and good areas to go knock and so we had a great idea of where we could go to find people in the best ways possible and we asked him to pray for us as we always do and i believe with our prayers and his it just enough payed off for us to have 3 great teaches which both lasted for about an hour and ended up all being in english...Ås is 25% immigration college town so there are many different races there of people and willingly invited us in! so we got three new potential investigators and hopefully we will be going back this week sometime to talk with them and set up other appointments! its very interesting how many lessons i actually teach in english and it jsut amazes me when i think about it! when you think of getting called you think and are told you will not use english but you use it when alot in this case in Moss because its one of the biggest places for imports and the its one of the main places the ferry from denmark comes in! so alot of the southern parts of norway have quite a bit of euthnicity going on, but yet its so great and get a chance to meet people from all over the world!

  speaking of which we met a convert from nigeria who was actually baptized in Drammen,Norway and moved back to italy and now is back with his sister and her family and he introduced us to almost 10 new investigators and we are starting to teach their family when she will give us a time to meet! so hopefully soon everything will start coming together for us and her family to meet! along with his friends he introduced us too!

   well our investigators that have dates for next week were all out of town this whole week....coincedence? must be! but i pray that all will work out with them they are such great people and just need to excersize that faith and they will be more than on their way:)! but like a said this week has been so busy with teaches and yet doesnt seem like much to tell! but just so you are all aware here is another answer to a prayer! so i have been trying to find a coat that wasnt like 500 bucks! we knew a guy who works at a company started in Moss called Helly Hansen which is a super nice outdoor sporting winter store and we had been in there to look at jackets before and we found one that was 3000kr so like 510 dollars and it was marked to 2000kr and we told him that thats the one we wanted and we asked if they would be on sale and he said not really and so we said we would buy it now since we needed coats! he said ok well my price is 500kr.......wo wo wo what... yea we got a 500 dollar jacket for like80 bucks!! its super nice jacket and super warm ill send pictures of it soon!

  well for personal study i have just finished the book of mormon and the peal of great price and starting on the book of mormon agian but going through this time i am making a time line of events and a history chart or geneology chart of people! i am going through it slow and marking my scriptures will "real intent" and its going well 1 nephi 13 is great never new how much was in there and along with 22! but i have been going through plan of salvation this week and have another weekly goal for everyone who reads this! so 2 nephi 2 is all about the fall of adam and eve but it also shows the neccessity of why! my challenge for you is to read 2nep chapter 2 and see what it means for you and why was it all important! i have reallized more and more how important it really is and its so awesome that we have this gospel in our life! i know that god has given us this plan so we can be happy and he gives us weaknesses so we can be humble and his grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before him and have faith in him then will he make weak things become strong unto them! ether 12:27) he gives us weaknesses in this life so we can over come them and thats one part of the atonement the enabling part and we need to remember that we can overcome anything or addiction we have in this life because of jesus christ! he is our lord and savior i know this from my own personal revealation! i know this church is true!

   i hope all have a great week and can overcome any challenges that are here or will come! i love you all have a great week!!

 

Eldste Farnsworth

Another Fantastic Week

  This week has been great and as usual doesnt seem like i have done so much until i look back on everthing that i really have done!! well this week has been packed with so much stuff and yet we are not the busiest missionaries meaning we are not having appointment after appointment its just not how it works here in norway and i dont know what we would do if we had that! like i said in my last letter the lords time will allow you to talk with everyone who neeeds to be talked to on that day and if some appointments dont fall through its because someone else is out there to listen to us that needs it more! i still cant get over how fast a mission goes by already! well just a little insight for atleast my parents who wonder norway changes companions every 9 weeks because its so expensive to do all the travel well atleast thats what i have heard? but anyway so november 9th is the next scheduled event of changes! but to put everyting on track and not have elders that come out during december they are doing a 6 week transfer so elders wont have to stay for 3 christmases! so my next transfer will only be six week and for the most part i will probably be in MOSS for a while! Well, me and my comp are doing great here and we are starting to get more investigators that are reallly interested and we have four investigators almost six with baptismal dates and ipray so hard that they will fall through and that we can have the utter most success with all of them! being out here you can really see the lords hand in all that you do and being blessed with the gift of interpretations of tongues is one of those! this week i feel like my understanding has deffinatly gone up but speaking has stayed pretty level! which is fine:) and it will come as i keep trying to talk as much as i can in norwegian as possible but dont get me wrong its a frustrating thing at all times when you cant say what you want! well here is a break down of the week

   So this past pday we went fishing with the elders from Drammen and cooked some hotdogs by the dock and caught nothing....ok we caught things but they were not fish!! some how we manages to first catch a star fish? second we caught a hermit crab? and we tried to catch a jellyfish? but that didnt go so well! but let me tell you that hotdogs here are not the same as america! they are just better here and taste different! because in american i hate hotdogs!

  well on wednesday we had been planning me and my companion for the big missionary zone conference in moss! so from 9-5 we sat in the chapel and had wonderful insights from our mission president and they were so great everything that he said just could stick out to everyone and he truely is an inspired man and knows what neeeds to be done in the mission to increase our wants and also what is best for the mission! He speaks and we listen and our hands write as much as we can remember because everything he says has so much meaning! i hope you all get a chance to meet this man and i hope at one time he gets to be in the 70 or something he just needs to be there! truely an amazing man! well we had a lady make food for all the missionaries there and she is the nicest lady! she makes food for us every saturday in moss and wants to go on a mission and she will be a great missionary when every she does go! well we had members come so we could do practicals and practice on them and for the final task we had member splitts with all the missionaries so 1 elder to a member so we had almost 50 people go out knocking in moss and areas around moss and we got like five potential investigators which is pretty big!! so it turned out to be quite the success after all!!

   So after this great event we had planned splitts with fredricksted! so i spent the night for two days in fredriksted this week and had a great time there! we found some very interesting people through out the day and even talked with a muslim guy who tried to teach us on the street! but we turned that around pretty quick! he actually also sang us to prayers in some islamic language i have no idea but i could understand some? and he asked me if i know what he said and i explained to him what he said it was crazy!! but we got his number and kept going! all in one day i have never met so many crazy people and drunk or on some kind of drug i have no idea what they were on but we met some crazy narco`s! so me and elder burr actuall got some good teaches and some potential investigators!

  well this week we had a lot of people out of town so we did a lot of knocking and trying to find other ways to get peoples attention! one thing i did forget to mention is that we were in the newspaper last weeek!! i forgot to tell you we were interviewed and were followed around for like 5 hours and were interviewed and he went on a teach with us and he ended up writting a great article on us and i wll send it home after i copy it and what not or maybe ill will give you a link to it if i can find it!! but he got all his info right besides that he said we had a temple in moss but other than that he was dead on about everyting!!

   well so yesterday we had a great sunday and we found a guy on friday out knocking and he ended up coming to church and is trying to stop smoking and do everyting he can and wants to do better in life and clean up! answer to our prays right? yes! and yesterday also we had a guy in the ward want to to take something to his friends (a hammer he had borrowed) and we took it too him and he said the he had been waiting for us and now has a baptismal date for the 5.nov so its crazy to see the lord working his ways when we work hard to do all we can!! he truely does watch out for us and truelly is on ourside! so elder ballard in his email quoted DC 100:5-8 which is perfect in this example which says: lift up your voices unto this people speak the thoughts that i shall put into your hearts, and you shall not be confounded vbefore men for it shall be given you in the very hour yea in the very moment what ye shall say but a commandment i give unto you that ye shall declare whatsover thing ye declare in my name in solemnity of heart in the spirit of meekness in all things and i give unto you this promis that inasmuch as ye do this the holy ghost shall be shed forth in bearing record unto all things what soever ye shall say! love this scripture so like we try as missionaries to lift our our voices and they will be heard! i know thats true i have put it to the challenge and it works!! i love being out here and i cant wait for every new day i have that oppertunity to share it to new people! i love you all and i hope this messege brings you up to help you!

eldste Farnsworth

What A Great Week

well like i always say that the weeks go by faster than you can even imagine! i feel like i had just barely had my pday like a day ago and we had conference already over a week ago! time flys when we do what the lord wants us todo and the time is already moving so fast and as i look back i have been in norway for like five weeks now i cant even remember unless i seriously count back! its true when people say that the mission goes by faster than any other time in life because the lord does not want you to worrie about time but to be here to do his work and will! every night when i look back on what i have done and i am amazed and wonder where i spent all of my time and how fast i did everything! the lord truely doesnt need time and he lets us not worrie about the time and we will make it to all our appointments and everything will work out in different ways and in better ways that you could ever imagine! well this week has been filled with some interesting events and its been alot of fun and reviewing conference and watching and catching up since we dont get to watch it in the same manner and way everyone back in utah gets too!

   well this past week we have been trying to get a hold of our investigator from iraq and it didnt work out and he was busy and his baptism didnt work out which was very hard and when he doesnt speak norwegian and doesnt speak english and communication is almost impossible with out some kind of picture and its still hard! but i know he wants it bad and we just have to find the ways to get him better prepared and a better understanding and use a lady we know that speaks his language and he will understand and want it even more! but he is done smoking! so he is ready and ready to enter into a new lifestyle and thats what he said that he wants so we are working our best with him!

  well we have finally been able to meet the guy i have my first book of mormon too! after 4 weeks of trying to meet he finally realized himself that the devil just didnt want us to meet and he made time for us basically that instant! he is a very strong backrounded guy and knows the bible well and he understands so much! when we taught him the first time and talked to him about the restoration he was very entertained by the idea and understood very well and he wants to do whats right and he is really taking into consideration and wants to find out for himself about our church and is starting to read and pray more! he told us that he loves to pray and he prays quite often and he is going to try to get his answer! in some ways teaching someone like him is very fun and especially when they are so open to what we have to say! we gave him a date and he is working toward that date buy needs to ask his.....mother if it would be ok! well it makes sense his family has had a past where they are basically all pastors and been members of A catholic church! he has a strong growing testimony already and he came to church with us yesterday and he really liked it! we had to translate for him sense he is from holland and doesnt speak norwegian so me and him are on the same page!! but all goes well with him!

  well this week we have really been trying to meet with the lady with 14 kids and we love going over there and they love having us and the kids surround us like we are family! they love us and want to be like us as we set that example that they love and want to become! three of the kids talk about getting baptized like they are already members its great and they tell their friends and other families that they are old enough and are going to be baptized!! the little girl just turned 8 and told her friend after she was asked what she is going to do now that she is 8....she replied OH im now 8! so that means i can get baptized!! they want to be members and its funny! we are giving them a date this week and working with the whole family as well!

   well i had my first oppurtunity and hopefully my last as well to go to a funeral here in norway! it was a very interesting experiance since it was not at a lds chapel and i got to go into a state church for the first time and they are so pretty! and just filled with incrediblely huge pictures that are very interesting....haha! but i could just feel that emptiness as i walked into the church me and my comp both said to each other...."i am so glad we are members of our church....this church has no feelings in it of joy at all?" its was a very weird and empty feeling that i have not really experianced since to my recollection i have never been in another church that wasnt of our faith! as pretty as the buildings are its just not the same feeling we get to enjoy everyweek so dont forget it! its a great feeling!

   well for the first time since i left my mtc group i got to see them again and it was so great! on saturday we had a training meeting for all the new missionaries and their trainers and we talked about the new program and had some practicals and it was good to see how everyone is progressing in the language and how fun it was to catch up and talk to everyone like we are the best of friends! i realized how much i missed them i mean they literally are like family know and when i see them its basically like a reunion of family! after the meeting we all got lunch together and just sat there and laughed and had a great time and told stories til we had to leave and that was not easy but we get to see them again pretty soon!

   well our ward mission leader organized a very interesting event for this coming wednesday and its a BIG DEAL! we are having all the missionaries in our zone which is 12 sets of missionaries coming to MOSS and having a giant splitts! having a big open house at the church going knocking on doors with members and everything its going to be a great event and its will really help the work in moss move along at a better pace! when ever we have members with us and since basically all of them are from norway or in that case MOSS people on the other end are much more reseptive to letting us inn! its crazy to see how much more responsive people are when you are a native! maybe one day i will speak as if i am a native! i hope so!!

   well this week has been a spirit filled week with teaches all over the place and my norwegian is starting to grow more and more! its nothing like learning spanish or a break off of spanish because for one how many people have actually heard someone speak norwegian? basically no one! so hearing a language that you have never heard of before really gives you a little persective of learning a VERY foriegn language! but norwegian is beatifull and i cant wait for that day that i am fluent and can understand and know what people say and be able to respond more indepth! but the language is coming along and i am starting to realize what peple are saying more but its still very hard to know and pick out what they are actually meaning and its a good thing i have a great comp!

  well my little spiritual message for everyone is actually from an ensign the oktober one! its talked about remembering what the profet told us in general conference! we never know when that time comes up when we get to preach the gospel and tell them what the profet said in the last conference so i incourage everyone who reads this to watch some of the talks given especially by the profet! i hope everyone is doing well and i hope no one is forgetting about me and please write me and tell me how everything is going!! i love and miss everyone keep the updates coming!

ELDSTE FARNSWORTH

A Great Week!

Well what can i say it really has been a great week! this week we got to have quite a bit of fun in finding and we had a lot of great teaches this week and i had a lot of experiances! well i just want to say that i know the lord is on our side in all that we do as long as we keep our part of the deal! "i the lord am bound when ye do what i say but when ye do not what i say you have no promise"! i believe that this scripture right here shows us a lot especially as i notice in mission work when we do everything possible the lord will bless the people you teach to open their minds and let you into their hearts! As a missionary every experiance you have will strengthen you in some way and help you bring people to him!

   well the people we have been teaching are being blessed more and more and its truely incredible to see the lord working in their life and yet the people dont yet see it. they start to say things that are profound and something they wouldnt say and then you see if they can clarify what they are talking about and it comes across in your mind....so basically your saying you are a member of our church?.... so we are having a baptismal date on... is the feeling that you start to get in your mind and its funny because they start to say this and you ask them more questions to open their mind even further and they are still completly with you and its when you let them think it out and the spirit hits you to ask them to be baptized and to show their faith to follow our lord and savior Jesus Christ! we promise everyone the same blessings of the gospel and we testify of how it will work in their life if they will only test it and try it for themselfs! people dont realize what a small and simple pray and do in their life when they ask with a broken heart and a contrite spirit! its by small and simple things that big things are brought to pass! god knows the whole picture or puzzle that we are working for and as we ask for his strength and advice is when we will truely be blessed!

   well we have been working with a great swedish man and he is such a joy to be around and is a very open and interactive guy! he is very stuborn and very strong sided in putting out an athiest view on everything....which makes it hard to tell him to only excersize faith and these points of view no longer excist they are just questions that dont really make or break what he tries to throw at us it is just an uneeded question for the most part haha! but we asked him if he would prepare himself to prepare for baptizm if he would find out if our gospel was true and he said he would! the smile of joy came across our face because we have commited him to it before and said no many times! he came to conference this weekend well to the sunday morning session and he loved Irying and president Monson he thought they were very powerfull talkes and i prayed so hard the whole time we watched it that he would feel that spirit of trueth and boy do i hope thats what he felt and i am sure thats what he felt! i just hope he can see that that is what he felt!

   well we got to have a really great experiance this week and that was that we got to be interviewed by the newpaper and so he came with us on a days work and got to see how us missionaries live our lives and how it all works! well he met us in the afternoon and i told him our beliefs and i taught him the first lesson while standing there talking while my companion talked to another guy trying to find a JW church for his sister and we found  out he was mormon as well baptized only in febuary and he got to be interviewed a little as well! being an african and proud to have the "holy spirit" and just about shouting it to everyone infront of the state church....which was hilarious! but we had some appointments set up and he came along with us and was very interested as well so it made it even better to have him there! we taught a lesson and had a member with us and the interviewer and just taught like he wasnt even there even though he was taking pictures and writting in his notepad that he bought that day and by the end of the day it was filled with notes! We had to make sure we were carefull of what we said as well to make sure he didnt get the wrong idea and made sure we clarified what we meant and our specific duties as missionaries! he asked us if he could see us in action on the gå gate which is just like a big street that cars cant drive down with stores and what not and we had not planned contacting but turned out to go very well in just one walk down the street we got three teaches which usually doesnt even happen in a day in MOSS! and he almost started to ask us tips! he is a writter that has to go question people on the streets and he knows how hard it is to find people to ask them questions so we exchanged ideas and ways to find! it turned out to go very well! he actually came to fotball the next morning and talked with us for a little bit!

    well conference was great and yes i watched it in english! no other language can do it justice! you just dont get the same messege out of it in a different language and also i just cant understand everything they say so i decided to watch it in english along with half of the ward who would also rather watch it in english! well the way it works to watch conference here is we watch saturday morning on saturday night at six watch P.S the next morning the saturday morning session after then a big dinner and then sunday morning after that so i have not seen the last session yet as we speak but hopefully i will get to watch it soon! in the first session one thing that i have started to do is memorize a scripture a day and Richard G. Scott spoke on that a little and its one thing i am going to work harder on! Jeffery R. Holland spoke in the priesthood session and as we all know he is just an incredible speaker and he had two quotes i really liked

*Sign on and Speak up

*Be on the Team

*Dont dribble out of bounds!

the last talk that really hit me that i loved alot is president Monsons in the morning session on sunday! He hit hard on morality and also depending on prayer and to use it often to excersize your faith in prayer! prayer is something i have loved so much on my mission you pray so much and for so many different things through the day! prayer is our own communication to talk with our heavenly father and i think we talk it for granted more and more! its a truely humbling thing to do! prayer will keep us close to him everyday!

i love it here and the work proceeds to push forward! i know the gospel is true and its why i am here to show my own faith that christ lives and we can live with him again through our sacred covenants with god that we can be with him again! i know my redeemer lives!

Eldste Farnsworth