April 13

Week Of Wonders!

This last week was one of the most incredible weeks of my mission! For several different reasons...

Probably number 1: BAPTISM! Alemat got baptized before church on Sunday, confirmed during sacrament, and received the Aaronic priesthood after church! It was a great baptismal service!

Number 2: Despite having to take a ton of time this week to plan for the baptism and for our training meeting which was on Saturday, the Lord blessed us EVERY SINGLE DAY to find someone to teach as we were on our way to different places. It was unbelievable! 

The people we met this last week were so cool. It was so amazing. It doesn't always happen like this, but it seemed like the Lord was directly answering our prayers immediately! Several times this week, we set plans to go out and find someone to teach and we would pray specifically for that, and not even kidding, we always found someone within the first 5 minutes. 

One of those is a stud 16 year kid named Casper. Probably one of the coolest kids I've ever met. We met with him twice this week and it was awesome. Sometimes in the scriptures they say something like "and not even an hundredth part of these things can be written" since there were just so many things that happened, and that's how I feel trying to sum up this last week. It wasn't even just in our area, but with all of the missionaries in Stavanger and in the whole zone! It's been quite a huge blessing, and pretty fun to be a part of. :)

Probably the biggest change in how we have been contacting and teaching people, is our focus on the Restoration and our focus on bearing testimony. We have made it more of a focus to tie in the restoration near the beginning of every conversation we have, and we have felt a significant difference in the amount of people we find, the amount of POSITIVE people we find, and the overall spirit of our conversations. I'm so grateful for the restoration of the Gospel. That really is our special message to the world. 

This is a shout-out to most of my siblings: I miss you guys! Seriously! Don't be surprised when I don't know very much about you and your lives when I get home because I don't really, unless you tell me about it! I love you.

The days are getting longer, but my time on the mission is getting shorter. But I've never been more excited to be a missionary. This really is the Lord's work, and it really is hastening. And if we choose to be a part of it, then we are choosing to receive so many amazing blessings and so much happiness. I know it's true!

One last thought, I read a scripture that I really liked this morning in Heleman 4:13.

And because of this their great wickedness, and their boastings in their own strength, they were left in their own strength; therefore they did not prosper, but were afflicted and smitten, and driven before the Lamanites, until they had lost possession of almost all their lands.

Make sure we always give thanks and credit to God. :) Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Nilsson

April 6

Norwegian Easter!

It was a great transfer week, filled with quite a few changes and capped off by an amazing (last of my mission) General Conference! I don't know about the one dude at the conference center, but I for one love, support, sustain, and will follow those men who I know are true prophets and apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. They speak with unmistakable authority and power. It was an incredible experience as it usually is. :) 

Easter is totally dragged out here! Even though most people don't really celebrate the resurrection of Christ, they are more than happy to take the whole week off and go on vacation. The city was a lot more empty and starting Wednesday afternoon, all stores and shops are closed until tomorrow, only opening for a few hours in between on Saturday. But despite, we had a pretty good week. I love working with my new companion Elder Allen. We've already had some pretty good moments together. On Thursday we flew to Oslo again for leadership council... I'm kind of getting tired of flying... but it's always fun to be in different areas and see other missionaries. 

We've continued meeting with Alemat! He came and watched conference with us and really liked it, and we are planning his baptism for next Saturday, so we're definitely pumped about that! He is such a good guy and has such a strong desire to follow Christ. 

I hope everyone had a great Easter! If you haven't yet, go to helives.mormon.org and watch the Easter video!! It's awesome. The church is true!

Eldste Nilsson

March 30

Well, my reign with Elder Nathan Duncan will be coming to a close this week.

He is definitely one of my best friends and I was lucky to be able to serve with him for basically three transfers. We learned a lot together and I learned a lot from serving with him! 

I will be staying here in Stavanger, and my new companion is another really good friend of mine, Elder Nathan Allen! He has been living in my apartment as a part of the other companionship for the last 6 weeks, and I also lived with him in Tromsø about a year ago, so we are pretty tight and I am way pumped to serve with him! He's from Salt Lake City and went to Highland High. It's going to be legit. There are two other missionaries who are moving into our apartment. One is Elder Childs, who played on the American Fork basketball team which beat us in the State Tournament (we made amends long ago), and he will be training Elder Broadbent from Orem. So it will be a way awesome transfer here in rainy Stavanger!

We had a great zone conference this week about having a vision, and also having courage. Both are essential in becoming like our Savior. If we want to know what it means to have courage, just take your quad and open up to about any page in the scriptures and you will most likely read about a prophet, apostle, disciple, or ever Christ himself, who showed so much courage in Proclaiming the Gospel and standing for truth and right when all the tides seemed to be against them. It was inspiring conference. 

This is the week of one of my favorite events of the year. This upcoming Saturday and Sunday is General Conference! Don't miss it!

 https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch?lang=eng

Come with questions! 

 
Listen intently and you will receive guidance for what the Lord wants you to do at this time. I know that God has called Prophets and Apostles on the earth in our day and that they hold the priesthood authority of God to lead the church on Earth. And I am extremely grateful for that. I love you all!

Elder Nilsson

March 16, 23

Well my friends, another great week in this part of the Lord's vineyard.

                                  

There was an awesome baptism this last Saturday for a Norwegian guy that the sisters are teaching, and it's just another one of those special moments where you get to look at someone and see how much the Gospel has changed their lives. 

That's really the purpose of the Gospel. Not just to change our behavior and actions, but to change us on the inside, and to change our nature. That's what it means to be a consecrated disciple of Jesus Christ! It has more to do with that than just what we do! Acting and doing are definitely one of the ingredients in being converted, and are essential if we are going to have a change of heart, but there is more to it than that.

Elder Duncan and I have been on the streets quite a bit, but I would say our most effective way of finding right now is on the bus. They've got nowhere to go when we're sitting with them on the bus:)

There should be another baptism in the ward here next Saturday. We have a ton of momentum right now in Norway and have had the best few weeks that we've had in a long time! 

I have a testimony that God answers prayers when we pray in faith. We can't just sit and wait, but we need to go out and do, show faith, and live worthy of the spirit. That's when the power really comes. 

I'm running out of time, but I love you all and best wishes until next time!

Elder Nilsson

Get ready for a picture overload. Elder Duncan and I realized this week that neither of us took very many pictures.. So I gave him my camera  and he gave me his camera and we have been going on a picture taking spree. So ... just be warned that a lot of them are just really random and stuff so just remember that haha.

March 9

Writing this email gets harder and harder each week I feel like. It's so hard for me to look back and try and remember everything that happened this week! I feel like the past weeks and months are just jumbled up into one big picture and I forget what happened when and what came first haha but i'll do my best. 

I do remember that last Monday we visited "Sverd i Fjell", which translated is "swords in the mountain". It's pretty cool and isn't that far away.  

On Wednesday, Elder Duncan and I hopped on a flight to Oslo for Mission Leadership Council. Our first flight actually got overbooked, so we ended up having to wait for the next one which left like 30 minutes later. They gave us compensation and the church actually ended up making a pretty good profit on the trip haha. The pilots of Norwegian airlines are on a huge strike right now, and all Norwegian flights have been cancelled, so it's pretty crazy at the airports right now. But we made it to Oslo, and the meeting was great! It's so inspiring to be with those other missionaries and President and Sister Evans. Plus Sister Evans makes unreal Cinnamon Rolls every time. :)

On Friday I was on splits with Elder Stookey. He is as funny and interesting as his name. We had awesome splits! Our miracle of the day happened while we were giving service. We got a call from an investigator who needed some help moving a couple of things, so we went to help her. We moved a bunch of things down the stairs and then had to wait for the moving truck. Well, the truck wasn't coming... After we had waited for about 10 minutes, a guy named Victor came. He is 19 years old from Zambia and his mom is really good friends with our investigators. So we were just sitting down getting to know him a little, and before you know it we were moving right along with the first lesson! We taught him the Restoration and about the Book of Mormon while we were waiting and he was way happy when we gave him his own book. It was sweet, and we're going to meet with him later this week. 

It's a way exciting time in Stavanger right now. If all goes as planned, there should be a baptism every single week in March here in the ward! So we're praying that it all works out, cause that would be huge! Should be a good week and a good month. I love you all! 

Elder Nilsson

March 2

Hey all you people! 

We had a pretty awesome week this week. First off, I've been able to play basketball lately!! It's kind of a funny story how it started, but it was pretty much a guy that we met on the street that knew a guy that loved basketball and wanted to give him our number, so the guys friend called us a few days later and says that he wanted us to play basketball with him.. So we decided we'd check it out once and see if anything happened.. Well we played the first time, and there was probably about 8 kids ages 16-20 who grew up in Norway, but most were African. 

Long story short, we played well, they liked us, and we invited the guy who invited us to come to church this last week, and he came! He is a way cool kid, and basketball is his dream! Since the basketball program in Norway is so crappy, he asks me a lot about how it was in America so it's fun to talk about with him:) But ya, he came to church and we gave him a Book of Mormon! Don't know if it will go anywhere but it was pretty cool:)

In other exciting news, Elder Duncan contacted a guy name Alemat on the bus on Thursday, then we met with him on Saturday and he is SO prepared! Such a stud. He's got a way strong faith, and pretty much wanted to get baptized right away. And just after his first time learning about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, he was already way pumped to help us teach some of his friends. His Baptismal date is March 28! That was a huge miracle. It was one of those lessons where the investigators leaves and you just look at your companion for a straight 10 seconds with face that says "are you serious? That was amazing." haha the spirit was really strong.

We had another good week with investigators in church! Church is so much better when investigators are there. I challenge everyone to find someone they don't know at church, find a new face, and go and talk to them! Be their friend!

Everybody needs friends at church whether they are members or not, and nobody can have too many!

Thanks for your prayers and support!

Elder Nilsson

Feb 23

In response to last weeks email, I am writing this email first thing in order to ensure maximum quality! 

We had a fairly decent week this week.Some of our current investigators made some good progress! Sounds like it's been a pretty mild winter back in Utah, and it's not much different here. Although it sounds like it's probably a lot warmer there.. But there has been absolutely no snow here, and it's even been kind of sunny lately! Not gonna lie, it's makes going outside of the apartment much more enticing, even though we go either way:)

Our typical day includes waking up, doing some extreme workouts to get ourselves ready for the peeps back home (you probably won't recognize me), and then Personal, Companionship, and Language study.

We'll usually have an hour or so to go out street contacting, and then the rest of the day we'll usually have 1 or 2 lessons to teach, or maybe an inactive or active member visit. The thing is, is that we don't really have a lot of "typical days" since we travel quite a bit or have other random things to do. This last week we traveled to Bergen again to have a Zone Leader Training meeting. We had the same meeting on Friday in Stavanger with half the zone, and then Elder Duncan and I flew to Bergen Saturday morning to have the meeting with the other half of the zone, and then flew back Saturday evening. There's not a lot of missions where you get to do so much contacting and proselyting on airplanes! It's pretty nice though cause they can't go anywhere! haha I had a couple of pretty good conversations on the airplane recently, but unfortunately nobody wanted to meet again..

So since Transfers were this week, there was a new missionary moving into our apartment, and it's Elder Allen! If you don't remember Elder Allen, he is one of the 3 missionaries I lived with while I was in Tromsø a year ago. So now it's me, Elder Duncan, Elder Gustafson, and Elder Allen all living together in Stavanger, and it's legit!

It was a way awesome week in Stavanger. Normally, there will be about 2-4 investigators in church, but this week there were 10! And the ward did SO good fellowshipping everyone. We even had a linger longer after sacrament meeting and it was so perfect! Our investigators who came were Jan, Rune, Årstein, and a family from the Congo. It was the African families first time in church, and I think they really liked it. The mom doesn't really speak English or Norwegian, so it was hard for her to understand anything, and her and her daughter had to leave right before sacrament, but Francois, the 19 year son, Elombay, a family friend, and Apollo, the 12 year old boy all speak Norwegian and all stayed for all of church! We haven't met with them a bunch so we were able to get to know them a lot better at the linger longer. Such a humble and awesome family. 

Rune is our investigator with a baptismal date. He is Norwegian and about 35 years old, but has some kind of speech impediment and learning disability, so we are taking it at a slow pace and teaching very simply, but he is totally hanging on to what we teach him! He's got such a good heart. He's kind of a big guy, so he really is just like a giant teddy bear haha. I love the guy.

Well we've been talking a lot about the power of the scriptures a lot in our mission. If you read the scriptures, you'll probably notice that so many of the prophets and apostles, and even Jesus Christ himself would use the scriptures, or refer to them in their teaching. In 2 Nephi 32:3 we learn that the scriptures are the words of Christ. In John 10:27 we read "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."

What better way to find the elect then to use the scriptures and let them hear Christ's own words. The scriptures have made such an impact on my own life. Reading them creates a desire in me to follow Christ. I can't read the words of Christ and his Prophets in the scriptures without wanting to become more like them. As WE read in the scriptures, we will have more desire, strength, and motivation to follow the Savior and live the Gospel. If you're not sure about that, then just experiment upon the word, and watch the seed grow. I know the scriptures are true! There is no better way in this life for any of us then following the teachings and councils that we learn through the words of God. 

Hope everybody has a great day. I love you and appreciate all of your support! The church is true. Don't forget to study the scriptures today! :)

Elder Nilsson