The Blessings of Service From Others

Hello everyone!

It's so incredible to feel the growth every single week out here!  Every day is a new adventure and every experience a new opportunity to grow.  It's been an absolute blessing!  This past week President told me it's now, "Pedal to the metal time" it's the back stretch of the mission and time to go as hard as we can!

In Drammen this past week, we were blessed with a baptism!  The Sisters' investigator who kept herself smoke-free for a whole week, was baptized.  There are always miracles when the Lord is involved!  Myself included, the baptism was an opportunity to learn and grow:

Just before the baptism, we had planned to have a couple investigators come to the baptism.  When we were struggling to find a ride - we went to our last result - one of the counselors in the bishopric.  He is a younger guy from Sweden who is already extremely busy.  When we asked him to do it, we already knew that he had enough on his plate.  The baptism was in 15 minutes and he wasn't even dressed in a suit.  He quickly decided that he would do it and picked up our investigators.  Needless to say, it was an extremely stressful situation.

The investigators came safely and I felt absolutely terrible that we had stressed this man out, but he taught me a very valuable lesson.  As we were walking towards the baptismal font to watch the baptismal ordinance, he put his arm around me and I apologized to him that we had added another thing to his plate.  He told me, "Don't even worry about it, I just had a very stressful morning."  He taught me such a valuable lesson.

I learned, that even when we are stressed - we can always find an opportunity to serve - to emulate the compassion of the Savior.  I don't despise anything more than not being on top of everything and having a plan to execute it, but this man still helped me to show my faith and was able to bless my life tremendously.

Of the men who came to the baptism, one of them said, "We are now at someone else's baptism, but someday we'll be at our own baptism!"  We now have 4 baptismal dates in our area and we're continuing to work to accomplish some great things!  Elder Skinner is an absolute beast and I can't even describe how much fun it is to be serving with him and to be so passionate about this work!  It is all so real!

I hope everyone has an excellent week!