There is Sunshine in my soul today! :-)

Dear Family and Friends,

Oh my word, this week has been amazing. Can I just tell you all how much I love life? I love life. This time I have spent on my mission has been the best time in my life. And I love being able to tell other people that. They always seem so surprised. They ask me how I like being a missionary or what it's like to have so many rules and I can always answer honestly when I say that I absolutely love it and It's been the best time of my life so far. Then people ask me why and I have the chance to explain to them the joys the gospel brings and the happiness it brings into my life and the joy I get when I see the gospel blessing other people. I love being able to just explain that to people and this past week has been full of opportunities to do that.

We've been meeting a lot of young adults recently (because of the university close by) and we seem to running into many many Romanians. Like the other day, the Elders met a Romanian student who has read the Book of Mormon several times and the Bible many many times and he is really committed to try to "explain religion out of existence" as he puts it. We met with him at institute and he wasn't super interested in staying but sister Orgill and I convinced him to stay because we knew if he stayed, he would have a good time. So he stayed and he did have a good time and lightened up and saw that we, mormons were regular people.

Then just the night after, Sister Orgill was on splits and ran into 2 romanians who knew the romanian the elders had met. In fact, one of them was his roommate. So we invited all of them to come to church and guess what? they all came :) the elders investigators and ours. And after church, they invited us over to eat Romanian food later that night at their place. So we went and we met their other roommate and ate some traditional Romanian food. We ate pork and some stuff that was made of sheep cheese and special corn flour. Also, they made us American pancakes for dessert. It was awesome and we didn't argue once, we just had the chance to explain to them the joy we felt as missionaries and the wonderful joy the gospel brings into our lives and they were really respectful and interested. They even wanted us to stay and play a game after dinner. Sadly we didn't have time but they are definitely interested in coming to institute and church again. So that was very exciting.

Things are all going well in regards to getting Kaj's baptism ready. Sister Orgill and I cleaned out the font and that was fun. It has not been used in quite a long time so when we turned on the water, rust came out of the pipe but it was red so that was creepy. but it's all good now. Nice and clean and ready to be used this Saturday.

Also, Amanda May got her call to Denmark! what in the world? Crazy. The Lord loves me so much :) She'll love it here. It's the best mission in the world.

Other than that, things are picking up lots in Horsens, tons to do and I've started learning Romanian, haha. The Lord is leading us to the elect every day and it's so exciting to see.

I'll send lots of pictures of my life now.

Romanian style dinner :)

Dear family and amazing friends,

 

This week has been such a great one. It has just been full of happiness and joy because I've been able to see the people that mean so much to me here in Horsens make amazing strides in coming closer to Christ.

 

The best experience we had this week was with one of our investigators who is the young man we met about a month ago (the one who had lived in Salt Lake city for like 10 years but didn't have good experiences with mormons). He came to church yesterday for his fourth sunday and then after church, we went to dinner with him at a member's house. On our way to dinner, were were walking and talking with him and he asked us how the "preaching of the gospel was going" and I told him "Great! How is the gospel going in your life?" He told me that it was going good and that he had made a new years resolution to give up coffee, drinking and smoking. That really surprised me because I remember him telling me when I first met him that he would not give those things up. I asked him why and what had changed and he todl me that it was because of spending time with the missionaries and coming to church and meeting people who barely knew him and yet were so nice to him that had changed his mind and his heart. He said that he wanted to be closer to Christ and have more of Christ's light in his life. He then told us that he had already given up cursing because he wanted his thoughts to be purer. He talked about his desire to prove himself to God and his desire to serve other people. It really was one of the best moments of my mission so far and it made me so happy to see this huge change in this young man's life and even in his countance.

 

Sister Orgill and I have been very blessed this past week to find many of the Lord's elect here in Horsens. We stopped by one of our investigators but she wasn't home so we decided to knock the apartment complex. The very last door we knocked, a young mother answered. She is from Poland and speaks limited Danish. So we told her we had a book in Polish we wanted to give to her and we set up a return appointment and came back with a polish book of mormon and restoration pamphlet. Most of the lesson we had with her when we returned was just us pointing to a section and asking her to read it but the spirit was very strong and later her husband and 6 year old son came home and we had the chance to teach them because her husband speaks english. It was a great experience to show me that the Spirit speaks to people in their own language and will help others understand the things we cannot explain about the Gospel.

 

And things are just going so well with our older investigator who is getting ready to be baptized very soon. I'm very excited for him because he will be the first person in my mission that I have found, been through the whole teaching proccess and then seen baptized. Everyone else I've taught, I get transferred right before they're baptized but not this time. Anyways, he is awesome and a great example to me.

 

Miralces happen every day. Remember that. Just open your eyes to them and you'll be surprised at how much the Lord blesses you and how many miracles happen every day. As a missionary, every person who smiles back at you is a miracle :)

 

I love you all!

 

Søster Briscoe