Good morning everyone!
It has been a good week here in seinäjoki. I am having a jolly good time. We are trying some new things to try and find people to teach. One of them is teaching english. There has not been too much success with this among the mission recently, but we thought we better at least give it a try. I feel like this city is a good place to do it, because they have a sort of international university here, where lots of people come and some of them dont know much english. Many are from africa and asia. Lots of asians. We have been focusing on trying to find younger people...of course we will take anyone we can find...but our branch is mainly all over 60 so we want to try and get some young folk in there to preserve this great branch for years to come. Anyway, the first English class is going to be tonight at 6. we have been advertising for quite some time. we walk around the streets and staple flyers in places...we tape them inside of stores...and the best part is trying to recruit people in person. We walk down the street and when a person gets close to us, we start talking to them in english..and hopefully they know a little, but not very much. So then we try and get them to come to our free english class so that they can improve their english ability. It has been really fun to just come up to people and start talking in english. And the funny part is that you need to be really bold...if you aren't like shouting, then they will just walk past you and ignore you, so you need to be really loud. At first it was so odd, but it got pretty fun. We found a couple of cool people who said they would be interested. This can be the first step to the gospel for them.
Other cool stuff that happened this week was that we gave each other hair cuts. We are becoming masters at it. We use scissors and stuff too. Looks professionally done. Hair cuts here cost like 30 something euros too, so it helps you save lots of money. I tried fixing my bike brakes this morning, they have been really annoying...every time you press it, it sounds like a banshee screaming. It is so bad...So i think it might have worked...we shall see. Last night we met some other christian ladies, the belong to a helluntai church. I think that is like evangelical or something...but we talked with them for a very long time. It amazed them that our church was not so different from theirs as they thought it was. We talked about a lot of doctrinal topics like faith and the savior and life after death. One of the problems they had with our church was that they didnt believe that those who die without the chance to hear and accept the gospel will receive that chance later. They believed that only the people in their church would be saved. this reminded me of a scripture i read in personal study. Helaman 6:34-36. I think that these verses really show that God doesn't pick favorites. If you are righteous and follow his word, then He will call you His people. It doesn't matter where you are from or what you past is. Heavenly father wants every one of his children to follow him.
34 And thus we see that the aNephites did begin to dwindle in unbelief, and grow in wickedness and abominations, while the Lamanites began to grow exceedingly in the knowledge of their God; yea, they did begin to keep his statutes and commandments, and to walk in truth and uprightness before him.
35 And thus we see that the Spirit of the Lord began to awithdraw from the Nephites, because of the wickedness and the hardness of their hearts.
36 And thus we see that the Lord began to pour out his aSpirit upon the Lamanites, because of their easiness and bwillingness to believe in his words.
These verses show that the nephites because of their wickedness, were no longer being blessed. The lamanites however, become very successful as they follow the teachings of the savior. Who we are does not make us God's people, but what we do.
That is my week! Also i got assigned another talk, so i will be speaking on sunday...only a week of rest.
God bless you all
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