September 19 - Arendal

Hey everyone! 

Thanks for all your love and support. I pray for your safety and happiness and hope everything is going well. Trust in God and draw near unto him and everything will work out! It was another great week! A lot of things are happening and the work is moving forward. 

First, -- is getting baptized this week on Saturday! We went with her down to Kristiansand on Friday for her baptismal interview with a zone leader. Everything went well and so now we are just finishing up plans for her baptism. Since we don't have a baptismal font, It is going to be at a beach on a fjord in a town called Fevik. We are really excited. It is a beautiful area. It is very close to where --, -- and -- live so we are hoping it will help get more of our investigators there. A lot of members have said they are coming. 

This week we were also able to meet with --. We rode our bikes to his house and he let us in. He told us that he was talking with his mom the other day and when he was just a baby, the missionaries would visit his mom. He is a really friendly and nice guy and open to talk. We mainly focused on talking about families and that God is our Heavenly Father and the book of mormon. He believes in a higher energy but isn't sure what or who God is. This next time we are going to watch meet the mormons with him. 

We also met with two new investigators, -- and --. We met -- on the bus about 3 weeks ago and finally got an appointment with him. We ended up meeting with him and his friend two days this week both on Wednesday and Thursday. They are both in their 20's, newly religious and very passionate about their beliefs. They are going out of town this week but we gave them both book of mormons and will be meeting when they come back. 

Another new person we were able to meet with is --, he was a former investigator who got busy and lost contact. We met him in the library and talked about the Book of Mormon. He is active in his own congregation but is open to try reading. 

So a lot of new exciting things have started happening and so we will see where it goes. I'm optimistic. We also had a really cool experience while out tracting on Saturday. We knocked into the house of this woman and her family. We had a long conversation on her door step about the plan of salvation and the hope we can find in God. She was interested in our message but was hesitant in meeting with us so thankfully we had a plan of salvation pamphlet that she gladly accepted and said she would read it. We asked her if we could come back and follow up on if she read and she said of course. It was a really great conversation and I know the spirit was there. I'm really excited on trying back with her in a week. Right after that we had another cool experience. This week in District meeting we were talking about finding and one of the members of the district said that his trainer (he was an AP that recently went home) went tracting he would always use Family History as a conversation starter for older people. So as we approached this house on Saturday, there was an elderly couple outside and so my thought process was was, "District meeting, elderly people, family history, go fight win!"  We tell the man that we are out to talk with people about family history work and his answer, "You are talking with the right man, come on in boys" Yesssss, jackpock! Family history for the win! He invited us in and we ended up talking with him about family history and the church for about a half hour. He said he has been doing family history for 11 years and uses the churches family search program often. We explained a little about the WHY we do family history and he thought it was interesting. He told us if we are ever in the area that we can come back and say hi. It was a testimony builder to me of the promptings of the spirit and taught me more about how the spirit works. The spirit didn't just say in my head, "It's the spirit, talk about family history work," It could have done that but that is more rare than common. Instead it brought back to my memory the experience I had in district meeting, where one missionary would approach elderly with family history, and gave me the idea to do the same. That is why feasting upon the word, and treasuring up the word is so important. The spirit commonly brings things to our remembrance and so we need to have a source where the spirit can do that. 

I love you all and am grateful for your love support and prayers. I know Heavenly lives and loves us. We are his children. Jesus is our Savior and redeemer. Have a great week!

Elder Witt