October 10 - Arendal

Hey family and friends!

Thanks for your love and support! To start off I want to share a quote off a sign I saw while we were out knocking on doors. It says"

Tenk positive tanker

Si positive ord

Gjør positive handlinger

Og det positive gror.

It was a good week here in Arendal. We were able to have many neat experiences! On Tuesday, we had district meeting down in Kristiansand. District meeting is split into 2 parts. There is a doctrine part and a skills part. The doctrine was on the doctrine of christ: teaching repentance and baptizing converts and the skills part was on listening and teaching to needs. Listening is super important and one of my old companions shared with me a quote i have liked. It is paraphrased as: One of the biggest communication problems of today is that we listen to reply rather than to understand. After district meeting we stopped in Grimstad and did a little street contacting there and then visited -- and -- who are two less active members.

On Wednesday, we went to the police station so I could renew my visa, and then we went and did service for a contact we have. We go over every other week or so to mow her lawn and do some yard work. She is preparing to sell her house. Then we finishing the day by going tracting!

On Thursday, we met with -- and --. It didn't go too well. They looked up quite a bit of anti church material and just tried to convince us the whole time that we are wrong. We are going to meet one more time and invite them to read the book of mormon but we will most likely be dropping them. It was a little disappointing. After that, -- sent us a text and asked if we had some time to go help him again with some service. We rode our bikes to our house and helped him. I really like --. We watched meet the mormons with him and his wife on Monday and it went well. He doesn't believe in God and is very skeptic but  he asks good questions and we have good conversations. He is super nice and we'll continue to pray it goes somewhere :) after that we visited a member who we've started teaching the missionary lessons to. 

Friday, was an experimental zone wide finding day. It's purpose was to experiment in finding and trying new things that we've never done to find people and make it fun. It turned out to be a big success. The elders in Bergen took the church's ping pong table to the city square and got games going. If they won they could teach the person a short message. Here in Arendal, we did a street stand and it turned out to go better than I'd thought. we had a couple people come up and talk to us. One was this man who investigated for about 2 years ago. He came up to us and asked some questions and then said I'll think about it and come back to the stand later in the day. He never ended up coming back so we didn't think to much of it. Then the next day, we were out in the city and were in this area of the city where we usually don't contact. and then all of a sudden we see this man and we stop him and it turns out to be the same guy that came to the street stand. It was a miracle. We talked to him more and he expressed his desire to quit smoking and we told him we have a little program we could work with him and he said yes and gave us his number freely without asking. I'm grateful for the Lord's guidance in finding this man. Later in this experimental finding day we were out knocking on doors. and we took with us all sorts of different materials. We trind handing out dvds, pamphlets and such. We decided to knock on doors in this certain area where we had a try back potential who was Lithuanian. We had a Lithuanian book of mormon and pamphlets. We knocked on her door and she was busy so we gave her the book of mormon and left. We continued banking on doors in the area and met another Lithuanian. we talked and gave him the pamphlets in Lithuanian and he loved them and was excited to read something in his language. We are going to visit him again.  It was another miracle that we so happen had with us the pamphlets in that language. 

On Saturday the next day we had another exciting story. We were knocking on doors and an older couple answered the door. They were extremely nice and friendly and we talked about their faith on their door step for a little bit and then asked if we could share a message about the book of mormon and they let us in! We sat down and talked with them and they gave us apple cake and soda and it was super awesome! they accepted the book of mormon and said we could come back! 

This weekend was stake conference in Drammen and so we watched that. It was good! I'm grateful for the gospel. It is the greatest news we could ever hear. I'm grateful for general conference. For me often the ideals presented and challenges given to us members can be big and intimidating. But As Elder Holland so testified 6 months ago that we get credit for trying. Success in gospel living comes as we strive to do the will of the father. Simply put much of that is simply improvement. We don't need to be perfect but if we set small goals we can improve and then act in faith knowing that we are on the right path and repentance is the key to getting back on the path. I love you all! Thanks for your support!

Elder Witt