Hello Everyone! Just thought I would begin by telling you
that I am the luckiest missionary in the world right now. But really. This week
has been truly amazing. I'm excited to tell you all about it!
But first, It's great to hear about everything going on
back at home. Crazy to think Haley's gone to Montana, and with Bonnie Stowell
too! I was good friends with her in Junior High! That should be fun. Congrats
to Casey as well that she made it on Student Council! That will be really fun
for her. Mom, I'm glad your surgery went well. It's also way cool that you met
with her Mission President! I love President Sederholm and I'm looking forward
to being able to meet with him in the years to come.
Let me know who got their mission call [to Denmark] that
Haley knows! I would love to email them and talk to them about it!
Now, about this last week...We were blessed this week
with so many miracles.
To begin with, we met with T***** twice this week. He's
getting baptized this week! At both of these lessons we had members which were
both good for him and the members. All the members that meet him just love him.
We also planned with the Elders Quorum President to send him Home-Teachers to
meet him this week. We're excited to get the last things set in place for him
to be baptized on Saturday!
We were able to meet with A*** P******* this week. She
just has a lot on her mind. But she really wants to come back to church. She
watched the Joseph Smith movie we gave her and she loved it. She also agreed to
call her previous Bishop to send her records over here so we can assign her
some new home-teachers. We really hope that we can get the ward as involved as
possible with her.
C****** is a really great black guy from America we met
with this week. He was a previous investigator but he went to Hong Kong for a
few months so both Ældste Mogensen and I had never met him before. He teaches martial
arts here and has had a long religious history. He was way fun to talk with and
fairly open to our message. Basically, he's willing to hold any commitment we
give him, but he doesn't believe he'll ever convert. We'll see if we can fix
that.
At the end of our lesson his ex-wife called. She's an
extreme atheist and hated any of the religious people he had brought over in
the past. But she had a lot of extra birthday cake from her birthday that
needed to be eaten, so he asked if he could bring a couple guys over to help
with it. She said OK. He was so nervous the entire ride over that she was going
to freak out when she saw our name tags, but actually, she really liked us! We
had a really good, long conversation with her. Hopefully we were able to help
with her negative feelings she has towards religion.
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| Easter at the Bishop's Home (Unfortunately, neither the Bishop or his wife are actually in the picture) |
We were down in Svendborg to eat a members (Lan Li) house
and she had invited a friend to meet us. Lan Li asked Ældste Mogensen to pray
for the food, but also that her friend would learn of the truth of the Gospel.
They said amen, but then Lan Li turned to Ældste DeMordaunt and had him repeat
the process in prayer. Amen again, and then to another member, Lan Li asked if
he would use his Priesthood to help her friend and asked him to pray for a third
time that her friend would accept the Gospel. Now that's what you call bold!
After some food and discussion, they learned that this
friend has had some encounters with evil spirits. She was Vietnamese and you
hear a lot about these Spirits from these people. While we were in the midst of
a conversation though, she started shaking and crying. She started looking very
scared and the tears just flowed down her cheeks as she begged us to help her.
We were so confused. I had never seen anything like this before. A priesthood
blessing was administered by Ældste Mogensen and Claus, and the evil spirits
haven't been back since. She even came to church the next day. I still really
can't believe that that happened, but I'm glad we could help heal somebody from
these evil spirits.
This is the greatest miracle of this week and maybe my
mission. Let me begin by saying how grateful I am for the Spirit and for members
who are ready and willing to help in this great work of salvation.
It all started with an appointment we were going to have
with T*****. We invited JJ to come with us to meet T*****. On the bus ride over
to our appointment with T***** we got a text from him saying the doctors came
to see him and we'll have to wait an hour. So we turned to JJ, asked if he needed
to go, but he said he could wait.
While waiting he had the idea to visit this Greenlandic
lady named A***** who was a potential investigator. Luckily (or was it really
luck) we had gotten off at the bus stop to discuss our options which was right
next to her apartment. Apparently, Ældste Mogensen and Ældste Merrill contacted
her on a bus a long time ago and had brought JJ to meet her because, well, JJ
is also Greenlandic so that's way cool. Unfortunately, she never let them in.
So we had the idea to have JJ start the conversation by speaking Greenlandic
with her as soon as she opened the door. It worked! We were in.
When we walked into the apartment it just stank with the
stench of alcohol and smoke. We walked into her living room to see 8-10 opened
cans of beer sitting on her table. She expressed how she hated that she drank
so much, but she was so depressed that she's become addicted. She continued to
drink throughout this appointment. We asked her if she was religious, and she
said not really. When your dead, your dead. Her Grandmother was religious
though and taught her some things.
She then told us that she had read a little in the Book
of Mormon that Ældste Mogensen gave her a long time ago, so we got out our
books and thought we would talk a little about it. We started reading the
introduction with her and then we got to the part where it says, "The
crowning event recorded in the Book of Mormon is the personal ministry of the
Lord Jesus Christ among the Nephites soon after His resurrection. It puts forth
the doctrines of the gospel, outlines the plan of salvation, and tells men what
they must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the life to
come." As soon as we finished that line she just burst into tears. We
waited in silence for about a minute as she cried, and then asked her what she
was feeling. She said, "Whenever I read in this Book, I just get the
feeling that somebody somewhere loves me. But I don't know who it is." We
then testified to her that we knew that God loved her and that he was reaching
out to her through us and through this book. We told her that if she wanted to
start a new life, give up drinking, and truly find peace in this life it would
be through Jesus Christ. The Spirit was so strong and she was so touched that
we wanted to help her so much. She said, "I never thought that there were
people in the world like you. I thought they were all selfish and cruel. But
you're not." She agreed to see us again the next day.
We came the next day, again with JJ, and she wasn't home.
We decided to go visit a less active instead but he was too busy to see us. On
our bus ride back we decided to stop by one more time. And guess what? She was
home! We began talking about prayer because she said last time that she would
pray. She was really nervous to pray because she had prayed one time before to receive
help to stop drinking and she was struck blind for a few hours! She said it was
a sign to her that if she continued down this path she would be lost. We then
taught her about the Restoration to show her the contrast between her spiritual
blindness and the light of the Restoration.
When we recited the First Vision, it was silent. We
waited for a couple minutes, and again, asked her how she felt. She said she
needed to believe in God. She agreed to pray, but she didn't understand that we
wanted it to be allowed, so when we all knelt she just started praying to herself
and we prayed that she would get an answer. She started balling again during
her prayer, but when she was finished, she looked up just bright and smiling.
She said it felt really good to pray. We then offered her a blessing to help
her stop drinking. During the blessing, JJ said, "Jeg befaler dig at blive helbredt!" [translation: I
command you to be healed!] It was powerful. Right before we left she went
to drink again from one of her many beer cans, but right as she put it up to
her lips, she set it back down on the table and said, "I can't swallow
this."
We invited her to church, and she said maybe, but she
wouldn't promise anything. I personally believed we wouldn't be seeing her
there. But she came. She actually came to church. She had read the pamphlet
twice that we left her and went through all the questions at the end. She read
that she needed a dress so she went out and bought one. She missed her bus the
Sunday morning so she paid for a taxi to drive her over to church. We had no
idea any of this had happened until after Sacrament Meeting. The best part, she
had only had one drink since that Thursday we gave her the blessing where
before she had been drinking 15-20 a day. Only once. She truly is a miracle.
I feel so privileged to be able to help people like this.
I saw so many miracles, big and small this week, and I know that God is helping
us with his power to bless the lives of others. How blessed our we to be able
to be a tool that God uses to heal the sick and the blind, the afflicted and
the powerless. I am filled with gratitude as I think how lucky I truly am to be
a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
I love you all so much! I hope your upcoming week is just
fantastic!
MKH,
-Ældste Wawro
P.S. - I attached a picture of the room where we had
church in last Sunday in Svendborg. Svendborg holds a sacrament meeting once a
month down there and they needed me to play piano. It's in a nice, little room
we rent out, but the spirit is so strong there when us few people meet.
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