Grace and Charity

Rakas ystäviä,

The week was much less exciting than last. We did A LOT of contacting because work with our investigators has been pretty slow. They haven't been able to meet, or in the case of the Iranian man, he was out of town and had forgotten his phone. 

We've been starting to do some work in areas that haven't really been touched lately. One thing we've been doing is going through old teaching records to find people and making a list of those we want to try and get in contact with again. Earlier this week we contacted one guy that has met with over 20 sets of missionaries in the last 30 years! We met with him on Saturday and he showed us a photo album full of pictures of missionaries he has met with! He really likes the missionaries and seems to believe a lot of what he has been taught, but for some reason has been unwilling to act on it. We'll see what we can do with him. Maybe it's his time!

On the downside, we recently put J the college guy back into the Lord's hands for a while. We had been teaching the same thing over and over because he just wasn't getting it and wasn't receiving answers. We had covered pretty much everything with him, and for his sake, we needed to let him go until he is able to notice answers or recognize the Spirit that is missing when he isn't meeting with us. So for now we are giving him a break that is much needed on either end.

We have also been going to basketball night a little recently. Many wards here have sports nights where anyone is invited, and it's a great place for people to bring friends, and for missionaries to bring investigators and potentials so they can be in the church building in a casual setting. We've attended twice this month, and despite my lack of interest towards sports, I have actually enjoyed myself and discovered that I am not too bad. Surprise!

Yesterday was a fun day. There was a woman that Sisar Ross knows who is spending some time at the spa in Ruissalo, an island just off the harbor here, and she invited us to come out and see her. So yesterday morning, we bused out to Ruissalo Spa to spend some time with this member, and she bought us lunch too, which was SO good. And, we got to do a member role play with her as well, so it was fun and productive.

Noting Better to Do in Finland than Relax at a Spa - Yeah, Right!

Then, in the evening after church, the bishop's family had us over for dinner and to start the member role plays with them. They are such a great family! Susana, the recent convert

who has come with us frequently on lessons, is an awesome missionary (she actually just got back from spending a week as a mini missionary with the sisters in Vaasa), and so is the piispa. It is going to be so great to have the whole family starting to do their own personal missionary work!

We also went to Tampere on Wednesday for Zone Meeting. In the meeting, we watched the short movie wbout Zion's Camp (You can watch it here: https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2010-07-090-zions-camp?lang=eng ) and compared it to missionary work. The Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders talked a lot about Preach My Gospel and how we con more fully use it to become more effective missionaries. There are a few assessments in the manual that we can take to evaluate our progress is various areas of our work and our personal growth in the gospel and as representatives of Jesus Christ. One assessment is focused around Christ-like attributes, and how we can become more like the Savior. The leaders challenged us to do one of these assessments every week and choose something from the assessments that we would like to work on. I decided that I needed to work on diligence and having charity. 

I've already been studying charity, which by definition is the pure love of Christ, and how I can have it more strongly especially in relation to those I meet on the street. As part of this, and as recommended by President Watson as something we all should do, I've been trying to pray for charity every time I say a prayer. I hadn't really seen too much of a difference until just the other day when we encountered a very interesting situation.

We were walking down the street, and walked past an older woman hobbling slowly along on a set of awful Finnish crutches. We just said hello as we passed, but she asked "Oletteko Jehovan Todistajia?" (Translated: "Are you Jehovah's Witnesses?") No, we told her we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, and suddenly she got very passionate. At this point in time, Sisar Ross was in the middle of making a phone call, so she was out of the picture for a moment. The woman asked me what our beliefs are about how we are saved, so I explained that, well, everything is through Jesus Christ and if we do everything we can to become like him and follow him . . .

"No," she said, "that's wrong! It is only though armo!" Grace! Mercy!

"Well, yes," I said, "of course we believe that, but we also need to do our part, and . . ."

"No! You Mormons," she said, "think that everything is your doing! You try to earn your way to heaven and you all say 'Look at me God, I am better than everyone else because I DID all these things!'"

She the proceeded to ask how well I know the Bible and I said that I read it of course, but then she told me that I needed to read it again because CLEARLY I don't understand that we are only saved by grace, because it says so. Poor Sisar Ross was completely oblivious to all that had just happened because she was on the phone, but when she joined the conversation, the lady basically repeated everything she had just said, then proceeded to lecture us for a good 15 minutes about how we Mormons believe THIS and THIS and that's wrong because all you need is grace!

And, no matter how many times we insisted that, yes, we do believe that the Lord's mercy is in fact the center feature of everything we do, she only heard what she wanted to hear. I could tell that Sisar Ross was getting pretty frustrated, but she was handling herself very calmly. But what surprised me most was that, while situations like this would usually get me very frustrated and potentially angry (I don't particularly care for other people telling me what I believe), I found myself praying for the woman! Praying that the Lord would soften her heart and help her to feel His love and get SOMETHING from this whole conversation. That was so amazing to me! Because usually, in the past I would be praying for patience for myself and for help to be able to explain without getting upset, but instead my prayer was focused on this woman, and not myself.

And, I think that's the essence of charity - being concerned for others when you could be worrying about your own uncomfortable situation. Because that is the center of Christ's Atonement. He willingly allowed himself to enter into the worst suffering and discomfort imaginable just so He could focus on us and our needs, because He loves us more than his own life. We are more important to Him, and when we follow that example and make others more important than our own discomfort, we allow the love of Christ to permeate everything we do. I still have such a far way to go to become more charitable, but this was a testimony to me that through prayer and study, we can develop these Christ-like attributes and become more like our Savior. 

I hope you all have a fantastic week and find something charitable to do this week for someone else.

Stay shiny!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant

FESTINORD!!

Rakas ystäviä!

Man this last week was SO surreal! It seemed we were in Naantali for like half the week helping with Festinord. We had the Sister Training Leaders camping at our apartment Monday and Tuesday night because they were helping as well, and then we were on splits with them.

On Tuesday, we were up early and got out to Naantali by 7am. We helped with some setting up, and then directed people to their rooms as they arrived. There was a bit of a panic because the lady who was supposed to provide musical numbers (with whom I was originally doing a duet) suddenly cancelled due to illness and asked me to figure it out. Everything worked out fine, but it was stressful.

Ready to Assist with the Great Naantali Race

The rest of the time, we helped with "The Great Naantali Race" where we were posted at stations and the groups had to come around and do activities such as figuring out if various quotes were from General Conference talks or Disney movies. It was a lot of fun, and I got very sunburned, despite being in the shade (I know, I'm pathetic). We did get some proselyting time in the evening. Sisar Jones and I were together to go contacting for an hour, and it was way fun.

Wednesday we were basically on kitchen duty all day, washing dishes and cleaning up. Then we got to go on splits with some of the young adults that were there. Sisar Ross and I each had a young woman, and were assigned a car to take them out to a couple lessons. Let it be known that I had not driven in over 7 months, let alone in a foreign country, and we only got lost twice. Thank heavens for GPS!

Thursday Sisar Ross and I performed a musical number in the morning devotional, but got to go home after that. We did our studies (during which there was a MASSIVE thunder storm) and Weekly Planning. Then, we had our first interviews with President Watson! He and his wife are SO NICE.

A Duet With Sisar Ross

Friday was the longest day of my life. We were at Festinord a little after 8am, where we participated in a choir for the morning devotional, then got put on dish duty again. We sang again in the afternoon conference meeting, then got assigned to help make flower arrangements for the center pieces for the fancy dinner that was happening. We got pulled into the rush of setting up the tables in the gym, and making sure there was enough silverware and the like. There was so much disorganization that the dinner started about 45 minutes late, and then we helped in the food service line.  This was also very stressful because, again, of little organization and lack of communication, and the poor kids got out of the dinner and on their way to the big dance about an hour late. But, I think all and all they enjoyed themselves. After dinner we were on table cleanup and breakdown duty, and we didn't get back to our apartment until after 10pm (with permission form the higher-ups).

Look, I'm a "Budding" Floral Arranger!

Sisar Ross Making Flowers (and Faces)

And just think that everything we did was super surface-level. Now I know what all goes into these kinds of events, and I will be SO APPRECIATIVE of the people helping if I ever go to one. 

And still after all that, we even had a great teaching week. I attribute this entirely to the Lord, because we were so drained from Festinord. But with the help of a lot of prayers and the blessings that come from doing so much service, the Lord helped us to keep the work going despite being gone so much. I truly believe we can't do anything without the Lord's help. Good thing he wants to help us :)

You guys are all rock stars. I hoe you have wonderful weeks and enjoy the Lord's love and your air conditioners.

Stay shiny!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant

Miraculous Coincidences

Rakas ystäviä,

I hope no one had a heart attack (Mom) because I'm writing so much later in the day than usual. We got all our missionary work done this morning since that's when things got scheduled, and then we wanted to hit up the stores before most of them closed at 6pm, and now here we are. And the Sister Training Leaders are coming in from Tampere tonight to do splits tomorrow, which will be way fun because this week is Festinord! I'm so excited that we get to help out so much, because we basically are going to Festinord for FREE. When does that ever happen? Next week you will hear all about it :)

The coolest thing that happened is that we had our first lesson on Tuesday with an Iranian man we met last week. But first a little important back story: A few months ago, Sisar Howell and I met an Iranian woman on the street who stopped us and asked if we had the rest of the Book of Mormon in Persian. Turns out she'd been taught quite a bit a few years back, had read all the Book of Mormon excerpts available in Persian, and had loved it. But when she had resisted setting a baptismal date (she was from Iran after all, and things are a lot different for people in that part of the world) the missionaries had let her go for a while and she had never been picked back up. So we started meeting with her until we were unable to get in contact with her for various reasons. 

Now fast forward to last Sunday evening, when Sisar Ross and I are stopped by and the Iranian man started telling us he's pretty sure he's seen us before and was asking for all the Persian materials we have available. This guy is probably the most agreeable person I've ever met, and we set up a return appointment right away. Well we met with him on Tuesday, gave him the Book of Mormon excerpts in Persian, taught a sweet lesson where he basically kept asking us to talk more about the Book and telling us he wants to know everything we can tell him, and then his friend shows up whom he'd invited and she was way interested too! We got a return appointment with both of them for Friday (where they subsequently agreed to come to church on Sunday and BOTH SHOWED UP, courtesy of the bishop who gave them a ride). And on top of all this, it turns out that this man in the (ex?)HUSBAND of the Iranian woman we met a few months ago. Talk about miracles! OR really, talk about the fact that these people are super ready for the gospel. The only potential speed block in the situation is that the man only speaks English and Persian (fine) and the friend only speaks Finnish and Persian (also fine) but they seem to not understand that we really need to meet with them separately and so both lessons we have had with them have been the two of them together with the lady not really understanding when we speak English and the man not understanding at all when we speak Finnish. So one of us has been teaching the man and the other of us has been teaching the woman, but we are going to have to split them up eventually. But other than that, they are basically the nicest most accepting people I have ever met, and I'm (cautiously) excited to see where this goes!

That is the biggest thing that happened this week. I honestly don't remember too much else. I forgot my planner in the apartment so I can't go back over the week to see what happened, which is honestly probably a good thing because I always take too long typing this email. 

I hope you all have a really fabulous week! Remember the Lord loves you and that anything is possible through the power of the Atonement!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant