Monday, September 28, 2015

LisburnWhiteboard Blitz 9/26/15 with: (left to right)
Elders Stanley, Plewe, Blosil, Thayne, Mickelsen & Parkinson 

Hello All!!!! This week has been quite the roller coaster! And it all started right after I logged off from my email last week. Monday was crazy! We had P-Day, obviously, and it was great to relax a little bit. We then went and taught a family in our ward whose daughter is less active and interested in coming back to Church.  Oddly enough, it i my MTC teacher's family.  They are a great family and she has been progressing well with the lessons and with coming back to church.  We taught the Plan of Salvation, and she loved it.  It is so good to see the light come to people when they learn about the restored truth! So, Monday was great!

Tuesday was pretty as well.  We had a lot of our lessons fall through and none of our try by's really gave us a good answer, but hey, we kept pressing forward.  We also had a fantastic District Meeting that morning in which Elder Lorimer taught on the special language of prayer and how English has distorted some things in the Bible.  For instance, when Jesus calms the waves, He say, "Peace, be still," in the English version of the Bible.  But in the German version, (Elder Lorimer went to Germany on his first mission), there is no comma.  This intrigued him and he decided to do some studying on it and found that the original tense of that verse is called the Vocative tense and is used when saying a command.  So rather asking the waves to be calm, Jesus commanded the waves.  There was no other option.  It was a really good lesson and you might have had to have been there to really get the power of it, but it was awesome!

We also taught more members the Family Mission Plan and it is getting some terrific reception.  The members want to help but they didn't really know how.  Now, we have given them ways to help and they are getting excited.  It was really quite fantastic!

Wednesday was also mostly good.  We had a lesson that morning with a new investigator.  She wasn't too involved in the lesson but she said that it didn't mean she didn't have questions.  But also that day, I had to take a test on the missionary website that gauges how stressed we were feeling after half of our training and I tested in the red, which is pretty bad.  I didn't even notice, but I had developed habits I didn't even realize such as pacing, eating more, not exercising that great and always feeling tired, sick or depressed.  So that was a slap in the face to realize that those things were happening to me and that I needed to make some changes.  So - I have been working on bringing my stress level down and making sure that I always keep in mind my emotions and my feelings and to always keep them in control.

We had a few lessons that night with members and one was Sister Kirkpatrick who took us to a chippy, which is a fish and chips joint, and bought us a good meal.  It was so good but so much food! I felt really sick after!  We then headed to a lesson with a less active woman who is mentally and clinically insane.  She has schizophrenia and it totally off her rocker.  That is where you saw the picture of us wearing the headsets.  She had us wear those because she thought they were awesome and we needed to try them on.  It was a very odd visit BECAUSE SHE IS THE MOST CRAZY PERSON I HAVE EVER MET. NOT LIKE SARCASTICALLY CRAZY BUT LEGITIMATELY INSANE! So that was my first experience with someone like that.  But it was all good.  After that, we traveled to Moira to visit a member and to present the Family Mission Plan and it was great.

Thursday was 50/50.  For half of the day, I was completely ready to give up and for the other half I was more excited than ever to do the work.  That morning, we had weekly planning and that went well.  We then tried to do role plays of street contacting and the words would not come out of my mouth!  My frustration and depression and stress all culminated in one brutal gut punch, and I wept.  I lost it.  I needed something like 20 minutes to recover from it.  Elder Blosil suggested that I call the Mission President and I did.  I called and left a message explaining what I needed help with and that was that.

We then decided to plan an exchange in Portadown so I could have a scenery change and destress a little bit. We planned to have Elder Plewe and I got to Portadown to tract and GQ and then Elder Blosil and Elder Thayne would come up to Lisburn to plan an activity we were planning to do on Saturday.  Me and Elder Plewe had a blast!!  We knocked doors for a solid 4 hours and Elder Plewe is the funniest person to chap with.  One time, a man opens the door and without saying anything else, Elder Plewe just says, "We are messengers from God." Well, the door was shut in our faces and that was that but it was pretty awesome!  At another door, a kid answers IN JUST HIS UNDERWEAR and Elder Plewe is like, "Oh, looks like we caught you at a bad time." It was so funny! But hey, it was all in good fun.  Elder Plewe is really cool.  The things that makes it funny is that he has this really deep, slow speech that makes it sound like he is always unimpressed.  It's hilarious and awesome!

Friday I spent the morning in Portadown and had some really good fun.  Every Friday morning, the Portadown Elders mow a members lawn and then the member feeds them.  His name is Brother Donnelly and his meals are legendary.  This time he cooked salmon, chips, carrots, beans and corn - coupled with Pineapple Maine, which is a drink, and then 3 round of dessert.  It was awesome.  I was able to grit and bare the salmon, and the rest was delicious.  You get special recognition among missionaries if your companionship finished the entire Brother Donnelly meal, and we did it! It was mostly Elder Plewe, buy hey, I helped out a bit as well.  It was quite the experience.  Friday afternoon, I returned to Lisburn and we GQ'ed until the ward activity she had that night which was based off of Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old?  And it was really fun!  All my useless childish knowledge was finally useful!  It was great fun and I got to know the members of our ward even better.

Saturday was the culmination of the week.  We had the Lisburn Blitz!  It was really great! We brought all the missionaries down to Lisburn from our district so we had a total of 6.  We set up a whiteboard in the city center and we just asked people what made them happy and we got some good responses.  We also had some good gospel conversations with people.  I really love whiteboarding! It's great!!

We also got what our trainers called, "Kebabtized" on Saturday night.  It is where you order a king kebab with donner meat (lamb) and you eat the entire thing.  I have to admit, I wish I would've gotten a picture of it.  IT WAS BIGGER THAN MY HEAD! And I couldn't finish it.  But hey, I tried my best. So now I have had my first kebab and we also received the GIFT OF THE HOLY COKE which is where you drink a coke with your kebab.  It was a really awesome day and I'm so glad I was able to be here for it.

A picture of the KEBAB!! I got this from another Elder

Sunday started off good but then declined by the evening.  We went to church as usual and then we went over to a members home for dinner. It was really good and we were able to share the Family Mission Plan with them and to get them fired up.  Hopefully our ward is getting fired up about missionary work, as well.  After that, we went chapping and were able to set up a few return appointments for next week so the work is progressing! That is already on top of the 8 return appointments we got from whiteboarding the previous day.  And once we returned to our apartment that night, we waited for moves call.  And it came.  We were hoping it would be from our Zone Leaders to tell up we were staying, but it wasn't.  It was from the AP's and Elder Blosil is getting transferred to Edinburgh.  I will have a new trainer on Wednesday and his name is Elder Allred.  Hopefully he is a good guy.  I didn't really want Elder Blosil to leave since he is a good trainer, but I guess it is the will of the Lord, not mine.  I will be remaining here in Lisburn and I will have to lead out the area this transfer while my new companion gets familiar with things.

Cool Mural in Lisburn

Well, that's it for the week! It has been an absolute roller coaster! But things are looking up and I am excited for what the future holds.

-Elder Mickelsen

"Awesome Headsets"