Hey all. Not sure how much time I'm gonna have considering that I need to work on college applications today... How crazy is that? Also how lame? I have to turn my real world brain on, that thing has gotta be pretty rusty by now. When I was going over the essay prompts I kept speculating over how I could tie it in to prayer or the Book of Mormon or something and I had to keep telling myself that it was an essay and not a lesson. :(
Anywho, it's been an interesting first week down here in Sønderborg. The work here is all but non-existent at the moment. Aside from a few recent converts and less actives there isn't much going. That means a lot of knock knock knocking :) I've also had my most avid and furious rejections here in the first week. More specifically on Thursday. The second door we knocked on was a lady who had experienced Amnesia and couldn't remember anything earlier than 6 months ago. We told her we wished her luck and would just go further... which we did. About a half hour later some guy came out on the street and called out to me. He was a little over six feet and well built with tattoos all over. He asked me if I had anything to write with, and I said yes. At this point we'd walked over to each other and he was write next to me. He raised his voice to a yell and screamed at me to look at the number 17 over his house. Then he proceeded to demand that I write down never to come back to that house and let a stream of unrepeatable cuss words and profanities spill out. He moved closer to try and intimidate me because I guess the look on my face just wasn't giving him the satisfaction that he wanted. More than being scared I was just sad... I tried to ask him if he'd had a bad experience but he wouldn't even let me get through a sentence and told us to get out of his neighborhood. I told him thanks for his time, he kept swearing. I told him God loves him, that didn't make him happy =) Well I had no intention of listening to this bag of hot air so when my companion made as if to head toward the car I told him just to follow me and I walked up to the next door. The man screamed from across the road that I was to leave the area or he'd have the police on me. I told him thanks, but that he could stop talking now because what we were doing was completely legal. At this point I think he was just caught off guard that I wasn't listening to him and he left. We didn't get anyone to listen to us, but I was happy I hadn't backed down to him. Literally ten minutes later the same thing happened but with a different guy. Someone on one of the wheelchair cruiser things they have for old people here in Denmark came flying down the street and called out to us. I sighed and turned around. It was a different guy of about the same build and age (35ish) and he proceeded to scream and cuss me out worse than the first one. He pointed to my book of Mormon and started yelling for me to write down never to come back to number five. I sat there and just kind of stared at him a little put out by the amount of negativity we were encountering. At this point I can just tell when it's more a lack of understanding and intelligence raging at me instead of anger that is deserved. It didn't scare me, but it still just kind of sucked my energy out. Well he wasn't happy that I wasn't writing anything down and so he kept swearing... I told him we had never come to his house before and that we were NOT Jehovah Witnesses (they are way common here and have very.... aggressive missionary tactics that people hate.) he said it didn't matter and went off more and more. Eventually he just gave up. As he was driving away I just couldn't resist throwing out one more ''God still loves you!'' to him... he yelled that he didn't ****** love me and my companion. All in all a good day!
Just as long as we have someone to point us the right way maybe we can avoid these things in the future...
Don't think that statue is the right one though. Someone put a cigarette in his hand.
Other than that though it's interesting down here in the South part of the mission. The members of the branch are awesome. Also we got to take a trip down to the border to check on some less actives. If we would have walked down the path this sign is for we would have ended up in Germany a few hundred meters later. No worries we didn't leave the mission :)
Basically the message I want to explain with these experiences is a little hard to explain simply and quickly, which means that I don't think I've learned it well enough yet. But like we all know, there is opposition in all things, and sometimes I just feel like we accept when people act in opposition to us because we're used to it. Often though I think we fail to realize that we need to act to counter that. We can't just bend our heads down and get kicked in the face. Faith is demonstrated when we have an assurance that our actions will be in accordance with Gods will and therefore Gods will can happen. If we don't act, we never have that verified and then our faith doesn't grow. Your testimony will grow more by using andsaying it than it will by just praying for it and doing nothing. Just as there is always something working against the good there is also always something working against the evil in the world. Opposition in ALL things. That opposition is us, and so we need to act just as boldly as the people working against us are.
We've had a bit of success while I've been here as well. No need to think it's all bad. Our potential pool for people to teach has according to Elder Willardson increased dramatically more this last week than it has during the rest of the time he's been here in the area. I mean if you know enough doors eventually you find some nice people. One lady said (and this seriously made my whole day) that she used to consider herself as a Christian but realized that it wasn't something she could just say but that she had to actually do stuff!!! Ding ding ding we have a winner! Becoming a Christian is now her project and I explained the Bible to her briefly and the Book of Mormon and she said we can come back soon to help her more. I wish more people were like her!
Well I guess I wrote a lot... I need to get going on my essay now. But have a good week everyone! Remember to do something so that you learn from yourself. Sometimes we are our own best teacher.
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