Nothing like a spider the size of your face to welcome you home after a long day of missionary work!
There's lots of things worse than creepy alien spiders though.... Try creepy apartment buildings instead.
When one of our appointments fell through we decided to knock the
doors of a big apartment complex. It was kind of ghetto and we were
warned never to go there at night... but it was only 3 in the afternoon
and we had nothing else planned. So I walked in the building and started
up the stairs. With each step I took I felt like I was walking into a
trap. And I've never felt a prompting so strong. A voice
somewhere inside my heart or my head said "TURN AROUND. GET OUT." and
then there was a literal force pushing me, keeping me from taking
another step. I told my companion that I had this horrible feeling and
she said she felt it too. So we got the heck out of there. We'll never
know what might have happened if we'd continued up those stairs and
knocked on a door or two. And I am SO happy that we'll never find out!
I'm so thankful for the guardian that's the Holy Ghost. So thankful for
the angels watching out for and protecting Sister Peterson and me. and
So thankful for that one angel that came and pushed me back down the
stairs.
I'll tell you a happier story now! Actually a miracle story.
Remember
how I went to the Jehovah's Witness church a couple weeks ago? After the
church service I was talking to a really nice woman from Czech. She was
super excited to meet us, and she asked us for our phone
number. So we went to visit her this week, and she told us how when she
first moved to Denmark 20 years ago two Mormon missionaries knocked on
her door. She couldn't speak Danish yet, so she couldn't understand
them, but they brought her a Book of Mormon in Czech a week later. Not
too long after that the JW missionaries came and she ended up converting
to that faith... and 20 years later Sister Peterson and I met her at
the JW church. After all these years she still has that Book of Mormon!
It was such a miracle that we met her. She's open to learning about our
faith and we are so excited to meet with her.
My mission is such a cultural experience.... So far
we've taught lessons to people who speak Swahili, Italian, Arabic, and
Czech. I even got to speak French with a woman from Morocco this week!
Denmark is seriously a bigger melting pot than the USA. I've also
learned so much about so many different religions. We went to a Danske
Folke Kirke's music night with one of our investigators who is actually a
female priest, and then another day we talked with a Muslim woman who
showed us how she prays to Allah and even gave us a copy of the Qur'an
in exchange for Mormons Bog.
It's really important to be accepting and loving of
everybody, no matter where they come from and no matter what they
believe. Joseph Smith said it best. "Have
the Presbyterians any truth? YES. Have the Baptists, Methodists, etc.,
any truth? YES. We should gather all the good and true principles in the
world and treasure them up... We don’t ask any people to throw away any
good they have; we only ask them to come and get more" (History of the Church, 5:517).
I'm gonna go take a nap now and hopefully there won't be any spiders.
Have a great week!
Har en god uge!
Avoir une bonne semaine!
Mají dobrý týden!
Avere una buona settimana!
لديك أسبوع جيدة
Sister/ Søster/ Sœur/ Sestra/ Sorella/ شقيقة Rogers
