General Conference

What a week! It was just crazy. We were busy, busy, busy. I'm glad the transfer is over and everyone has settled into their new areas.

I saw the Lord's hand in my life again this General Conference. I had the privilege to participate in the translation of General Conference into Greek. I'm very grateful that I got the opportunity again. It was just amazing. The intensity with which I felt the Lord's help was amazing. I recognized that I couldn't do this alone from the beginning and I prayed for the strength do read the talks in Greek at the tempo and rhythm and with the feeling that was necessary to convey the Spirit and the power of what these Apostles and prophets were saying.

This is the first session on Sunday.

I was able to translate President Eyring's talk, Elder Cook's talk, Elder Andersen's talk and I had the privilege to read the translation for Elder Holland's talk and I knew that I needed to work hard to convey that emotion he conveys when he speaks. I also knew what I wouldn't be able to do it on my own. So, I prayed for a miracle. I prayed that I could feel what Elder Holland felt as he spoke and that I could speak as Elder Holland spoke. It turned out to be an amazing experience. As I read I felt like I was giving the talk and that what I was saying where my words i.e. they came from my feelings. It was a little bit like floating. It was quite amazing. I hope that it will be a great experience for those who'll listen to it in Greek.

This is towards the end of the second session on Sunday.

That Sunday I had another experience with the Lord's hand in my life. In the morning I remembered that it was our turn as missionaries to give the Priesthood class in Halandri branch. I had completely forgotten that and because we were in Ilion and Elder Neville was in Akropoli we hadn't planned on going to church in Halandri. We called Pres. Karamboulas and he said we shouldn't worry about it. But as we were sitting in Sacrament meeting in the Athens 1st branch (Greek) I just had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to be in Halandri. At first I wanted to suppress it and make excuses why it wouldn't be practical. However I spoke to Elder Neville and we decided we would go after Sacrament meeting up to Halandri to teach that class.

So, it was and we went and we taught the class somehow (we didn't really have time to prepare). I could tell that they were very grateful that we'd shown up. I'm also very grateful that I went, because the whole time I knew I'd made the right choice. It turned out to be a little difficult to coordinate our meeting with Elder Barber and Demeyere again (who were doing translation too) and I ended up staying for the whole 3 h in the Athens second branch (English). It was pretty nice though. I was able to meet Canada again. He was in church there. We were both really happy to talk again. It worked out and I wasn't worried at all about not having time to practice reading the talks we'd be translating in the evening because I knew that I'd done what Heavenly Father wanted me to do.

Elder Holland's talk.

Questions and Caves

This was my last week with Elder Jensen. We had a lot of fun stuff to do. Also a lot of less fun stuff. We did a lot of preparation for next week. We're getting 6 new missionaries. It'll be pretty fun. Elder Jensen will train a missionary from Latvia and we have no clue if he knows any English xD. I'm getting a new companion! I'm staying as Assistant and I'm getting Elder Neville (France) to join me here. He's from my MTC group too! I'm really excited for that.

We had a lesson with Harry last Wednesday. It was really awesome. I really saw the hand of the Lord in that lesson. We tried to apply what we'd been preaching to all the missionaries in the trainings we've been doing. We prepared with scriptures and also questions that we wanted to do. We took some extra time when we prepared in the morning. We started out and it just flowed. We kept asking Harry questions and he started to answer and teach himself. We wanted him to realize that he needs to commit himself to come to church consistently. So, rather than just telling him that he need to come to church we spoke of obedience and the blessings of being obedient. Then we spoke of reasons why we are disobedient and we came to the conclusion that a great reason for disobedience is fear of man rather than of God. As we discussed this I could see in his eyes and his demeanor that he was realizing that he himself needed to work on his fear of man.

By the end he committed himself to bring his aunt to church and to be there no matter what. It seems that he had trouble convincing himself to come with her. At the end of the lesson I was sure that he 'got it' and he wanted to to what we never had to tell him to do. I'm so grateful for the Spirit teaching as we left time for Him to teach and to testify. The next part of this story is that Harry showed up this last Sunday in church with his aunt in tow. It was just wonderful that they both came and were there!

And today we had a great morning experience. We went up on a mountain behind our house with Harry and President Freestone. We got to the top and could see all around. We saw down over all of Athens (which is huge) and to the sea on the other side and to Marathon (the place the race is named after). It was a great, great view. A little further down on the mountain there is an awesome cave. It is where the ancient Greeks excavated the marble for the parthenon on the acropolis. It is quite huge and has all sorts of small tunnels. Some of those even go all the way down to Athens. It was used in the 16th century or so by a famous Greek robber. He would hide there and go down into Athens through the tunnels. XD We didn't get to go in the tunnels but the cave was epic!

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Oracles and German

This has been a great week. I loved it! We had some great experiences. What just disturbs me is that the time is passing by faster and faster. I can't really keep up with it. Especially here in the office days can zip by like nothing.

We had some lessons with Sean this week. We came to a really interesting point with him. Earlier in our lessens a week ago or so, we asked him what he thought about the BoM. He told us that he knew it was true and good. We were kinda happy to hear that. We asked him how he knew and after his answer we were a little less happy. He said that he had his ways.... He wouldn't tell us at that point what his way was. This week we came to this topic again and he shared that he consulted an oracle (in form of a book). We explained to him that we didn't believe in these kinds of things. He was saddened about that and he said that he didn't really want to stop using this oracle because it helped him. It seems that we've reached an impasse with him. It was a very interesting conversation but a little saddening.

We did a lot of work inside this week. We prepared many things for the training we'll have with the missionaries next week. One thing we had to do was really funny. President Freestone asked us to copy a quote from President Hinckley and to make some nice cards and laminate them to put in the scriptures for the missionaries. Elder Jensen wrote it up on the computer and printed everything out. Then we laminated them together and cut them up and everything. Just as we were finishing up Elder Jensen asked me if I wanted to check the quote for spelling. Well, I did and I found some typos. Great! President Freestone spotted them too later on and we got to re-do everything again. So we'd just wasted two hours laminating and cutting. That was a great moment. xD

We had an exchange on Friday with the Elders in Akropoli. That was tonnes of fun. They are three together so I got two of them for the exchange. We had fun startling people as we walked up to the people to contact them. Three big guys coming up to these small Greek people xD We also had some great lessons in the afternoon. We taught two brothers from Kongo (separately). One lesson was in French and then the other we taught in German. That was really cool. Elder Kopischke speaks German too. This was my first full lesson in German. This man from Kongo lived in Germany for a long time and because of that he speaks almost perfect German. We taught him the message of the Restoration. It was quite good. We gave him a baptismal date in the end. I was really happy about those two brothers. They are both really good.

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Corinth and Number plates

We had a great week. There were some wonderful highlights this week that really touched my heart. We went up to Corinth again, this time with President Freestone, Elder Wilderspin (went home this Monday) and Harry (Greek new member). Wow, that was a great experience! It was actually quite cloudy and rainy that day. However, we didn't let that put a damper on our spirits. I'm very grateful that I was able to go. What warmed my heart was to see Harry so light hearted as he was on that trip. He has a lot of trouble here in Greece. He was divorced just very recently and he gets to see his two children only every 2 weeks. He quit his job because of harassment he suffered there. So, he doesn't have a lot to smile about right now, but that trip to which we invited him really was a treat for him. Or so it seemed. He was joking and laughing and just all-round happy throughout the day. That just made me really happy...

Elder Wilderspin, Me (instigator of this pic xD), Elder Jensen

I'm grateful for the moment when I saw Emmanuel in church this week. We'd had a lesson with Emmanuel, a less-active member the week before last together with President Freestone. He has been a member longer that I have (since 1991) but he somehow just lost the fire of his testimony or something and he decided that he didn't need to come to church any more. With President Freestone's help (he did most of it) we convinced Emmanuel that we needed him in church (which we do) and he agreed to come to church again and give it another try. What a highlight! He stayed true to his word and I know he'll be blessed for it. I hope he continues on this path and that he'll actually re-find that fire for the gospel in his heart. I know it must have been there once and I'm sure it'll come out again if he only does as he's supposed to. The Lord will look out after him.

Me, Harry, Elder Wilderspin, Elder Jensen

Another highlight of my week came this morning. We had the group of missionaries leaving this Monday (5 pers.) in our apartment for the last 3 days. We had to host them for those days. It went alright. We had a fun time with them. Even if they made a mess of our place. And they were very loud. XD So, we dropped them off at the airport this morning and we won't see them for a while at least. Then we went to the police station to pick up our number plates. Finally! We got there, and we'd called them earlier in the week to verify how, when and where to get them, and then they told us that we had to go to another police station across town (the main one) for those plates. But we told them that we'd called and talked to them and they'd told us to come to the place we were right then. They wouldn't have any of it. So we had to drive across town (without GPS because it broke just two days earlier for some reason) and get to the station there. It was the main one, we had to go through a security check and everything before we got in. But finally we obtained those number plates. We are once more FREE to drive around with our car! I've very grateful for that mercy of the Lord.

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Tickets and Illness

Last Monday Elder Jensen and I were in for a treat. We had to help President Freestone with some translation in the morning with the guy that brought the heating oil and afterwards we sorta invited ourselves to his house to watch a Disney movie. We watched Aladdin and we got some sandwiches and stuff from Sister Freestone. It was a very simple and humble pleasure but I enjoyed it nonetheless!

Also, we had another great experience on Wednesday. We were invited by Tasos (member) for dinner with him. The dinner was really nice. We ate at a small restaurant close to his house and we had these delicious snails. They were to die for! After the dinner we made our way back to the car where we were in for a nasty shock. We'd gotten a parking ticket and they (the police) had taken our number plates! This wasn't very nice for us. Obviously we thought we had to leave the car there and take the metro back home. We were worried, of course, about leaving the car in Athens. Especially for such a long period. So, as we were getting on the metro I felt impelled to read the ticket we'd received very carefully again. As I was going through it I came to the second to last point and I realized that it said that we had the permission of with that slip of paper to drive our car back home on a direct route. So turned to Elder Jensen and explained this and we turned back and were able to drive the car home. I'm grateful for this small mercies the Lord shows to us even in our infirmities and when we err.

On Thursday we had an exchange with the missionaries in Agios Dimitrios (south of Athens). We set up a whiteboard on the street  in the morning and we contacted people and used the whiteboard as a means to gain some attention. We spoke with people about family prayer (3 Nephi 18:21). It was heart-warming to hear that a lot of the people we spoke to actually prayed in their families and felt that it helped them and blessed them. One young couple (twenties) was very cute when we asked them if they would like to be together forever they both immediately said yes. xD

On Saturday Elder Jensen and I, as well as Elder Clark (Senior Couple in the office) got sick with the flu. It his us all at the same time, which was rather strange. We were down and out for a day and a half. We laid low all of Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Not very fun. Yesterday we stayed home all day and we had the chance to watch a good movie about President Thomas S. Monson. But luckily it's passed and we all got well quickly. I'm feeling great again and so is Elder Jensen. Elder Clark is feeling a lot better but he still needs some rest.

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