Svið and the Spirit
This week was pretty cool! Also, thank you to everyone who responds to my emails! Your messages always make me smile! I love you guys!
Weekly Report -
Tuesday: We served at the local Goodwill! It's always fun. It's also crazy to see just how many clothes people donate. It seems like sometimes people donate more clothes than I own haha. Later that day we went to one of our friend Jóhanna's house to do some yard work. She bought us pizza and it was really fun to talk with her!
Wednesday: We got to play Soccer again! Some new people came to play haha. Once they learned that we were Americans, they may have roasted us a little bit about Americans not being good at football. We had an odd number of players, 7. So they counted us as each half a person, making the game 3 on 3. As we continued to play, Elder Whittle worked hard to show that the soccer stereotypes about Americans were not true. I on the other hand, though trying my best, did a very effective job at showing everyone why the stereotype exists in the first place.
Thursday: We lead the Book of Mormon study again! Our friend, Jónína, came! She met one of the members and they're getting along very well! Jónína's one of the sweetest ladies! I don't remember what I've said about her, but in one of our lessons, she gave us cake and salmon to take home and cook. Just before we left, she self proclaimed that she was our grandma now. She's super kind!
Friday: Jóhanna invited us over for dinner again! There's been a deal at domino's all week (Mega Vika) The pizza was only 1700ish thousand kronur instead of 3000-4000ish which is out of our weekly budget unfortunately for me, but fortunate for my pants.
Saturday: We got to deep clean the church a little better! We moved all of the chairs out of the chapel and mopped, and several other things. In the evening, one of the member couples invited us over for svið, which is a sheep's head. It wasn't too bad. I ate most of it, including an eye and a tongue and some cheek and a little bit of the top of the brain stem. geez louise. There's a sheep nostril in my stomach that's weird to think about. It wasn't too bad. It just tasted like some basic meat. The eye was slimy, but the worst part was the inside of the bottom lip. It was not fun. You know how a cat's tongue has a bunch of spikey taste buds on it? That's basically what it was. It felt so weird in my mouth 😬😬.
Sunday: Overnight, a winter storm blew in. It's cold now. I've got to go shopping soon and buy a big jacket haha. It was a fast and testimony meeting! I got to bear my testimony. Remember Jónína? She came to church! She sat by the same member that came to Book of Mormon study! In relief society, they were sitting together and chatting a little and laughing together in the corner of the class when there was a lul in the lesson! It made the branch president and us missionaries super happy to see! Jónína's amazing.
Later this week we will go to Reykjavík for a zone conference! President Mattsson's coming! I'm super excited to see him again! He's always on 'fire'!
Something that's been on my mind a lot this week, has been the story of the mote and the beam. It talks about 2 people, one who has something small (a mote) in his eye, and the other having a large thing (a beam) in his eye. I'll call them Person M and Person B. In the first scenario, person B sees the mote in person M's eye and tries to pick it out. In doing so, he likely doesn't do a good job. If I had a beam in my eye, I doubt I'd be able to pick something small out of someone else's eye which is extremely delicate. In the second scenario, person B sees the mote, but he also sees his own beam. Rather than immediately digging at Person M, he first turns to himself, and works on taking his own beam out, so that he can see clearly to help Person M. It's the same story with us, but not just a mote and beam. Mistakes, habits, experiences, trials, jokes, pranks, memes, music, games, sports, friends, family, friends who aren't really friends, a lot of things try to cloud or obstruct our vision. Though these things aren't inherently bad, they can get our aim just off the mark. One degree maybe. One of the things that Elder Whittle told me in our companionship study, was that when things don't go right, people naturally look out, to try to see the mote in person m's eye, rather than seeing the beam in your own eye. It's been an amazing perspective changer. It reminds me of the Airplane safety videos/demonstrations that tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first, before you help your kids or the people around you. You can't help someone else very well if you are going crazy from oxygen deprivation. But if you put yours on first, you'll maintain the coordination and mental sharpness given by having a stable oxygen supply, in which you'd be able to put the masks on your neighbors more effectively. In the scriptures Jesus said to the apostle Peter, that if he (peter) loved the lord, then he should feed his sheep. Feeding his sheep means helping, supporting, loving , serving. It means putting the oxygen mask on your neighbor's faith, or helping them get the mote out of their eye. To do those things to the best of your abilities, would it not be better to be breathing steadily, seeing clearly, and working intentionally? I'm not entirely sure how to put my feelings into words with the correct implied emotions haha. I think what I'm trying to get at is that if we want to genuinely love and serve others, we need to work on improving ourselves too, with humility and pureness of heart. That's one thing I hope to work on and improve.
I've been listening to a lot of talks by Elder Uchtdorf this week as well, he's really amazing! His talk 'On Being Genuine' is really amazing, you should give it a listen.
Öldungur Rasmussen
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