May started off with a bang...

These past 14 days have been kind of crazy not gonna lie. 2 wednesdays ago I was on splits with Elder Richards, and I accidently hit him with a car. It was kind of miraculous the way that everything worked out. We called an ambulance and it turned out that the hospital was right across a field by the parking lot. He was never in critical condition, but his quad got a partial tear. No bones or anything else broke though. The doctor said that he basically just had to walk it off and in 3ish weeks it would be better. Guys, elder Richards is a beast. He was lying on the street shaking from shock, and he looked at me and told me to forgive myself and that he forgave me. It's a very christlike thing that he did.

It would just so happen that zone conference was 3 days later. So I got an interview with president Mattsson, and President was also a beast. He told me similar things. That it was mistake and that I need to forgive myself.

I was pretty shaken up the days following, but I got a priesthood blessing from Elder Whittle, and it had some pretty amazing effects. I've been to almost completely put it into the past thus far (while of course learning from the situation).

On that saturday we had Zone conference with President Boom of the europe North area for the church. While sister Boom shared a training, there was a video that she shared. It was used for a different purpose than for when it was produced (for driving safety), so when it got to the end with the driving info, she was like 'ok you don't need to pay attention to this part' and then President Boom chimes in and says 'unless your backing' and looked at me. His tone was playful and we all started laughing and I was a little in shock still tbh. It was overall a really good experience though.

This past monday we went to the westman islands. It was really cool. I saw puffins, I'll share pictures. someone was talking about the population, and how it's about 4000, which was crazy because my high school was about 4000 people. I've shared photos on google and will probably share more soon.

quote from another email I wrote because I'm too lazy to rewrite things:

"In terms of cool experiences, I'd like to talk about the butterfly effect. We have a friend who's on baptismal date, but has been flaking out largely. They don't answer messages, and when we've been to her house to try to visit she's not home. This past Wednesday we deep cleaned the church, and the branch president ordered pizza. So we were taking the boxes out to the dumpster, and elder Pollock drove away without me, but as I was walking after him, our friend rode by on a bike! We called out and she stopped so we could chat for a little. It was kind of epic because if Elder Pollock hadn't drove off without me, we wouldn't have been able to connect with her.

Another one is Thelma Karen. She's a returning member. For years she would never respond to the missionaries, and never do anything in coming back to the Church. But several months I ago I had started talking with her on Facebook. I didn't know she was a member until the zone leader saw and told me. A little while after that I got transfered to Selfoss. Since then we've been able to meet up and she's coming to church consistently again! She recently set the goal to attend the temple this September! It's been awesome to see her testimony begin to take root again!"

I'm not sure how to make the font not small anymore. It snowed again last night... really awesome. It's also come to the point where it's light outside when we go to bed and when we wake up so it won't be dark until september or October or something.

I've begun reading through preach my gospel from cover to cover in icelandic. Reading in icelandic helps me tremendously. I've read my scriptures and stuff in Icelandic as well for several months. It's really cool to be able to speak it too. Speaking of languages, I ended up translating from spanish to english during testimony meeting 2 sundays ago.

This past week I've been thinking a lot of the extent of our agency. Specifically in regards to life after death, judgment, and so on. One thing that's been particularly prevelent in my thoughts is the sheer power of our agency. When we stand before God to be judged, we'll receive the judgment that we want based off the laws and consequences (good or bad) that we know. The scripture that men are free to chose eternal life or to chose captivity and death is so true. I firmly believe that when we stand before God, He'll be asking what we want to do, where we want to go, and He'll have the entire situation laid before our eyes, but in order to go to those places we need to be willing to abide by the rules of those places. A lot of todays culture I feel pushes to the side of things where agency and consequences shouldn't be connected. A lot of things and 'struggles' that people face are often part of them trying to avoid the consequences of their actions, but that's not where joy, peace, or growth come from. In the judgment, I also firmly believe that most, if not all people will have already chosen where they want to go and what consequences they want to receive. As I write this it just sounds like the coloqueal version of some scriptures in the Book of Mormon, so I guess i'm not saying anything new, but it's still really interesting.

Anyways, chose liberty and eternal life over captivity and death! Love,

Öldungur Rasmussen