Kjære familie og venner

Elder Knudson is flying in for our zone conference tomorrow and he'll be staying overnight in our apartment. I'm sure we'll share a couple of giggles over the fact that our letters are being exchanged among families. He's a cool guy, I'm glad I've been able to serve around him.

It's a sad fact that as soon as you start getting your surroundings on your mission and everything starts clicking, people begin to point out the fact that you don't have a whole lot of time left. Fortunately, the faster the time passes, the faster the works seems to go. Probably because for the first time on your mission, you actually know what you are doing haha.

Well this week, we got another baptismal date! Lars, the man who came to church with Fernanda (my brazilian fireball of a convert), agreed to be baptized on June 30th. He's a way open dude and really seems to be seeking for some closure after his father died a few years ago. As we talked about the Plan of Salvation with him, one of the questions he asked was "So, say there was someone who believed in Christ but they were never baptized with the correct authority in this life. What would happen with them?" A Heavenly Father who was fair obviously would not hold that against that person. That's the purpose of the spirit world talked about in 1 Peter 3:18-20 and 4:6. As a revelation received by Joseph Smith: "All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God; Also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom;For I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts. And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven." (D&C 137) How fair is it for a man born in the middle of the ocean who never heard the name of Christ, to be damned to hell without the chance to even make a fair decision for himself? None of us can judge another person's situation in this life as a "fair chance." None of us know what circumstances or environments have affected another person's beliefs and values. What a joy it is to know that, ultimately, our Heavenly Father will judge us according to the desires of our hearts and the person that we are, rather than where we grew up and the religion we held ourselves to in this life. "But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God" (Romans 14:10-12) At the end, after everyone has received a knowledge of the things of God, everyone will confess before God that, "Hey man, you were right the whole time!" At that point, we are judged "according to the desire of [our] hearts." According to the person we are, and who we have become. What we have done with the chances that the Lord has given us. And those "chances" will be different for all of us, because we are all different people. No one is going to be ignorantly saved, exalted or damned. Lars' father can still choose to accept the Gospel of Christ and be baptized just as any other person who has ever lived, or ever will live on this earth. (1 Cor. 15:29)

Lars liked that answer.

Yongqing seems to be doing pretty well. He's pretty well integrated into the branch now, considering there's a language barrier for him. You just can't help but like the guy though, Norwegian social barriers or not. I'm pretty excited for his wife to move here. I hope I'm still around to meet her.

There's a member here who went to school at BYU-Idaho at the same time as me. She is dating one of the Norwegian members here. Kinda random. But it's even stranger because she actually knows my cousin, Brennan. I saw a picture of her before she came here and she looked really familiar for some reason. It wasn't until we got to talking that we made the connection. She hung out with the same group of people that Brennan did, and since Brennan lived upstairs from me in the same building, it's pretty likely I saw them in the lobby of the dorm complex at some point. She said something about him getting called to Italy on his mission? Lucky duck. It's still 45 degrees here haha.

Well, we've got some prep work we've gotta do for our zone conference tomorrow. Stay safe this summer ;)

Love,
Elder Sessions