His First Great Commandment

This week has been spiritually amazing and uplifting! And I’d like to clear up last week, I got many emails with words of encouragement-  I appreciate them so so much, but I also want to make sure that everyone knows that it was hard, but it was absolutely fantastic. I don’t think I articulated well enough the amazing spirit that is felt here. It is so powerful. The home sickness was a little tough, but overall, I know I’m here for the right reasons, the work is great, and I’m having the time of my life. My emails are to show both the good and the bad I feel, because missionary work is never easy, but it is always possible. There are times that it has been hard - but the MANY times it has been good, it hasn’t just been good - it has been amazing. So I’m here to tell the truth of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, of my mission, but always remember that the Lord’s work has always had opposition. 
As early church members trekked across the USA to land where they could become free from persecution, or even earlier as Jesus Christ and his disciples were killed because of their beliefs. Now hopefully I won’t have those experiences haha, but I do know of the reality of Satan trying to push us down, make us feel as though we can’t do something. That is why he is called the “accuser” as one of his many names. He accuses us of things we’ve repented in the past about, of things that we feel incapable of or inadequate of. But that is why the Lord is called the “Advocate”, because he is advocating to Heavenly Father the suffering we go through in this fallen world. He understands everything that we’ve gone through, that we are going through, that we will go through. Never feel as though you are alone, because the Lord will always - and I truly mean always - understand what you are going through. He advocates not only to Heavenly Father, but to yourself, that through him, through faith in him, all can be done. He tells you you can do this, where Satan makes you doubt yourself.
Getting off my soapbox now, (I will definitely be back on it later), but let’s go through the week! So let’s start with the fourth of July! I’ll send some photos, but it was amazing. We got to enjoy the fireworks and stay up til 10:50!!!!!! (you don’t know how crazy that is lol) and then I woke up in the morning feeling dead, but it was totally worth it because we saw some amazing fireworks over the BYU campus. 
Friday was a hilarious day… There’s this elevator we have in T2 (where our classrooms are, it’s an old building) and it has this super sketchy elevator that we all call the trampoline, you just move in the elevator (like take a step) and the elevator shakes. So of course, us being the extremely intelligent, mature, thoughtful Elders, we decided it’d be fun to bend our knees and make it shake a little. Well, we really got it going, it was great. It felt like the Tower of Terror a little bit as it drops and lifts quickly in small intervals. The lights even started flickering… honestly it was super cinematic. But then one of the Elders got pretty courageous and maybe bent their knees a little too much (or jumped, we will never know), so of course the elevator gets stuck between two floors, and instantly the room temperature increases, so we call the elevator service, they tell us that someone is on their way. We continue to wait… and wait…. And wait…. And finally, after what feels like an eternity (20 minutes) of excruciating heat, the worker comes, asks us “Hey elders, I’m here, were you jumping” and one of the Elders, says “YeS yES tHEy wErE juMpInG” soooo that was funny, luckily we didn’t get rebuked though. But one of the elders did because now the elevator is closed, and one of the ones that was jumping broke his ankle… (no, not on the elevator, though that would be more ironic), so now he has to walk up 5 flights of stairs everyday to get to class.
So Saturday was a little rough, it was kind of the same old schedule, everyone was starting to feel tired in our district, we weren’t really progressing as a district and I felt like some jokes that people were making were pretty intense, and took away the Spirit, and overall just kind of a negative feeling from everyone in the group. However, prayer works! I swear by it, it is one of the most powerful things you can do, in times of need, in times of thanks, in times of good, in times of bad. The strongest part of this day was the fact when we taught this lesson to Klaus - Klaus is our teacher who is a “fake investigator” and though fake, he is amazing at acting and not breaking character. So we get through this lesson, I’m not completely sure of everything that he is saying in Danish, but we get him to pray at the end. Something about having an investigator pray for the first time with you is so powerful. Even if the experience was a role play, it brought the Spirit so strongly. It excites me for the time that I can help an investigator to pray and to communicate with the Lord, I’ll be doing this, teaching someone to pray, in Denmark. I will get to hear their first prayer, feel the spirit and the faith that they have, and I can not wait.
Now this negative feeling continues, and spoiler alert, but it didn’t stop until yesterday (as in Wednesday). And this negative feeling was really brought on by one of the members of our branch presidency, he was in our room on Sunday, “kind of” guiding us on our ponder exercise. The pondering was about Joseph Smith and what he was thinking (it was a picture of him leaning on a fence). Now, I don’t know why or how he came to think that the things that he was saying were true, or why he would tell a room full of set apart missionaries false doctrine, but it happened. He talked about the restoration of the Gospel through Joseph Smith, and he told us that the one thing that Joseph Smith really wanted, other than knowing which church was true, was the ability to be forgiven. And yes, the Lord did tell him that his sins were forgiven, however the teacher said that it was a reactivation of the atonement. That the atonement was lost in the apostasy, but through Joseph Smith it was brought back. I want to assure you that the atonement is infinite and all powerful and could only be done through our Savior, Jesus Christ. That through our Savior, Jesus Christ, was the ultimate sacrifice, and that no person, even as great as Joseph Smith, save it be Jesus Christ could reactivate it. Now this instantly, after being taught to us that Joseph Smith restored the atonement, brought a negative spirit to the rest of our day, and we struggled to feel it after his message. He also told us that our testimonies (which weren’t completely our testimonies, they were just what we learned from the mission conference), but he told us that they were cliche, that they were the things we have learned our whole lives and that we didn’t apply it. This gave us this nasty dark feeling, a terrible feeling. However, all is well, we brought it to our AMAZING branch president who I love so much, he told us that our testimonies are really strong and powerful and that the Atonement was not reactivated by Joseph Smith.
Monday was a pretty average day, I saw Elder Long and Elder Bergeson! It was really good to see them and to talk to them about their first experiences at the MTC. It felt great to have a piece of Boise here on campus to talk with. And it is insane, because I worked with Elder Long in the temple and was in choir with Elder Bergeson… and now they are companions! They seem like a really awesome companionship, and I’m excited to see the work that they do. I also saw another fellow temple worked, Elder Jensen (older Elder), and he’s headed to Australia. So monday was all about connecting with Boise, and it felt great… but not gonna lie that whole experience from the other day was dampening the mood a lot.
Come Tuesday, my companion said something that was pretty rude to me, it made the whole day really rough. However, I didn’t think it was going to happen, but after our devotional (and I was praying that we would somehow fix it), he apologized for it. The devotional was extremely powerful, yet felt lovingly rebuking. The devotional was about love, specifically loving the Lord. He talked about how if we love the Lord, then everything else falls into place. It is the first and greatest commandment, so it makes sense that we would love our neighbor, and follow the rest of the commandments if we love the Lord with all our heart. Obedience, sacrifice, repentance, humility, etc… all fall into place when we love the Lord with all our hearts. He told us that we need to learn his language, which basically means don’t deny promptings, listen for them and go and do them as soon as you receive them. I’ve felt multiple times impressions to say something to my companion and I ignored them (this was before this day) and I know that if I said them, he probably would have thought twice about saying what he did. Second, we were told to play his music, which I think was both literally his music, but also doing his work, and listening to the language and doing as it says. You can only love a composer by playing their music, you can only love the Lord by doing his work. You can study all you want about their music, their works, but you can never learn to truly love it without doing it. Third was take his name upon ourselves, which we do every week with the Sacrament. We need to remember him always, and as missionaries we are literally wearing his name upon ourselves, so we must act, do, speak, listen, preach as the Lord would have us do. However, this put both me and my companion in a very humble state, which we then, with our entire room (4 people) had a heart to heart, about everything, the things that were hard in the MTC, the things that we all want to do better, and we grew a lot. It was powerful, the love we had for each other, and the knowledge again that we would literally do anything for each other because we are family.
Now, I wish to say that with that powerful experience, that the Spirit was fully back, and it was for a good while, but one of the Elders was super struggling, he felt inadequate, and started remembering old sins. I started feeling this dark feeling in my chest, a really evil spirit was weird. I can’t explain this well enough in text, because you had to experience it firsthand to really understand, but I guess how I can explain it is think of that feeling before you go on a roller coaster, right when you’re looking over the really tall downhill part, and then you feel that drop in your stomach, that was the feeling, except it didn’t go away. It felt like were just going to drop. So, I felt prompted to take the Elder that was struggling outside. We went outside and instantly the Spirit was back and we felt at peace… but it was class time so we had to go back up. We talked about how he was feeling and the problems he was having, and when we got back to our classroom, that nasty, terrible feeling was back. I felt like I had to get out of the room as soon as possible, so we got out, went to the lobby, and started playing some good music. I felt prompted to pray with him, and the Spirit was definitely there. But it felt as though there was a battle in my chest, a battle for good and evil. The Spirit was winning, but I felt so conflicted and the other Elder felt the same way ---- and when I tell everyone this, this was a legitimate experience, something felt very very wrong ---- so we get out of that building because class finishes, and we head to S1 where we felt the Spirit much stronger, something was really weird with that other building. We get in one of the chapels, and I feel another prompting that we should give him the prompting to give him a blessing of comfort. He asked me to give it, most of our district stood in, and it was the most, the strongest, spiritual experience I have EVER had. I gave the blessing, through the priesthood, and the power of the priesthood is real. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but all I knew was that the Lord had overwhelming love, understood his struggle, and was so proud of the choices that he made. I have never felt love that powerful, that consuming as I have when giving that blessing. The Spirit returned tenfold, the Elder gave me a really big hug, and told me that it helped a ton and after that he returned to his happy, loving self. I felt like I could run a marathon after that. I felt exhausted too, like I did just run a marathon, it was the most amazing feeling I have ever felt. I can’t imagine how Joseph Smith felt after seeing the Lord, I felt as though I was going to pass out and it reminded me of Joseph’s story about passing out on the fence after his powerful experience.
This is real stuff. I can’t testify enough about how real this experience was. If you are ever struggling to feel the Spirit, find a worthy Melchezidek priesthood holder, and as for a blessing of comfort. This just reminds me how important it is to be worthy always, because you never know when the Lord needs you to perform a blessing. If I did not work things out with my companion, I probably would not have been in tune enough with the Spirit. I’m so glad that we did, and that I was able to have such a powerful experience. The Spirit, the Lord, our Heavenly Father, it is all so real, and the Spirit here in the MTC is powerful beyond belief. When it is gone, you feel it because it is a constant here, when it is there (and so often it is) the promptings can change and help people.
I’m doing really fantastic, especially this week. There were tough parts, but it is all so amazing. And everything is for my and my district’s experience. We had to fall down in order to be built up more powerful, we had to practice faith in order to more strongly believe and to more strongly feel the Lord’s restoring power. This is the true and living Gospel. The Church brings so much joy and guidance, and serving the Lord for two years is the best choice I have ever made. 
I have a talk that really hit me this week, I’d ask you to listen or read it, because it is just so powerful and relates a lot to what I learned this week. It is “The First Great Commandment” by Elder Holland. It is beyond powerful. 
I love you all so much and I’m praying that you will have an amazing week. The Lord loves all of you, I love all of you, and I can’t wait to hear from all of you.

Jeg elsker jer, 

Ældste Salisbury