5 Minutes Late!‏

Dear Family, Pictures: Obviously I was forgeting to pull out my camera and it was hard to stop and get a good picture, so these will have to be good enough to see the Family Fun Zone in action with missionaries trying to get people to come and enjoy some good company and food. We get a few regulars that make a pit stop on their way to the OU game. I'm a slacker and just cook hotdogs and wait for people to come to the grill so I can talk to them, but my companion, Elder Madsen is doing great! Him and another new missionary join up and walk all over talking to people and they got to teach a lesson during all the activity and passed out two copies of the Book of Mormon. Elder Lewis and I did happen to have some good contacts and committed a few college students to come to church at the institute the following day. Hopefully they followed through.Last week we taught a great lesson to a woman from West Africa and she, during the lesson, asked what she would need to do to join the church. That was a surprise and I found myself struggling to answer such a simple question, but it finally came out. She then went on to explain her previous experiences with missionaries and finding copies of the Book of Mormon and conversations with others who had typical anti opinions about the church...she corrected them. We have a lot of good going on.So, to the highlight and subject of my e-mail. President Eyring made a special visit to his daughter's baby blessing in the Noble ward. I missed my chance to meet him. We, the Norman 4th ward, meet at the same building as Noble and we have church right after them and our morning meetings start just after their sacrament meeting. Our ward mission leader picked us up as usual, around 10am to go to our corrilation meeting at the church. As we pulled up to church and walked to the door, something had caught our ward mission leader's attention. When he caught up to us he said, "that looked like President Eyring in that SUV!" Elder Madsen and I were thinking ya, sure. Well, to our suprise we walk in to the building to hear everyone chattering about the visit President Eyring made to their ward...ough! Just five minutes earlier and I would have been able to meet President Eyring. I happened to learn from it though. It wouldn't make much sense to you, but it was an experience God gave me to teach me something. Its been really interesting on my mission to see how often God is teaching us if we are open to it. Overall it has to do with the feeling of knowing I could have experienced better, but didn't quite make it. Kind of like at some point in time we will all have an understanding of what it would be like to "dwell with God" and how disappointing will it be if we have to settle for less and depart from something so wonderful. There was a lot of connection and learning that came to me beyond that. Much like the experience Elder Scott related in General Conference about personal revelation and prayer; "is there more that I should know."Things sound good at home. Hope all continues well and I love you all!-Elder Osness