"How did this haaaapppeeeen??"

Hey Everyone!
 
First I want to talk about the title of the blog this week. There is a story behind it haha. Sister Fredrickson, who is one of the sisters in my district also going to Norway, was telling us a story during a break between classes last week. She has some very interesting mannerisms and at one point during the story she expressed her feelings by yelling at the top of her lungs, "How did this haaaaappeeeeeennn??", obviously with the emphasis on the word "happen." It was hilarious, just thought I'd share haha. The Danish missionaries next door get a kick out of hearing the various outbursts that come from our room each day.
 
So, as far as the Norwegian goes, it's pretty awesome. It's amazing that I can already speak more and better Norwegian after three weeks then I can Spanish after two years of high school classes. Our teachers have said that when we get to Norway, people will be amazed to find out that we will have only been speaking the language for two months at that point. Military linguist specialists have sat in on missionary language classes to try and figure out how we learn so quickly. They honestly can't understand it. Our teachers are BYU students who don't even have degrees yet. There's nothing special about the method they use to teach us. It's the gift of tounges. There's no way I could learn Norwegian this fast on my own. We are already having full conversations and teaching parts of the lessons in Norwegian.
 
When we came into the MTC three weeks ago, there was a district of English speaking missionaries that came in with us at the same time, in our zone. English speaking missionaries are only here for three weeks so they have already left for the mission field. It's insane how quickly time has gone by. I joked to Elder Bekker, my companion, that we only have two more sets of English missionaries to go through before we head out. So I guess we are counting our time left in Utah by how many English missionaries come through here. 1/3 of the way there!
 
Last week, we had Elder Maynes from the Quorum of the Seventy come to speak to us. He talked about the importance of having the guidance of the Holy Ghost when we are teaching. It isn't the words that we say to the investigators, but the Spirit that they feel as we speak that matters. The Spirit will always testify of the truthfulness of things. Our purpose as missionaries is to "invite others to come unto Christ by helping them recieve the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ..." Ultimately, we are not the ones who help the people make the changes in their lives. They have to make that decision for themselves, and it's through the feelings and the promptings from the Spirit that they decide to make those changes. That's the beauty of free agency.
 
I hope everything is going great for everyone at home. I've got less then six weeks left here in Utah, then it's off to Norway. I play a lot of four square during our assigned gym time, which is great. Brings back some awesome elementary school memories. By the end of my 8 1/2 weeks here, I'll be a beast at it haha. It's a lot of fun.
 
Just a quick shout out to whoever in my family has some information about our ancestors from Norway. I'd like to learn a little bit about our Norwegian origins and whether or not we still have some distant cousins there. It'd be really cool to have the opportunity to find them while I'm in Norway.
 
Just a clue, if you're reading this then that means I gave you my blog address before I left and I want to hear from you, so feel free to write me at the Utah address on my blog! We have an entire day once a week dedicated to things like writing letters, so I promise you'll get at least some sort of a reply. :)

Til next week!!