It's been forever since I've been able to do a blog post! Over a week actually. Mainly that's cause I finally made the move to Norway and my P-days changed to Monday. So keep an eye out on Mondays from now on.
Ok so it's been pretty busy this week, and I've lost track of the days without time to write down what I've done each day. Plus I'm short on time so it won't be as organized this week.
But first of all, my flights to Norway. That was kinda the biggest thing haha. We found out the Friday after my last blog post that the rest of my district would not be coming to Norway the next Monday. I was the only one to receive my visa...which is weird cause my application had been turned in for only 8 weeks. Everyone else's had been there for about 4 months. So I'm not too sure how that happened actually. So unfortunately, I would be traveling alone ha. Elder Bekker was not happy about staying in the MTC for another week or however long it took to get his visa. But he's over it by now I'm sure....(last I heard, they were still in the MTC and will probably get to Norway this week)
So early Monday morning, the other three missionaries took me to the travel office to see me off. 36 (or so) hours later, I was in Oslo, Norway. It was a little iffy for a bit if I was going to get there on time - my first flight to Dallas was delayed, and then I missed my flight to England. Luckily, there was another flight into Heathrow about two hours later so I was still able to make my connection flight from London to Oslo, literally by the skin of my teeth. I got to the gate right as they were going to close the doors.
So finally, around 5pm local time on Tuesday, I made it to Norway. I met President Johanssen. He's shorter then I expected, and I'm not just saying that haha. He's way awesome though, and hilarious. We went to the mission office in Oslo for an orientation and then to the mission HOME about 30 minutes away for a dinner and sleep. The dinner was delicious. Norwegian seafood is literally the best in the world hands down. We are certainly well fed here haha.
About 6 o'clock the next morning (so we're on Wednesday now I think?), I was picked up by a group of missionaries to go back into Oslo and meet my first companion. His name's Elder Davis and he's from Las Vegas. We live in a semi-small town called Tønsberg which is about 2 hours southwest of Oslo. The area we are responsible for is pretty big. I'm not sure how big in terms of miles and stuff but we have a car so that's a clue that it's one of the bigger areas in Norway.
After we arrived in Tønsberg, we dropped off my stuff at our apartment....thing. Haha and then we were off contacting in the city. We talked to a ton of people about the Book of Mormon. My Norwegian was terrible and I was pretty sure they taught me the wrong language in the MTC. I didn't have a clue what anyone was saying lol. But I said my part, and Elder Davis pretty much responded to anything they said. I've started to understand a lot more now, I think my ears are "adjusting." We did meet one person on the street there named Joy. She didn't have a whole lot of time and she didn't speak Norwegian, but she gave us her address and asked us to come by later on talk to her more about the Book of Mormon. More on her later.
Later that night I had my first real teach as a missionary. Luckily it was in English haha. It was with a family who have been meeting with the missionaries here for about 3 months now. One of the daughters is baptized, and we're still teaching the mom and two of the other sisters. They're really fun and they even let us use their computers last night to skype our families for Mother's Day. We're still holding out hope that the rest of the family will make the decision to be baptized soon. They know the church is true, they just don't feel they are quite ready yet. Luckily, we're pretty patient :)
Elder Davis has been in Tønsberg for three months already, so luckily he knows all of the people we're teaching right now. We've got one lady named Marie who has a baptismal date set for May 21. We also have a couple guys named Robin and Daniel who they met last week, before I got here. We taught Robin the other night and he's really cool. He has really been searching for the truth for a long time. There are three churches in his little village, called Andebu (which means "duck town" haha) and he's been to all three. He said there is one priest for all three of the churches and each time he teaches in a different church, he teaches different doctrine. Robin said that didn't make any sense and he also said he didn't know how so many religions have come out of ONE book, the Bible. Shouldn't there be ONE truth, like it says in Ephesians 4:5? We told him that was the purpose of the Book of Mormon. It clarifies a lot of what is in the Bible and makes it so that you can't twist one verse fifty different ways. It's like having two witnesses in court. It's much harder for lawyers to twist the testimony of two people rather then one. Robin has definitely been prepared by the Lord to hear the truth, so we're excited for that.
We also met with Joy yesterday. We gave her a Book of Mormon and invited her to read and pray to ask God if it was true. The Spirit was way strong there, and she said that she would. We set up another appointment with her for this Saturday, so that will be fun.
There's a couple of other people we've also met. We met a young guy named Joaquim who was really interested. And tons of other people too. Tønsberg has been a dead area for a very long time, so it's really exciting for us. We hope that we can set up the foundation to really help the church grow in this area.
So there's a ton of stuff going on right now haha. There's so much more I could talk about but I really don't have time. I'll just say that the more I learn about the Book of Mormon and how it really applies to everyone in the world, the more it's confirmed to me that it's true and very important. It's awesome to know that the stuff they teach us in the MTC actually works with real people. I guess that's because it's true :)
One quick note. I've got my Norwegian address here if you want to send me mail (yes please :p).
Elder J David Sessions
Slagsveien 38
3117 Tønsberg
Norway
And Sami will update the Norwegian address on the side of the blog too. This is the only address I can get mail from so I don't need the MTC one or the mission office one there anymore.
Well, that's all for this week! I hope everyone's still doing well. Can't wait to hear from you all.
Love,
Elder Sessions
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