Slottsfjell Tower- one of the oldest buildings in Norway

Same Tower; Same Brother Still Thinkin He's Cool :P

Jeremy and Verdens Ende, or the end of the world

Jeremy and His Companion (?) Verdens Ende, or the end of the world

Verdens Ende, or the end of the world

Verdens Ende, or the end of the world

End of the World and back again.

Oh man, I don't even remember what happened last week. This week was way more interesting anyways haha.

I did get a new companion. His name is Elder Stratford, he's a pretty cool kid. He's from Logan, Utah and we're getting along just splendidly. <-----word? I'm not sure.

We started off this week by going to Verdens Ende, which translates to The End of the World. It's basically a collection of cliffs right on the southern tip of Norway, and you can look out onto the Atlantic ocean. It was way cool and I got some good pictures, hopefully I can get those sent home soon.

Then we had a zone conference with a bunch of missionaries in Oslo. That was pretty cool, I got to see Elder Davis again and he sounds like he's having a ton of fun there in Oslo now.

This week was the annual Slottsfjellet Festival here in Tønsberg. People from all around Norway came for the festival, which meant there was a ton and a half people out on the streets all week. We found SO many people to teach it's crazy. I'm excited for this week, we're gonna be way busy.

We found one guy who's about our age. He was actually one of the main musicians in the festival this week. But Elder Davis and I had talked to him a few weeks ago and I gave him a card with mormon.org on it and told him to check out the website. He actually did, and said he was interested to learn more. Elder Stratford is a music guru and I'm pretty into music as well, so we're gonna meet with this guy later tonight and have a little jam session in the church. We'll teach a lesson of course too :)

That's just one of the many people we've found that we can talk to this week. Pretty much anything that could have gone right this week has gone right, so it's been pretty exciting.

By the way, we did get an email from church headquarters that says we need to be more careful about the information we share about the people we are teaching in our letters home, especially for missionaries like myself who have it posted online. So I won't be using real names of people on the blog anymore, but I can still share stories and things from the people here.

With that said, there is a man we have been teaching for a couple of months now who I have mentioned on the blog before. Despite that, we're gonna call him Timothy. Haha, this fake name thing could be quite fun.

Anyways, Timothy has come to church a few times now, and I think he's really enjoyed it. We certainly enjoy teaching him, our biggest problem is getting out of the house after a lesson just cause he's so darned fun to talk to. But he's a way nice guy, and he's really come a long way.

I managed to slice my finger this week. A friend of mine here apparently talked to my sister about it on Facebook (can't believe she's talking to my family!). In any case, reports of my "crying" over a little "paper cut" are grossly exaggerated on both counts. Slightly more then a paper cut, slightly less crying. haha. Basically, I was carrying a metal sink in someone's yard (haven't a clue why there was a sink in a yard, but that's not really the issue here) when we dropped it and it sliced my finger. Didn't feel too awesome. Certainly brought some excitement for a few minutes, but luckily Elder Stratford was there to assure me I'd have to lose something like 4 quarts of blood before I passed out. Thanks bud. He also offered to superglue the cut shut for me. I passed on that delightful opportunity.

That's pretty much been my week. We're extremely happy with all the people we found, and I'm exhausted. We had to work hard, but it definitely paid off. We've got some exciting times ahead.

Thanks for the drawings from the CTR 6? class in the Gainesville Ward! There must have been some sort of discussion involving platypuses (platypi?) in their class that day. In any case, I got plenty of wonderful, friendly looking platypuses to cheer me up. I really hope they were supposed to be platypuses. Could have been backwards beavers though.

Have a good week everyone!
Elder Sessions

Jeremy and Elder Davis with Marie at her baptism

Bonfire on the longest day of the year

Elder Davis, Elder Tedrow, and Jeremy with Loa at her baptism

Elder Davis and Sessions

Elder Sessions, Davis, Somone, and Crandall

Elder Davis and Jeremy (taken by a member)

How they dry their clothes

The fjords at sunset

Jeremy and Elder Davis at the Bonfire with the typical thumbs up picture :P

Some Pictures of Jeremy and his fellow Norway missionaries while he was at the MTC

Home Sweet Tønsberg

It's official. I'm staying in Tønsberg another 9 weeks!

My trainer is moving to Oslo to be a zone leader! So that'll be cool to have him come back on splits and things like that. My new companion has been in an area called Hamar for the past transfer. He'll get here on Wednesday. His name is Elder Stratford.

We had a baptism in Tønsberg on Saturday! Loa got baptized as planned =) It was really cool. Her sister (the baptized one) got up and bore her testimony in church yesterday as well, and basically told their mother that she needs to be baptized too. Haha it was way funny, but I think Rosa took it seriously....which is good.

There was an older Norwegian couple in church yesterday. A member had invited them, and they came for the first time. They loved it! They said it felt like they were "coming home." They had been to a lot of different menigheter (congregations, basically churches) and they said as soon as they walked in, they knew this was the right one. They asked to be baptized, and the missionaries haven't even met with them yet! So that was cool, hopefully we'll meet with them soon and begin teaching them.

We went bowling last week on our P-Day. Anyone who has seen me bowl before, knows I am HORRIBLE! It was no different with Norwegian bowling balls. I don't remember exactly what my score was, but I'm pretty sure I didn't break 100.

One of my teachers in the MTC once told us about a tough time he had on his mission in Norway. He and his companion were so bummed out, they ate a giant box of Snickers in depression, haha. The first part of this week, I thought about that story, and really wished I had some Snickers.We could not find ANYONE to teach!   We spent almost all day on the streets contacting people, and no one was interested. It was bad. I was really bummed. I went the healthy route and ate a bunch of apples instead.

But Elder Davis and I kept working. There wasn't much else to do, honestly =p. But we did, and we ended up having a great weekend. We had the baptism of course, and then the Norwegian couple asked for baptism  on their first time in church. We still have Patrick who we have been teaching, and we hope we can set a baptismal date with him tonight. So things are looking up, when just a few days ago, I thought we'd never teach again.

The missionary work is really going awesome in Norway. In May, we had only 6 baptisms in all of Norway (including Marie!). But that was way bad. June 5th we had a mission wide fast for the missionary work, and the church members participated. Over the next five weeks, we've had 28 baptisms! We had a record month for the mission in June. It was amazing how much it changed. And the best part is, there's many more people in Norway who still have baptismal dates for July. So things look like they might continue going great. I really hope so.

By the way, Happy 4th of July to everyone!

Have a good week!

Elder Sessions

The Unfortunate Automobile Backing Incident

This transfer has been 9 weeks of firsts for Elder Davis and I. It was my first area. Elder Davis' first time training. First time being a senior companion for him actually. We got our first parking ticket in Norway. And the other night, we also had our first, what I like to call, "unfortunate backing incident."
 
Nothing major. It was kinda boring actually. Elder Davis was backing up, and I was behind the car directing him. Problem was, I wasn't paying too much attention, and neither was he. We were in a hurry. But we bumped into a car behind us. Little paint transfer, that's all.
 
But, we find the owner of the car and let him know. He's about 20. He is also in the middle of a party with his friends, so he's in a more....dizzy state then usual. Still seems pretty functional though. However, he was convinced that the repair would cost 10,000 kroner, which is about 1500 dollars. It was kind of a ridiculous claim. I could have taken a wet rag to it right then and there and fixed it in about 20 minutes. But, we kept our mouth shut. It took a while to exchange the information....he couldn't remember what his address was. We got it sorted, but unfortunately, it pretty much killed the rest of our night.
 
So that was kind of a fun thing haha. We also have a baptism this next Saturday with a girl named Loa. Her sister was baptized about 3 months ago, and she told us last month that she wanted to be baptized too. But then she left for Iceland for a month. So we've been teaching her over skype haha. She gets back today, so we have a week to give her a refresher course before her baptism.
 
It's also the last week of this transfer period. Which means come next Wednesday I could be moving! Or I could be staying in Tønsberg another 9 weeks. We don't really know. But either way, it will most likely be my last week with Elder Davis. But it's totally possible that we both could stay in Tønsberg. It's all up in the air at this point. We'll find out on Sunday for sure, so my next blog will have that info.
 
I've gotten a few questions about whether or not you can send me pictures. As Norwegians say, "Vær så god!" Basically means, go ahead! I love the pictures, keeps me connected in a way :)
 
Also, shout out to the Activity Day girls in the Gainsville Virginia ward. The package was great, and the stuff will be well-used. Another shout out to Corey and Selena who are gettin married this week!? Send pictures! haha.
 
Thanks to everyone for the emails and support. It really does help us out here.
 
Love,
Elder Sessions
 

Careful what you wish for

I'm short on time once again this week. So this'll be a quick one.
 
We finally got our copies of the conference edition of the Ensign this week. One of the talks I remember hearing was by Dallin H. Oaks about our desires. I remember thinking it was a really good talk, and so I went back and read it this morning. It was a really good talk.
 
I had actually been thinking about how our desires affect what we do. That was the subject of one of our lessons for one of our investigator families. There's a scripture in Alma chapter 29 that talks about how God grants unto men according to their desires, "whether they be for good or whether they be for evil." I think it's interesting how much of an emphasis is placed on our desires.
 
If you think about it, it makes sense though. Everything we do is based off of one or more desires. When we are hungry, we eat. When we are tired, we sleep. Desires are the most basic motivation of every action we take in our lives. So our salvation must definitely be based off of our desires right?
 
How do we make sure our desires qualify us for salvation? First, we need to know what kinds of desires we should have. What is a "good desire"? Luckily, Heavenly Father has given us the scriptures and prophets to tell us.
 
I think the basic purpose of this life is to change our desires from bad to good. King Benjamin from the Book of Mormon tells us that "the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been since the fall of Adam." We have to "put off the natural man" and desire to be better. Desire to do the things which bring us closer to Christ. We know what those things are through the gospel of Jesus Christ. By developing faith, truly repenting, being baptized and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost we can obtain our salvation. But we won't do those things unless we really desire it.
 
The most important thing is to make certain that our good desires are always stronger then our bad ones. A desire to sleep can be overcome by a desire to finish a project late into the night. In the same way can a desire to partake in things which cannot help us in an eternal sense, be overcome by a desire to have good works. We build our desire to have good works by learning more of what it means to have good works. The more we learn about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the more we will desire the blessing of that in our life. There's no if, ands, or buts about that.
 
Ultimately, everything comes down to desire. Do I desire to work as hard as I can, every day I have here to bring as many people to Christ's church as I can? That's my desire, but maybe I can develop it a little stronger....to overcome a desire to sleep too much =)
 
Have a good week everyone!
 
Elder Sessions