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