10 December 2012

Kjære familie og venner

Winter has set in. We've gotten over a foot of snow this past week. And it's been way cold, about -17 celsius. So that's been fun. It's supposed to keep snowing this week, and it isn't even technically winter yet! Looks like my last winter in Norway is gonna be a good one.

I've got some pictures to send home this time. The first  one is a picture of the "super-district" in Oslo a couple of days before I left. The rest are from today. Early this morning, getting ready to go out....the view of Kristiansand from the top of the mountain-hill we climbed....and the view from the bottom on the ways up.

I'm trying to think of anything else interesting that happened this week. Dunno, the only investigator we meet consistently with right now is Nancy. And actually, I've only met with her once. She is a 22 year old Norwegian girl who met the missionaries a little over a month ago. She's cool, and I'm hoping we can set a baptismal date with her soon. We've just got to meet with her more consistently, but she's got a crazy work schedule, so we'll see. Adam we haven't met with yet again, but I'm gonna send him an email right after this and see if we can visit him soon. We've got an investigator named Dag who we'll meet with on Wednesday who has some potential so that's exciting as well. We've got the perfect member lined up for him, so hopefully it will go well. It'll be our second meeting with him.

Tonight, the ward is showing the First Presidency Christmas Message. The Arendal Elders are driving here to Kristiansand for that and then they are staying the night at our house and we are getting up tomorrow to drive 3 hours to Stavanger for a training meeting. Then we'll have a pretty normal week after that. We're starting to get our Christmas dinner appointments set up, so that's exciting, and our Christmas Mission Conference is gonna last for 3 days, from the 26th to the 28th. Best time of year ;)

God Jul alle sammen!

Eldste Sessions

3 December 2012

Kjære familie og venner

Well congrats first to Alexa and her dude for having a baby. We almost have the same birthday now, which woulda been cool but hey, she's gotta come when she's ready to come I guess. I'm sure it was a relief for Alexa at the very least haha. And ya'll can tell her I said that =P

I got an email back from Adam this week. He's doing well and he wants us to come back "sometime in December." So hopefully we'll be able to get back there sometime in the week or so before Christmas. He's kinda busy with family stuff right now, but it was really encouraging that he at least replied to our email. 

We had a bunch of other investigators kind of coming out of the woodworks this week. No one really making a TON of progress just yet...by that I mean, no one has come to church yet. I don't consider someone a serious investigator until they come to church =P But, we really have a lot of potential and some follow up appointments that I'm pretty excited about this week. So, tune in next time =)

We're starting to see the effects of the new missionary age here in our mission. My whole mission, we've had between eight and ten sister missionaries here. Right now we have eight, I think. When Elder Bekker and I go home in March, we'll be replaced by fourteen missionaries. So that's a gain of twelve, right there. Of those fourteen missionaries, six are sisters! In may, there are, so far, five missionaries who have gotten their calls. Four of them are sisters. So that's ten sister missionaries coming, and none of the ones who are here will be going home again until July. President Teixiera, our Area President, told us that by the end of next year, we'll have 120 missionaries in Norway, up from 56 right now. Kinda sad I'm gonna miss it =)

Christmas is a fantastic time in Norway. We've gotten a ton of snow this weekend. The decorations and tree are up in the city. I freakin love Christmas in Norway. Especially as a missionary haha. So we're looking forward to that, or at least, I am.

Merry Christmas season everyone!

Elder Sessions

26 November 2012

Kjære familie og venner

Transfer weeks are always really long. Especially when you move. I think it's cause suddenly you realize you are in a different city, in a different part of the country, around different people, and a different dialect...It seems as though your previous area was an eternity away, when really you were there only 4 days ago. It feels like literally forever since I wrote my last emails in Oslo.

Kristiansand. I'm really diggin this city. It's waaay smaller than Oslo in every way, which is a little weird for me. So that is taking some getting used to, but I think the changes are good, overall haha. Preparation day has been a lot quieter as well, without 8 missionaries running around here. There's a ton of WW2 history in this area though. Today, we visited the only surviving Gestapo headquarters in Norway. That was kind of interesting. The building, which is right down the street from our Young Adult center in the city, was the torture chamber and prison for Norwegian resistance members who were arrested by the Nazis. Norwegians are very proud of the role they played in WW2, for good reason. The German army completely demolished the country when they first invaded, with the Government only escaping by a matter of hours to London. From that point in 1940 until the end of the war, the Norwegians ran the best organized resistance efforts in their own country, without any real assistance from other Allied forces. They were a little preoccupied elsewhere, obviously =) There's a ton of other bunkers and old things around this area which I'm pretty stoked to check out.

As for investigators here, there are a ton of names of people that I haven't been able to meet yet. So not sure how positive I'm willing to say those people are. All of our appointments with our "progressing investigators" have fallen through, so I'm a little bummed about that. Apparently they were progressing a lot more before I got to the city haha. Hopefully we can get some appointments with them this week though and figure out where we want to go with them. A couple sound like they might be ready for baptism in the next little while, but that'll be hard if we can't meet with them.

One guy we met on my first night here out in the city was pretty cool. His name is Adam, he's from Bosnia. We talked to him on the street and then he invited us over to his place a couple of night later. He's got a muslim background, even though he's pretty much Norwegian...he's spent most of his life here. The appointment went really well. We talked a lot about prophets with him and he seemed intrigued by the concept of a modern day prophet...provided he really is a prophet of course haha. So he was pretty willing to start reading in the Book of Mormon and praying about it. He invited us to come back some time and he mentioned that his wife might be interested in sitting in next time as well. So we're excited for that, although he'll be busy with exams the next couple of weeks, so we'll just be keeping contact with him over email.

After all this....I'm turning 21 tomorrow. Honestly haven't thought about it that much, haha. I definitely don't feel that old though. The only thing it really means for me right now I guess, is that I officially don't have a military ID card anymore. 1st time since I was 10. So that's a little sad haha. Other than that, I don't really feel like there's gonna be that much of a difference for me. Tomorrow will be a day just like any other =P

Have a good week everyone!
Elder Sessions

19 November 2012

Kjære familie og venner

Found out yesterday morning that I'll be moving to Kristiansand on Wednesday. My new companion's name is Elder Donahue. He's 26 years old. I've met him once before and he seems to be a pretty cool dude, so I'm excited for that. I'll be a district leader again, but there only going to be one other area in the district. So there will be 4 missionaries total, instead of 18 total haha. So a little bit of a difference. It'll be nice to get out of the big cities though. I've heard lots of really good things about Kristiansand. It's way down south, so that'll be a good place to go for the winter. There is a ward of about 75-80 members there. And the dialect sounds fantastic. All in all, it'll be a pretty good place to finish out a mission. I've got 3 months or so left, so it's not very likely that I'll move again. 

We met with S.K. Kim again last week. He's Catholic and he was pretty stoked about the fact that we have Apostles who live today. There's a little bit of a language barrier so it took him a couple of minutes to realize we were talking about living people, not just the ones in the New Testament. He was pretty excited about that haha. So he said he was going to go home and tell his wife about it, who has already started to read the Book of Mormon. Elder Lillywhite is also leaving Oslo, so I'm hoping that we can meet with them one more time before Wednesday. He's an executive for Samsung in Norway, so he stays pretty busy during the week on business trips out of the country and stuff, so that makes it hard to meet with him. Cool dude though.

We had a really cool dinner with a member named Yelda and her mom this week. I actually taught Yelda when I was in Bergen and we had a baptismal date with her. She moved to Oslo and was baptized here a couple of weeks after her mom was also baptized. They've have some health issues and things so it's been tough for them to have very much contact with the church. They are from Iran and when I was in Bergen, Yelda promised me that if I ever came to Oslo, she would invite me over for some Iranian food. That was one of those promises that you make without thinking it would ever actually happen, you know? haha. But it was cool, I was able to collect on that and we had a good time. I ate a dried lime. It was pretty gross, but the rest of the food that you are actually supposed to eat was fantastic. Yelda is dating this returned missionary named Morten and he's legit. He's been worried about the family not being visited and stuff, so that was good. I was pretty excited about starting to visit them more often, so that's one thing I'm sad about in leaving Oslo. Elder Bekker and I are probably going to eat dinner at their house when we come back to Oslo in March to fly home. 

Exciting week ahead as I head to a new area. I'll take some pictures =) Have a good one!

Elder Sessions

12 November 2012

Kjære familie og venner

It's official. My release date has been changed to March 6th. So I'm coming home 3 weeks earlier than I thought I would. The mission office told me that I could tell my family, so I'm calling that official. I'll get my flight plans in a couple months.

Enough of that. This week we set a goal as a mission to get 100 new investigators. A new investigator is someone we've taught once and gotten a return appointment with. Basically someone who is showing genuine interest in taking the missionary lessons. To put it in perspective, we've been averaging between 40 and 50 new investigators a week. So, we were looking to more than double our numbers. We ended up with 98. So we didn't quite meet the goal, but I think we got the point across haha. As the largest district in Norway (18 of the 56 missionaries are in the Oslo District), we had wished that we could have carried the mission a bit more than we did...of the 98 new investigators, only 24 came from our district, but I've decided that we really couldn't have worked much harder than we did. Either way, the Lord helped us to miraculously increase the number of people we were talking to this week, and I don't think anyone here should be dissatisfied with that.

We had a district meeting on Accountability this past week. I wanted to share some of my notes from that meeting. 

Accountability is knowing there are no "free tickets" in life. We are responsible for our own actions. Accountability includes being responsible for our actions before our peers, our leaders, and the Lord. Accountability is the law of Justice. It's also the law of Mercy. The blessings we receive for obedience and the consequences we face in disobedience are all founded on the principle of Accountability. All throughout our lives, we learn step by step, mistake by mistake that there are always consequences for our actions. Accountability is described in the Doctrine and Covenants. Section 130 says, "There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundation of this world, upon which all blessings [we can even say all consequences here] are predicated. And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated."

Essential to Accountability, is our free agency. We could not be accountable for our actions, if they were not actions based completely on our own free will and choice. "And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free. He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored unto you." I love that scripture. It basically says, "It's your choice."

I think one of the biggest lies that Satan tells people today is that what they choose doesn't matter. That it doesn't affect themselves or others. There are always consequences for our actions, and choosing to follow the teachings of the Gospel brings happiness in personal and family life, both here and in eternity. When it comes to the Final Judgement, we will all have been given a fair chance to accept the Gospel. For some people, that means they grew up in the Church and had to gain their own testimony independent of their parents'. For others, it means they accepted or rejected the Gospel later in life, even after this life. Whatever our situation, we will have a perfect knowledge of the truth at the Judgement, and a perfect ability to have made our own decision.

Our final fate will be dependent on the principles of Free Agency and Accountability. Ultimately, our Heavenly Father has provided a way for us all to be happy in the end, though our opportunities for further progression depend on our faith in Jesus Christ and his Grace in this life. How we show that faith and make ourselves accountable for our choices is up to us. "...ye are permitted to act for yourselves"

Obviously I tied that a little bit more into missionary work when we talked about it in district meeting haha. But the principle is the same and applies to everything, not just missionary work. So, I'm a fan haha.

Other than that, we're still working to find some people to teach. We're meeting with a Korean man tonight who took a Book of Mormon last week. I called him this weekend and he and his wife have both started reading and he said his wife especially is interested in hearing more. He's a way nice man and we call him S.K. cause his name is way hard to pronounce. My tongue was definitely not made to pronounce Korean words. 

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Sessions

November 5, 2012

Kjære familie og venner,

Well, I finally got out of the hospital on Thursday morning. The Assistants have been watching me like a hawk ever since then. We had a meeting with our bishop scheduled for Thursday night, and I'm pretty sure me going to that meeting was the equivalent to the sin of blasphemy in Elder Bekker's book. Friday morning, Sister Evans made some crepes and sent them with the Assistants to our apartment, expecting me to be at home. But I was already in the city haha. After 6 days in the hospital, I definitely was not going to be limiting myself to 4 walls anymore. I haven't done anything too intensive yet, but I'm feeling great and I've been able to get out of the apartment every day since being released. So that's good. We've planned on having a normal week, so we'll see how that goes. I'm still feeling extra tired, and I'm popping about 20 pills a day, no joke haha. 

We've just recently gotten a new ward mission leader. He is fantastic. He's 25, just got back from his mission in Poland a few years ago, and he's recently married. He's way excited to do the work, and he's already arranged a couple of nights this week where we are going to go out knocking on doors with members. So that's really exciting. We're working on just getting ourselves organized so that we can better work with the ward. One of the things I've been doing in my down time the last couple of days, is working on an online map with all of the ward members on there. That way, when we are planning on our traveling to appointments, we can easily see what members live in the area we are going to, and plan on visiting them. There are 600 members in the Oslo ward, and we've found that they are pretty well spread out, yet concentrated, on the map. So pretty much, wherever we go in our area, there will be at least one or two members who live around that spot. Only 150 of the 600 members are currently active, so there's lots of less active work that we can be doing. That's one of the major things we're hoping to start on once we can get settled. We're really wanting to focus on two things. 1, getting the members excited about missionary work. 2, organizing those efforts so that when new missionaries come into the area, they can pick up right where we left off. So it's been pretty busy, despite my handicaps the last few days haha.

I missed out on the mission conference with President Teixiera. I did go to the leadership meeting with him on his first day here, but the morning after that was when I was admitted to the hospital, so I missed the general session. Sounds like it was a pretty good conference though. From what I saw in the leadership meeting, President Teixiera is quite the fireball, haha. He doesn't mince words, which makes his presentations painful, but necessary. The mission has set some serious goals since that conference. We want to be able to get 100 new investigators a week. Right now we average around 40-50, so it'll take a lot of work haha. Another goal that President Evans has asked that we make as a mission since the conference, is to read the four Gospels and 3 Nephi before the end of the year. I've had some extra time on my hands the last few days, so I made myself a little study worksheet. I'm gonna study the four Gospels along with Jesus the Christ by James E Talmage. He goes through the entire New Testament and there's a ton of extra study material in there that I think will make things interesting. I've read the book about 4 or 5 times already on my mission, but this will be the first time that I do it alongside the New Testament. It took a few hours, but I lined up each chapter of Jesus the Christ that goes over the Gospels with the section of the Gospels that it covers. So, now I can read my "reading assignment" from the New Testament and then James E Talmage's commentary on that same section of scripture. I've started today, and I think I'll be able to finish before the end of the year. I attached the reading list to the email for anyone who is interested. It seems to be pretty popular among the missionaries here so far =)

I attached a couple of pictures from my hospital stay. One, is the view of Drammen from my window. Not bad, and we had just gotten the first snow of the winter so it looks pretty cool. Another is a picture of Elder Bekker, looking so happy to be visiting me. The third one, is a picture of the food I got in the hospital. It usually wasn't that glamorous. Usually it was sandwiches and soup. I'd put a picture of me on there, but it's not pretty, so we'll save that for my post-mission slideshow when I can face the shame in person haha.

My companion was on splits with the zone leaders the whole time that I was in the hospital, and he didn't do a whole lot of work with our people for the week and a half that I was down. So, our area is dead now, we've pretty much got to restart. Kinda disappointing, because we were really starting to see some progress before I got sick. But we've got a busy week planned, so I'm excited for that.

Have a good one everyone!

Elder Sessions

October 29, 2012

Hey everyone!

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I'm not dead. I am currently in the hospital though. I spend a lot of time sleeping and sucking chemicals into my arm through an IV. So that's loads of fun =] 

I'm writing this email on my mission presidents iPad. It's pretty legit. I've never actually messed with one of these things before. 

Well I've started getting better today, and the doctor said he saw some improvement when he checked me out earlier. So I've got a couple of more days to hang out here at least but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Thanks for your prayers and stuff. Kinda boring sitting here and I'm stoked to get back out. Nothing makes you appreciate your work more than not being able to work. Hopefully I'll have a good report for next week =]

Seeing as how I'm writing this thing on an iPad, this will unfortunately be the only email I write this week. Good luck to anyone in the path of this storm, good luck to anyone who has a competition or test this week, congrats to anyone who got pregnant, had a baby, or won a prize last week! I think that covers everything =] 

Love you all!
Elder Session

October 22, 2012

Kjære familie og venner

I fell sick this week =( So I've been home for about 4 days now. 

For the most part, our investigators are all people with potential who have asked us to call them back this upcoming week. So we'll see if we can get some return appointments with them, they all have some reading or something that we've asked them to do.

We had stake conference yesterday. That was pretty cool, although I was somewhat miserable sitting through the 2 hour meeting haha. We were visited by an Area Authority...I forget his name. He gave a pretty cool talk on the family though.

We have an appointment tomorrow night with Jonny. We're going to go over the Plan of Salvation with him. So that'll be good. We weren't able to get an appointment for last week, so this will be the first time we've met with him in a couple of weeks.

Yeah not too much else is happening right now. This week we have a mission conference with the Area President, Jose Teixeira. The last time he was here was in April for the big Norway Conference when we got the second stake here. So it's cool that he is able to come back.

Have a good week everyone!

Elder Sessions

October 15, 2012

Kjære familie og venner

I've got my conference notes this time! So I'll write a couple of highlights from my notes in here. But first, a little update on our week. I was on splits with Elder Godfrey, one of the zone leaders here in Oslo on Wednesday. We went out pretty much all day and talked to people on the streets. Found a ton of new potentials, so that was exciting. One of them, named Nikolai came to church yesterday. He's a 21 year old Norwegian who said he was looking for a church to go to. Things went extremely well for him yesterday and I think he was really enjoying church. Unfortunately, someone came into the church and stole a bunch of things from the coat rack, including our investigator's iPod. So, he wasn't too happy about that one. Neither was I. But, hopefully, we're gonna be able to meet with him again. He had a good experience at church until that point, so I hope that he isn't going to completely be turned off by it.

Our 19 year old less active kid came to Institute on Friday. He even invited his twin brother to come with. So that was really good as well. We also met with another less active guy named Jonny who asked us to teach him the missionary lessons. It went really well and he told us about his inactive friend who he wants us to try and meet with. We're gonna meet with Jonny again this week and find out more about his friend.

Conference notes:
"The 'treasures of heaven' are meaningful time spent with family and friends, and the blessings of the Gospel in our lives"

"Life is not a race it's a journey. Enjoy the moment! We live for life, not just to wait to die."

"Regrets can be avoided tomorrow by living the Gospel and following Christ's example today."

"Deep personal conversion and strong family relationships help to protect us from the temptations we face every day."

"Ridicule is the Adversary's sad excuse for a motivation to sin"

"Pay attention to your spiritual gifts. Develop them. Help others do the same"

"See men as they can become, not as they are"

"The Church and the Gospel are there to help us have the strength to overcome our trials, which we all inevitably will have. Why would we withdraw from it when we face a trial of faith? Don't be surprised when you are backed up to a wall of faith and asked to make your stand. That is how we grow in faith"

"God's promises are always calculated to bless us"

"The crowning appearance of our love for God is always through obedience and loyalty"

"Faith means not always seeing the end from the beginning and remembering that God can"

"There are added blessings to be received when we combine the works of doing our own family history with the work done in the temple. Doing both is good. Doing both together is better"

"It is important to know for ourselves that the Gospel is true AND be true to the Gospel."

And I've got a ton more. Some of those quotes are direct quotes from the conference, but most of them are just things I wrote down as people were speaking. There's about 10 pages all together in my book. The thing about General Conference is it can be different for everybody. For me, there was a lot about personal conversion and raising a family (I call those "heavenly hint hints"). For someone else they probably learned different things. That's what happens when you have prophets and apostles receiving revelation for us ;)

Have a good week everyone!

Elder Sessions

October 8, 2012

Kjære familie og venner

We've already heard tons of examples of youth who are talking to their bishop about turning in their mission paperwork. Not even just those who fit into the new age requirements for missionaries, but apparently others who took the change as a wake up call. They're talking about doubling the number of missionaries out in the world within the next five years. That means over 100,000 missionaries! I don't think I'll see too much change before I leave here, simply cause most people's mission calls here take a while because of visas. But, one change that might affect me is that they are also reducing the amount of time that missionaries spend in the MTC. We're not sure if the Norwegian missionaries' time will be changed, but if it is, it will change the length of our transfers here in Norway. Currently, they are 9 weeks long, but if the MTC changes their transfer lengths, then we'll have to do so as well. It might affect my departure date. So we'll see, we're really not sure of much of anything right now haha.

So that was exciting. General Conference was great. I had planned to throw in a couple of my notes that I took while watching, but I forgot my notes at home. So, that's not gonna happen this week. Maybe I'll share them next week. President Uchtdorf's talk in the Saturday morning session was great, as well as Elder Cook's, Elder Holland's (of course), Elder Oak's, Elder Scott's, Sister Dibb's...I liked a lot of them haha. Conference weekend always goes by super fast. Next one, I'll get to watch with the family. So that's cool.

Still don't have any investigators right now. We got some good less active work done this week though. We visited a family last Monday and one of the sons named Jakob, who has been less active for about 4 years since he was 15, was there. We had a good time at dinner and got his number so that we could invite him to come on teaching visits with us. We then got an appointment with another less active youth named Sina who recently moved back to Norway after being in South Africa for about 2 years. Jakob and Sina remembered each other from Young Men's and Jakob was a huge help when we visited him. Sina's had a tough time of things so it was really good to have Jakob there who could get on his level better than we could, simply cause he wasn't wearing a tie and a tag. Sina didn't want to take the missionary lessons from us, as we had offered, but he did show up to Institute the next day. So that was a good sign, we'll see what happens from here. We might go back and visit him and his dad again this week.

I really wish I would have remembered my notes! Haha that was my entire plan for this email. Oh well, I'll save it until next week.

Ha det bra!
Eldste Session

1 October

Kjære familie og venner

We have 8 missionaries in Oslo right now. The city isn't divided up into areas for each of the companionships, so we're all responsible for everything within the ward boundaries. Which means, with Elder Lillywhite and I living in Sandvika with the Assistants, we actually live outside of our own area since that is a part of the Sandvika ward. So that's fun, I remember the first time we rode the subway out to the apartment and I saw the Oslo city limit signs I was like, uhh...do we need to call for permission for this? Cause normally we can't leave our area without permission. But hey, I do what I want right? =)

This weekend we set up a street stand in Oslo sentrum. Some may remember back when I was in Bergen we would take chalk and draw the Plan of Salvation out on the ground in the middle of the city. Well, we did it in Oslo. Among the 8 missionaries, we walked 40 people through the drawing in 3 hours. We handed out 30 copies of the Book of Mormon. Elder Lillywhite and I taught 9. So that was cool. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get any phone numbers although I did give a book to a Russian guy who said he would call us. So we'll see. I went on splits with the new Oslo Elders this week and Elder Anderson, the senior companion, and I did a bit of contacting on the street. We talked to a guy from Portugal who wants us to come visit him sometime this week. So that's good cause we really need some people to visit haha. Reynaldo hasn't answered his phone for about a week, so that was kinda sad. We dropped Devinder cause he just didn't seem to be all that interested. 

I had a big district last transfer. This transfer, it's even bigger. 18 missionaries in the district in a mission with 57 total. So I'm pretty busy with exchanges. In order to get on splits with everyone I'll have to go twice a week, at least. That's prolly not gonna happen, so I guess I'll have to skip over some missionaries. It's definitely the best way to do the district leader thing haha. 

Well, this week we're going to visit that Portuguese man and a less active man named Jonny who has asked us to teach him the missionary lessons. Then there's General Conference this weekend. So that's exciting. My last time watching in on the mission, so gotta hope it's a good one. The week after that is our zone conferences. The week after that is stake conference. The week after that, we are having a mission conference and President Teixeira, the Area President is coming. And then it's Halloween. So October is pretty much gone and then suddenly I have two weeks and the end of this transfer. 

Busy month. As usual, right? =)

Vi snakkes!

Eldste Sessions

PS. couple pictures. one of our dinner with a Chinese member here. Another is a companionship picture which is going to hang on the ward bulletin board so the members know who we are.

24 September

Kjære familie og venner

Hey everyone! We moved in with the Assistants this week. Took us about two days to get finished with that, mainly because we had appointments and things in between it all. With transfers and moving and everything, we didn't have a whole ton of time to do any proselyting. We did have a couple of appointments with a man from India named Devinder. After our last appointment with him on Saturday, I'm not too sure how interested he actually is, so we'll probably end up dropping him soon unless he starts showing some progress.

I had another baptismal interview with a woman down south in Fredrikstad this week. She is from Iraq, and she moved to Norway with her two daughters about 10 years ago, mainly because they grew up as Christians. Iraq is not exactly the easiest place to do that. So they ended up here. Her two daughters actually live in Oslo, and one of them, Roya,  has come to Institute a couple of weeks in a row now. She likes it, and we've been able to answer some of her questions about the church. I'm hoping that with Roya's mom getting baptized, that will help her to be interested in actually sitting down and meeting with us, which she hasn't wanted to do just yet. So we'll see, but I don't expect anything to happen with that for at least a few more weeks. But there is definitely potential there.

We just heard the other day that we are going to have another mission conference next month. I'm pretty lucky that I'm getting 3 in only a year, it's pretty unusual, especially since it's so expensive to travel in Norway. Elder Teixeira, the Area President is coming to do a mission tour, so everyone is going to be flying into Oslo for a two day conference. Mission conferences are nice because it's a great opportunity to get to see everyone again. This may be my last chance to see a couple missionaries before I head home, so I'm excited for that. 

And, of course, there's always General Conference as well. That's a good time. Couple more weeks for that. We're crossing our fingers for a Norwegian temple to be announced! It's not likely to happen for quite a while actually, but I can't wait until that day. =)

Well, we're hoping we can get out this week and do some good finding. Tonight we're heading to a less active member's house who wants us to teach him and his son the missionary lessons. So that'll be fun. He also mentioned a friend who had a couple of questions about the church, so it'd be nice to get a referral out of it as well.

Til next week!

Eldste Sessions

17 September

Kjære familie og venner

Well we just had our moves call this morning....nothing is changing. I'm staying as district leader with Elder Lillywhite in Oslo. But, we are moving into the Assistants apartment in Sandvika because they opened a new Elders area in Oslo and they are taking our apartment. So that'll be fun, Elder Bekker is still an Assistant so I'll be living with him again haha. I was really looking forward to a change of companion or area, but it'll have to wait another 2 months. For now, I'm just glad I can keep working with what we have in Oslo. 

Reynaldo is coming back to Oslo this week. His boss called him in to work. So, I'm not exactly sure what's happening there haha. He's doing a nice little mission tour. He went first to Tromsø for a couple of days, then all the ways north in Hammerfest, and now he is in Bodø on his way back to Oslo. Hopefully we can meet with him this week and get him settled before he darts off somewhere else. 

We don't really have much else going for us right now. The member work is tough here and we haven't had a whole lot of time to get out and contact on the streets recently. Jonathan has been busy this week...we weren't able to visit him. So we're pretty dead. But there are good things happening and I think it's important to just focus on that rather than what is not happening. There is a less active man who has asked us to begin meeting with us to help him come back. So we're excited about that one. 

Last P day, the elders in Oslo got ahold of some matching shirts and we all wore them. So there's a picture. It was pretty funny haha. 

Love

Elder Sessions

10 September

Kjære familie og venner 

Our last P-day was pretty fun. We went out to an island in the middle of the fjord and had a little bbq. There were these cool ruins on the island which we got to go climbing through...it was an old 12th century monastery. As we were eating our lunch, a fox decided to come join us. It literally came to within 5 feet of our little eating circle. I took some pretty cool pictures of the island, the ruins, and the fox so I'll send those on. There's also a picture of me in a skate shop by the name of Session. I thought it was cool that the store was obviously named after me, so I took a picture with a couple of the hoodies bearing my name which they sell there. Birthday present, parents? =)

Well, Renaldo moved to Tromsø this week. Things were going all up and down this week with him haha. First he lost his job, which really was a good thing cause it meant he could come to church...and he recognized that as well. So we were pretty stoked about that. A couple of days later though, he comes to meet us at the institute center with a train ticket up to Northern Norway. He said he wanted to move up there to find a job. Luckily, we have missionaries in that city so we gave him the number for those missionaries and he was able to get in contact with them before he left Oslo. He was up on our mission website with a baptismal date for a couple of weeks in Tromsø already. So that was a little bittersweet.

Other than that, we did get to visit a less active guy named Jonathan on Saturday. He is from Mexico and he was baptized here in Oslo last year. He hasn't been able to come to church only because of his 3 year old son who has leukemia. It's kind of a tough situation. But he's an awesome guy and the best part is that he has a 9 year old daughter and a girlfriend, both of which are not baptized. We talked with them a bit when we visited and we're going to go back sometime this week to see if we can teach at least the daughter. It'd be fantastic if the girlfriend was interested as well...especially since she is a Norwegian and we always love teaching those =P

This is the last full week of the transfer. We'll have our transfers call next Monday morning. Don't have a clue what is gonna happen there...I'm pretty sure I'm going to stay here in Oslo. But we'll see =)

Good luck with school everyone...I'll be back in two semesters!

Elder Sessions

3 September

Kjære familie og venner

I was filling out a Preach my Gospel survey from Church headquarters just now and one of the first questions was: "Choose the number of months you have been on your mission", then there was a slider with the number of months increasing from left to right. It took way too long to slide that thing over to 18 months. Can you believe that? I hit 18 months yesterday...

My parents always told me there was a time when I would have to start studying to get good grades in school. They told me this when I finished elementary school, middle school, and even high school. It's a point of extreme pride on my part that I have continuously proved them wrong. One part of my life where I cannot avoid studying though is definitely the Gospel. I can sleep through my DNA class and still get an A, but I can't sleep through personal scripture study and still apply the principles of the Gospel to myself. Luckily, I've discovered I really really really like studying and learning. It's awesome. So maybe I'll apply it to school when I get back, but the look of chagrin on my college professors' faces when they wake me up to hand me another "A" exam may be far too satisfying for me to miss out on ;) One thing is for sure though, I'll definitely have to show a lot more diligence in school from here on out. I got pretty darn lazy up there in Rexburg my last semester. 

Well, Renaldo got caught up at work again yesterday so he wasn't able to come to church. Which means we're going to have to move his baptismal date back. We haven't told him this yet....he'll be way bummed. We invited him to watch a baptismal service we had just this past Saturday and he thought he was the one getting baptized. So that was a little awkward. We sorted it out though and I was really glad he was willing to do it haha. We gotta finish teaching him and he's gotta be able to come to church first. 

He's really the only one we're meeting with consistently right now. It's been kinda frustrating in the search for new investigators the last couple of weeks. Not that I'm frustrated by it, it's just been a frustrating situation. There's a difference =) I have been feeling pretty worn out though, so I'm grateful for the P-day today haha. I'll get about 6 or 7 hours of relaxation before we gotta get back out there again. We cherish those hours.

One thing that has been really fun this transfer has been being a district leader here in Oslo. I haven't talked about it too much, but once I week I'm giving a district meeting presentation to a group of 12 missionaries. It's been a lot of fun, and the mission theme for August has been our missionary purpose. This past week, we talked about our personal covenants with God. It's something I've thought a lot about lately, and I'm grateful to have a nice platform to kind of get my thoughts out once a week. Our missionary purpose is to "invite others to come unto Christ by helping receive the restored Gospel..." Despite the use of the word "others" in that purpose, my basic point was that we cannot invite others to come unto Christ, without getting ourselves on the path first. That's something we have done by being baptized and confirmed by priesthood authority to enter into that sacred covenant with God. 

We cannot teach the Gospel without the Spirit with us. How sensible is it then that our baptismal covenant is our key to having the Spirit as our companion? As stated in the sacrament prayers we hear each week in church, if we (1) take upon us the name of Christ, (2) always remember Him [aka allow the Atonement to be a part of our daily lives], and (3) keep His commandments, we are then promised that we will always have His Spirit to be with us. Maybe it's cause I'm a dirty "Spirit-less" heathen, but sometimes I think missionaries aren't selfish enough. We think too much about solving this problem or that with our investigators, without remembering that we ALSO need to make and keep that covenant with God, in order to have the Spirit present in inviting others to do the same. If we focus on our covenants and "getting the Spirit", everything else in our lives will fall into place, because we have the assurance that God is with us every step of the way.

Another important thing to remember for everyone is also that taking the name of Christ on us, remembering him (daily!), and "keeping" his commandments, are descriptions of a process rather than an event. No one is going to "keep" the commandments. Ever. Cause we aren't perfect, remember? But that isn't what "keeping the commandments" means. God doesn't need us to keep His commandments. It's for us. By living the Gospel and doing our best to follow Christ's example, we put ourselves in a position to be worthy of having His Spirit as our companion. That is what cleanses us and helps us improve. And that's really what it's all about.

Til next week!

Elder Sessions

20 August

Kjære familie og venner

Well this week was a busy week. We had a dinner appointment with members pretty much every day, and we were able to get to know a pretty good number. So that was good. We also got lots of names of families and less actives to go and visit. We ate dinner with the bishop and his family yesterday, and that went extremely well. He gave us a list of about 10 names to visit. We're also going to help his 20 year old son move this week...his son has been less active for about 3 years, so that will be a good opportunity for us to get to know him. So from one busy week to the next we go, haha.

There was this way cool guy from Nicaragua who came to our language class this past week. We've been teaching a Norwegian class of about 30-40 people twice a week. It's been pretty successful in getting people to come out to our institute center in the city and it's pretty well known in the community. The employment agency for Norway, called NAV, has started to advertise our class to immigrants moving to Oslo. So yeah, it's pretty intense. But anyways, this Nicaraguan guy hears about the class and shows up on the day we had planned to show the Joseph Smith movie after class. I invited him to stay and he was like "Man, I'm christian, of course I'll stay!" Haha he's a way cool dude and we've started teaching him about the church. There's a slight language barrier, but there are plenty of Spanish members here in Oslo to help us out on teaches. I'm hoping we can commit him to a baptismal date sometime this week.

I went on visit to Fredrikstad this past week to do a couple of baptismal interviews there. After checking on familysearch.org, I found out that I have a lot of Norwegian ancestors from that area of Norway, so I convinced my temporary companion to drive through the village they lived in on our way back to Oslo. So that was pretty cool to see that, it was just a bunch of farmland and stuff. The village is called Onsøy, Østfold, Norway. I didn't have my camera, but if I get back there at some point, I'll have to snap some pictures.

I meant to say this last week, since it happened yesterday...but Happy Birthday to Mom! I won't say how old she is, but I just know it's twice as much as me! =) Crazy thought just hit me...if I was my mom 20 years ago, I'd be pregnant with ME right now. Nuts man....then my sister is turning 17 next Sunday. So that's cool. I'll probably freak in about 3 months when I hit 21, but I'm not gonna think about it too much right now.

So yeah. It's raining right now and we had planned on grilling some stuff in a park for P-day. So Mother Nature just rained all over that idea. Eh...we'll prolly do it anyways haha.

Have a good week!

Elder Sessions

26 August

Kjære familie og venner

Well we had a pretty good week this week. I'm pretty sure I talked about Renaldo last week, the man from Nicaragua who came to our language class. Well we met with him pretty much every night last week, as per his own request haha. We set a baptismal date with him for the 15th of September. He would definitely be able to make that if it weren't for his job. He works Saturday night-Sunday morning and so he isn't able to come to church. Which is kind of a problem for him getting baptized. He likes everything we've talked with him about though, and he brought a friend with him to the center on Friday. So we're just hoping and praying for a change in his work situation. He's not exactly in a position to ask for a change of hours or anything like that. So we need a miracle.

We're continuing to work with the members, especially the families with inactive youth, who were referred to us by the bishop. We haven't had too much progress with it just yet, but the families have at least reacted positively to the idea of us, someday, coming to get to know their kids. We're hoping to gain their trust so we can change that "someday" to "today"...but that's a work in progress. 

This upcoming Sunday is my year and a half mark on the mission. We have transfers in about 3 weeks and after that I'm only going to hear my name read two more times during moves call. It really is insane how quickly time moves on our missions. March still seems forever and a day away, but it'll be here before I blink. 

Elder Godfrey, one of the zone leaders here in Oslo, and I had a pretty cool experience yesterday after church. A man who was visiting the church for the first time asked the bishop for a priesthood blessing and Elder Godfrey and I were asked to participate. Another member actually said the blessing, while Elder Godfrey and I stood in, but it was the most powerful priesthood blessing I've been a part of. As we stood there with our hands on this man's head, you could literally feel the power of the priesthood in the room. It was pretty legit. Hope it helped him, haha.

Well that's all folks! Fun fact: "et folk" in norwegian means "a people" Go figure.

Elder Sessions