Kjære familie og venner

Well we had a tough week this time around. Probably one of the hardest ones of my mission so far just because we felt like we were working pretty hard, but really getting beat down on the streets. There was one stretch of about 20 hours of street contacting where only two people were willing to talk to us. 

There really wasn't too much that happened this week though. We weren't able to meet with Lars on Friday, and he didn't come to church yesterday, so we didn't make a whole lot of progress with him. We did have our zone conference. It went pretty well. Elder Peterson and I did a rotation of presentations on improving contacting. I talked about things we can do to get appointments with people and he talked about teaching to the needs of the people we are talking to. I think they went well, but we both felt like it wasn't really something that the zone really needs at this point. 

The cool part about zone conference was hearing President Johansen speak for the last time. He talked about the things he usually says to missionaries in his exit interviews with them. So that was really cool. I attached a picture of President and Sister Johansen with me after the conference. They leave Norway on the 29th of June. We'll be going to Oslo for a zone leader conference with President and Sister Evans on the 30th, so we're getting right to work. It'll be fun, I'm excited to meet President Evans. He sounds like he has some big plans already.

That about all for this week folks =)

We'll talk

Elder Sessions

Kjære familie og venner

Elder Knudson is flying in for our zone conference tomorrow and he'll be staying overnight in our apartment. I'm sure we'll share a couple of giggles over the fact that our letters are being exchanged among families. He's a cool guy, I'm glad I've been able to serve around him.

It's a sad fact that as soon as you start getting your surroundings on your mission and everything starts clicking, people begin to point out the fact that you don't have a whole lot of time left. Fortunately, the faster the time passes, the faster the works seems to go. Probably because for the first time on your mission, you actually know what you are doing haha.

Well this week, we got another baptismal date! Lars, the man who came to church with Fernanda (my brazilian fireball of a convert), agreed to be baptized on June 30th. He's a way open dude and really seems to be seeking for some closure after his father died a few years ago. As we talked about the Plan of Salvation with him, one of the questions he asked was "So, say there was someone who believed in Christ but they were never baptized with the correct authority in this life. What would happen with them?" A Heavenly Father who was fair obviously would not hold that against that person. That's the purpose of the spirit world talked about in 1 Peter 3:18-20 and 4:6. As a revelation received by Joseph Smith: "All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God; Also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom;For I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts. And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven." (D&C 137) How fair is it for a man born in the middle of the ocean who never heard the name of Christ, to be damned to hell without the chance to even make a fair decision for himself? None of us can judge another person's situation in this life as a "fair chance." None of us know what circumstances or environments have affected another person's beliefs and values. What a joy it is to know that, ultimately, our Heavenly Father will judge us according to the desires of our hearts and the person that we are, rather than where we grew up and the religion we held ourselves to in this life. "But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God" (Romans 14:10-12) At the end, after everyone has received a knowledge of the things of God, everyone will confess before God that, "Hey man, you were right the whole time!" At that point, we are judged "according to the desire of [our] hearts." According to the person we are, and who we have become. What we have done with the chances that the Lord has given us. And those "chances" will be different for all of us, because we are all different people. No one is going to be ignorantly saved, exalted or damned. Lars' father can still choose to accept the Gospel of Christ and be baptized just as any other person who has ever lived, or ever will live on this earth. (1 Cor. 15:29)

Lars liked that answer.

Yongqing seems to be doing pretty well. He's pretty well integrated into the branch now, considering there's a language barrier for him. You just can't help but like the guy though, Norwegian social barriers or not. I'm pretty excited for his wife to move here. I hope I'm still around to meet her.

There's a member here who went to school at BYU-Idaho at the same time as me. She is dating one of the Norwegian members here. Kinda random. But it's even stranger because she actually knows my cousin, Brennan. I saw a picture of her before she came here and she looked really familiar for some reason. It wasn't until we got to talking that we made the connection. She hung out with the same group of people that Brennan did, and since Brennan lived upstairs from me in the same building, it's pretty likely I saw them in the lobby of the dorm complex at some point. She said something about him getting called to Italy on his mission? Lucky duck. It's still 45 degrees here haha.

Well, we've got some prep work we've gotta do for our zone conference tomorrow. Stay safe this summer ;)

Love,
Elder Sessions

Kjære familie og venner

Yonging was baptized on Saturday. Elder Peterson and I had a pretty busy morning getting ready for that one. We had planned to go to the branch sport activity in the morning and then go home, get changed, run to the store, and be back at the church to meet Yongqing an hour before the baptism. After a string of bad luck with buses being late and forgetting the keys at the church, we ended up sprinting back to our apartment, showering, changing, buying food at the store and getting back to the church all within an hour's time. We made it, and the baptismal service went really well, but now both of us are deadly sore cause of all the running!

It's been really cool with Yongqing because we weren't entirely sure how much he was actually understanding of the lessons. But when he was interviewed for his baptism on Thursday, the missionary who did the interview said Yongqing was using analogies to explain the gospel to him haha. I've come to realize that Yongqing actually understands just about everything we say to him and the things he reads in English, he just has a hard time speaking it. He is also hilariously Asian. When we were talking about the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity with him, he said in his broken Chinese-English, "Well, I'm married and I love my wife. I don't drink or smoke, cause that's stupid. I guess my only problem is...my programs." I guess at one point he had downloaded a number of illegal computer programs. He later felt guilty and deleted them and bought legitimate copies. That's real repentance, people, haha.

Yongqing was baptized by one of the members here, and I confirmed him on Sunday. We've really begun teaching a lot of Chinese people recently, it's kind of odd haha. We had 5 Chinese people in church yesterday, and only two of them were members. Before he was even confirmed a member of the church, Yongqing was asked by the sister missionaries to sit next to their Chinese investigator during church. He's going to receive the Priesthood next Sunday. His wife is moving here from China in the next couple of months, and Yongqing has already talked with her about the church and she seems excited to come learn more. Maybe we'll start a Chinese branch here in Trondheim haha.

It's been exam time for the university here over the past couple of weeks, and the university students are pretty much the bulk of our investigators. So we haven't really been able to meet with a whole lot of them again. We're hoping that exams will be done this week and that we can meet with people like Jenny or Sindre again. But so far, we just haven't been able to get ahold of them to set up appointments.

President Johansen is finishing up his mission here in about 3 and a half weeks. I heard a rumor that the new mission president wants to change our transfers from 9 weeks to 6 weeks. That would cut almost a month off of my mission because I would leave around the 24 month mark instead of the 25. So we don't really want that. I'm sure there will be some amount of changes over the next couple of months, though, as we make the transition to a new president. In any case, Elder Peterson and I will be going to President Johansen's last zone leader council on Wednesday. That'll be kind of sad. I had, most likely, my last interview with him last week when he was here in Trondheim. I told him I'd probably be seeing a bit of him back home, cause I'm sure I'll be spending some time at the Bekker's home in Salt Lake, if I ever get to Utah. Elder Bekker is, of course, my MTC companion and President Johansen's nephew, and they live down the street from each other.

There's a chance I'll be going far north of the Arctic circle this week. There's a baptismal interview that needs to be done in Tromsø, and I'm pretty sure we're going to have to fly up for that one. Elder Peterson and I will be flipping a coin to see who gets to go. Check it out on Google Maps. Tromsø is quite a ways up there! My goal is still to go on splits with the missionaries up in Alta this transfer, (which is one of the northernmost missionary areas in the world) so maybe I'll just let Elder Peterson take this Tromsø splits haha. Living this far north is strange for me. It snowed on the first of June here. Ridiculous. Two weeks ago, it was pretty warm though, so we'll see what happens this week.

I've attached a picture of me and Yongqing at the baptism on Saturday. The red tie is a new favorite I found in the apartment we just moved into =)

Have a good week everyone!
Elder Sessions

P.S. listening to the new EFY cd for 2012. it's not too shabby ;) but then, we don't get much as far as music on our missions, so maybe my tastes have been warped haha