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
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