Kjære familie og venner

Despite living in the largest and, quite possibly, coolest city in Norway, I have yet to take any pictures. Well, at least not on my camera. We did take a trip to a Catholic church here in the city (Fjord)and took some cool pictures there (one of the members in Oslo here cleans the church, so he has a master key to all the secret passageways and stuff =P)...see below.

I'm sending some pictures from our P-day last week in Trondheim though. We went to a science museum. One of them is a picture of Elder Peterson and I playing this little mind game they had there. You attach this band to your head which has a couple of electrodes on it. They read your brain waves and you can either compete to relax the most or think the hardest. Depending on who has the most/least active brain waves, the little ball on the middle of the table moves back and forth. You literally move the ball with your mind. It was pretty legit. I'm pretty sure I lost that one though haha. There's another picture from the museum and then a picture of us at a member's house my last night in Trondheim. Elvis Presley was on the tv in the background and the lady sitting next to us was going nuts dancing along to the music. It was hilarious and one of the sisters managed to snap a picture of it.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was interviewed by another Trondheim newspaper. The article was supposed to be about love, in relation to the 1 year anniversary of the shooting rampage on 22 July 2011. The reporter made it sound like she was going to interview multiple people around the city to get everyone's viewpoint, but the article was just released in the newspaper on Saturday with the headline, "Gode Gud: Eldste Sessions (20) er omreisende i kjærlighet" I haven't seen the article since it was only a Trondheim newspaper and I'm in Oslo, but apparently there's a picture of me staring dreamily up into the sky. I don't remember that picture being taken haha. The reporter was supposed to email me a copy of the article, but she never did. So I've asked Elder Peterson to see if he can get me a copy of it, since he's still in Trondheim. 

Anyways...Oslo. Fantastic city. For a big urban area, it really is beautiful. Like I said, I haven't had the chance to take any pictures yet since we've been so busy. Elder Lillywhite and I are both new in Oslo this transfer, so we've got a lot of investigators to meet and a ginormous city to get lost in. And we have definitely done a lot of that. It's cool though because we can literally walk anywhere in the city and have people to talk to. So since neither of us are familiar with the city at all, we tend to get lost somewhat on purpose, and then walk around until we see something familiar. Along the way, there's lots of people to talk to about God, haha.

I'll be honest, I'm not too sure who we are teaching right now haha. The previous missionaries left the area in somewhat of a mess, so I'm still trying to get everything sorted out. We did have two people in church yesterday, so they're gonna be our first victims this week ;) Either way, it's gonna be busy the next few days meeting with all of these people. There were 10 investigators on the progress record when I got here, which is the most I have ever seen. Problem is, I don't know how updated that was, because I know for a fact at least two of those people on the list are no longer being taught. So it's a little bit of a headache, but we'll get it figured out soon haha.

Vi snakkes! =)

Eldste Sessions

16 July 2012

Kjære familie og venner

Well, I'm headed out of Trondheim....to Oslo! They've cut down the number of districts in the Oslo zone down from three to two and I'm going to be a district leader in Oslo. So once a week I'll have the fantastic opportunity to conduct a district meeting with a group of 14 missionaries. Keep in mind, there's only about 55 missionaries in all of Norway haha. It'll be fun though, I'm way excited for it. I've heard nothing but good things about Oslo, and I've actually been there on exchanges a couple of times...seems like a really fun city. It'll be the biggest area I've served in, as far as the city and the ward.

My new companion's name is Elder Lillywhite. We're probably related somehow, considering my grandmother's name is Lillywhite. You know those Mormons...pretty much everyone is connected somehow. He went into the MTC as I left, so he's only two months "younger" than me. I've never really served around him yet, so it'll be fun. The number of potential companions I could "get to know" on my mission is increasingly smaller, but luckily he still fits into that category. Elder Bekker is continuing as Assistant and they're a part of my new district so it'll be cool to hang out with him again on P-days.

Fun fact: I am now a "grandfather" =) My greenie, Elder Bird, aka my "son", is training this transfer. Which means, I'm getting a grandson haha. What's really ironic, is he's from England. I don't think he's from the same area of England that I lived in and I don't recognize the name, Elder Leighton, but it's cool nonetheless. 

That's about all the cool things that happened with transfers this time around. Elder Knudson is coming into Trondheim as a zone leader with Elder Peterson, so this will be the third time that Elder Knudson takes over my area. He came in to Bergen when I left to Trondheim, and then when I moved from the Trondheim District Leader area to the zone leader area, he moved to Trondheim as the new district leader. He's been up north this transfer in Alta, but now he is coming back to take my place again. I'm not really sure how that keeps happening, haha.

I've talked with the elders in Oslo whose area Elder Lillywhite and I are taking over and it sounds like they've got a pretty solid area set up. They had 7 investigators in church last week. So that's exciting. I'm guessing in a big city like Oslo, though, you'd pretty much always have someone to teach. It'll definitely be a little different from the areas I've served in before, although Bergen was a pretty nice sized city.

But honestly, I think it's just easier to send it to the mission office. That way, no matter where I'm living, I'll get it.

Vi snakkes!

Eldste Sessions

Kjære familie og venner!

We had a pretty solid week this week. Jan Peder came to church again and we're going to meet with him on Wednesday. I was giving a talk in church so I didn't get a chance to talk to him too much after sacrament meeting. He said he had some questions, and he hadn't read the chapter we gave him in the Book of Mormon, but he promised to do it by Wednesday. So that'll be good.

Hard to believe from my point of view, but we just had zone conference last week.  It went pretty well. President Evans doesn't have the zone leaders do a presentation at zone conferences, so it was kind of nice to not have to plan anything. Well I say that, but we actually ended up doing more this time around than usual. The missionary couple took a trip to the temple last week, so Elder Peterson and I were basically in charge of the food and all the other practical stuff that they usually do for conferences. It wasn't too hard, although a little time-consuming. I gained a new respect for people who make food for large groups of people. The enchiladas turned out pretty decent though.

Kathleen also came to church and we met with her afterwards. It went ok, although she basically has her own beliefs that she wants to stick to. She's still interested in meeting with us though, mainly I think, so she can have someone to answer her questions about what he believe. Which is what we are here for, pretty much. She's is going on vacation until the end of the month, so we won't meet with her again for a while.

Our moves call is next Sunday morning. So it's time once again to find out my fate at 6:45am. I've been in Trondheim for a while, so if I had to guess, I'd say I'd probably leave. But missionaries have stayed in areas for 8 months or more before, so that is definitely a possibility as well. It would be nice to start somewhere fresh in a new area though.

That's kind of the extent of what happened this week. We did get an appointment with a younger guy named Bill for tomorrow, but I've never met him since we got him as a referral from other missionaries. So we'll see how that goes.

Have a good week everyone! We're off to a science museum =)

Elder Sessions

2 Jul 12

Kjære familie og venner

Well, another week down. I feel like I had a ton of things yesterday that I wanted to write home about, but now I'm drawing a blank. 

Our new mission president, President Evans, arrived on Friday. Saturday, Elder Peterson and I flew into Oslo for zone leader council with him. He and his wife are fantastic. The way we have come to describe it is that President Johansen was our favorite football coach/motivator and the Evans are the parents. They're extremely nice and, despite the jetlag, they seemed really excited to get to work. They are flying into Trondheim tonight for our zone conference tomorrow.

Jan Peder came to church yesterday. Afterwards, we taught him for about an hour or so. He likes everything we've showed him and he likes the fact that we believe in prophets and apostles today. He likes the Book of Mormon and says he feels it agrees with his Christian beliefs from the Bible. He understands everything we teach him extremely well, better and quicker than most people I have taught. Because of that though, he understands kind of the gravity of what we are saying. He realizes that we believe there is literally a prophet on the earth who receives revelation from God. At this point, he says he can't bring himself to believe that. We told him that's ok, God's gonna be the one to do that haha. He said himself he is a little apprehensive about praying to receive an answer, mainly I think, because he knows what it would mean if it were true. He's grown up his whole life in the Norwegian State church, so I think it comes down to a fear of change for him. We told him to not worry about anything else except trying to find the truth for himself through honest study and prayer. He said he could do that. This Wednesday, we're going to show him a talk by President Monson from this past General conference, so he can hear the prophet for himself. He wasn't ready to set a date for baptism yet, but I'm hoping we can do that soon. 

Lars has asked for a break from meeting with us while he's involved with his work. So I don't know if we'll be able to meet with him again, but he did tell Fernanda that he liked everything he heard from us, and liked coming to church, he just needed some time to settle down a bit. Kathleen has been traveling or something so we haven't been able to get an appointment with her.

There was indeed an article in this past Ensign about Young Single Adult centers in Europe. The centers in Norway were a big feature in that article, including the center in Trondheim. I'm actually sitting in that center at this very moment writing this email and I skyped my family from that room just a month-ish ago. Our previous mission president was quoted in the article as well as one of the couple missionaries who used to serve here in Trondheim. I've met two of the three members who were quoted in that article from the Oslo ward. In all of the bigger cities in Norway we have a YSA center, so missionaries here use the centers quite a bit for teaching investigators and getting involved in the YSA activities, since we teach alot of people that age anyways. Bergen had a YSA center, which is where I spent a lot of my time while I was there. The Trondheim center isn't as big, but they still have weekly activities and things which we occasionally go to. The Oslo center is definitely the biggest and it becomes a central hub for missionaries flying in and out of Oslo during transfers. I've attached the article to the email for those who want to check it out.

Speaking of transfers, we've got less than two weeks until our moves call, where we find out who's gonna go where. I haven't heard anything about if I'll be staying here in Trondheim or going, but I will say it's extremely unusual for missionaries to stay in an area for more than 6 months, which is how long I have been here. So we'll see, but I probably won't hear anything for a couple more weeks. I'll be sure to send any address changes along in an email when I get them.

Oh yeah, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I was interviewed by another newspaper a couple of weeks ago haha. A reporter and a photographer came knocking on the church door when we were eating lunch one day and asked if they could ask us a couple of question for an article they were writing. This time it was an article about love, in conjuction with the 1 year anniversary of the shooting rampage on 22 July here in Norway last year. It will come out here in Trondheim on the 21st of July and I've asked the reporter to send me a PDF copy over email when it's ready. So I'll send that along home, hopefully with a translation. I've gotta start charging people for these interviews and hire a publicist or something....well I dunno how kindly my mission president would look upon that little money making scheme actually...

Yep, I think that's about it for this week. I got a fantastic email from my grandmother this week, it's always good to hear from that side of the world. Maybe they could come on that mission to Norway ;)

Talk to ya'll soon!

Elder Sessions