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
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