Oh man, I don't even remember what happened last week. This week was way more interesting anyways haha.
I did get a new companion. His name is Elder Stratford, he's a pretty cool kid. He's from Logan, Utah and we're getting along just splendidly. <-----word? I'm not sure.
We started off this week by going to Verdens Ende, which translates to The End of the World. It's basically a collection of cliffs right on the southern tip of Norway, and you can look out onto the Atlantic ocean. It was way cool and I got some good pictures, hopefully I can get those sent home soon.
Then we had a zone conference with a bunch of missionaries in Oslo. That was pretty cool, I got to see Elder Davis again and he sounds like he's having a ton of fun there in Oslo now.
This week was the annual Slottsfjellet Festival here in Tønsberg. People from all around Norway came for the festival, which meant there was a ton and a half people out on the streets all week. We found SO many people to teach it's crazy. I'm excited for this week, we're gonna be way busy.
We found one guy who's about our age. He was actually one of the main musicians in the festival this week. But Elder Davis and I had talked to him a few weeks ago and I gave him a card with mormon.org on it and told him to check out the website. He actually did, and said he was interested to learn more. Elder Stratford is a music guru and I'm pretty into music as well, so we're gonna meet with this guy later tonight and have a little jam session in the church. We'll teach a lesson of course too :)
That's just one of the many people we've found that we can talk to this week. Pretty much anything that could have gone right this week has gone right, so it's been pretty exciting.
By the way, we did get an email from church headquarters that says we need to be more careful about the information we share about the people we are teaching in our letters home, especially for missionaries like myself who have it posted online. So I won't be using real names of people on the blog anymore, but I can still share stories and things from the people here.
With that said, there is a man we have been teaching for a couple of months now who I have mentioned on the blog before. Despite that, we're gonna call him Timothy. Haha, this fake name thing could be quite fun.
Anyways, Timothy has come to church a few times now, and I think he's really enjoyed it. We certainly enjoy teaching him, our biggest problem is getting out of the house after a lesson just cause he's so darned fun to talk to. But he's a way nice guy, and he's really come a long way.
I managed to slice my finger this week. A friend of mine here apparently talked to my sister about it on Facebook (can't believe she's talking to my family!). In any case, reports of my "crying" over a little "paper cut" are grossly exaggerated on both counts. Slightly more then a paper cut, slightly less crying. haha. Basically, I was carrying a metal sink in someone's yard (haven't a clue why there was a sink in a yard, but that's not really the issue here) when we dropped it and it sliced my finger. Didn't feel too awesome. Certainly brought some excitement for a few minutes, but luckily Elder Stratford was there to assure me I'd have to lose something like 4 quarts of blood before I passed out. Thanks bud. He also offered to superglue the cut shut for me. I passed on that delightful opportunity.
That's pretty much been my week. We're extremely happy with all the people we found, and I'm exhausted. We had to work hard, but it definitely paid off. We've got some exciting times ahead.
Thanks for the drawings from the CTR 6? class in the Gainesville Ward! There must have been some sort of discussion involving platypuses (platypi?) in their class that day. In any case, I got plenty of wonderful, friendly looking platypuses to cheer me up. I really hope they were supposed to be platypuses. Could have been backwards beavers though.
Have a good week everyone!
Elder Sessions
Sunday, February 3, 2013
SLC visit with relatives after getting mission call Dec 2010
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| Jeremy, Grandma Lillywhite, my cousin Brianna Dahl, Jim and Kathy Lillywhite and Mom |
28 January 2013
Kjære familie og venner
My companions all get a kick out of the weekly "20 questions" game my Dad likes to play. Here's this weeks edition.
"How did transfers go? How are you settling in with Elder Rasmussen? Tell us about him….where is he from, about his family (brothers and sisters), what does he think about Kristiansand? What was his last area and how did he like it? What was his favorite area served so far? What branch of military service is he in? How long has he been in the military? What is his military specialty? Although I have never asked this before of any of your companions, what is his favorite quote? Last, but not least, what does he think about having YOU as a companion?? (ie: troublesome, trial and tribulation or joy with whom to serve)"
Well I'll try to answer them all. Transfers went great. He missed his plane out of Oslo so I ended up chilling at the airport by myself for about 10 hours. Pretty much slept in the car the whole time. We're settling in fantastic. He is from Salt Lake, he's got 2 younger brothers and a younger sister, a ton of step siblings, and a half brother and I think he likes Kristiansand. His last area was Drammen and he seemed to enjoy it. Drammen was the city where I stayed in the hospital so he and his companion actually came and played monopoly with me while I was in there. He says he has favorite things from each area, but his favorite city was in Bergen, his favorite ward was in Drammen, his best transfer was in Tønsberg, and his favorite P-day was in Romerike. He's in the Army Reserves. Been in for 2 1/2 years before the mission. He's considering ROTC. He is a Humvee mechanic. Doesn't remember the MOS. His favorite quote is "Death does not come after your last breath it comes after the last memory of you is lost." He thinks having me is a companion is awesome. We were in the same district in Bergen and it's nice for him to be with someone who is familiar with missionary work and the language and can back him up as a senior companion. He really said that...
I'm not sure why President wanted me as a junior companion this transfer. He didn't say anything about it to me. I'm assuming it's because Rasmussen is a younger guy on the mission who just got done training for the first time. That was only his first transfer being a senior companion, so I assume that President Evans wanted to keep him going as a senior...no reason for me to be senior just cause I'm going home soon. So I think it's for Elder Rasmussen to get some more experience as a senior and maybe he wants to humble me or something haha I dunno.
We have Gospel Essentials somewhat periodically on Sundays. It's taught by our Ward mission leader when we have it.
We had two investigators in church yesterday. Nicole, who is the fiancee to a less active guy that we are meeting with. And Jørgen who is friends with a member. We're not really teaching Jørgen at this point...he hasn't shown a whole lot of interest, he just kind of showed up to church yesterday. He comes to activities in the Young Adult center every week.
We were out knocking on doors last night. It was pouring rain after having snowed for two days so everything was wet and slushy. We were soaked. We had a couple of people who asked us to come back later this week but not much else other than that. After an hour and a half of this, we knocked on a door of a lady who said she wasn't too interested but she invited us in to warm up. So that was kinda nice. We had a nice discussion over wine glasses filled with coke about the Church. She's a religion teacher at a middle school here so she was interested to hear from the Mormons what the Mormons believe. We left a Book of Mormon with her and her daughter and told her to call us if we could give a presentation to her school class about the Church...something I've done before. They weren't interested in any return appointment, and I'm not too optimistic that we'll see them again, but we'll see what happens. She has our number =)
That's all folks!
Elder Sessions
21 January 2013
Kjære familie og venner
I'm getting a new companion. His name is Elder Rasmussen. He's another older guy, about 26 or 27 now. He came to Norway when I was in Bergen, so he's been here for a while. He's in the military...he worked out some kind of deal with them so that he could go on the reserves for 2 years on his mission. Pretty cool. I've served around him before, he was in my district in Bergen and Oslo, so I'm excited. He's going to be my senior companion, so it'll be a nice little break, haha not really. I'm just glad I don't have to carry the phone anymore =P He'll arrive on Thursday morning.
Well I was pretty excited about this next week until I logged on for emails this morning. We've really been having a hard time finding people to teach, and the investigators that we've had have not been making progress, so we've ended up dropping pretty much all of them. We had a family that we were excited to go visit this week, if you remember Adam that I talked about when I first moved to Kristiansand. Adam emailed me this morning and said he wasn't interested in any more visits. I kinda expected that since he hadn't responded to our emails until I called him on the phone this weekend, but it was still a bummer. So Elder Rasmussen is going to get a fresh new start in an area with no investigators haha. I'm honestly looking forward to it though, I've felt like we needed to reboot for a while and a transfer is the perfect way to do that.
I spent a couple of days in Stavanger this past week. Two of my former companions, Elder Lillywhite from Oslo and Elder Peterson from Trondheim, were there so that was cool to see them again. It was the first time that I had been on splits in Stavanger, and I've now completed my tour of all of the big cities in Norway so I considered that a real accomplishment haha. Elder Abrams, the zone leader, and I spent most of the time walking around in the city contacting, although we did have two dinner appointments with some cool families. With one of the families we had planned to ask for a referral. We shared a great spiritual thought after dinner and the atmosphere was perfect to ask for the referral...it was going to be the next sentence out of Elder Abrams' mouth. And then, the father said they had to run the kids to the church and asked us to close with a prayer. So that was a real bummer haha. The family reacted really positively though and they'll get the referral the next time they go over there I'm sure.
It's still snowing outside, though not as much as it did in December. It's a bit cold, though again not as cold as it was in December. The days are starting to get a bit longer though, so I'm looking forward to some more sunlight and maybe even warmth at some point haha.
Til next week!
Elder Sessions
I'm getting a new companion. His name is Elder Rasmussen. He's another older guy, about 26 or 27 now. He came to Norway when I was in Bergen, so he's been here for a while. He's in the military...he worked out some kind of deal with them so that he could go on the reserves for 2 years on his mission. Pretty cool. I've served around him before, he was in my district in Bergen and Oslo, so I'm excited. He's going to be my senior companion, so it'll be a nice little break, haha not really. I'm just glad I don't have to carry the phone anymore =P He'll arrive on Thursday morning.
Well I was pretty excited about this next week until I logged on for emails this morning. We've really been having a hard time finding people to teach, and the investigators that we've had have not been making progress, so we've ended up dropping pretty much all of them. We had a family that we were excited to go visit this week, if you remember Adam that I talked about when I first moved to Kristiansand. Adam emailed me this morning and said he wasn't interested in any more visits. I kinda expected that since he hadn't responded to our emails until I called him on the phone this weekend, but it was still a bummer. So Elder Rasmussen is going to get a fresh new start in an area with no investigators haha. I'm honestly looking forward to it though, I've felt like we needed to reboot for a while and a transfer is the perfect way to do that.
I spent a couple of days in Stavanger this past week. Two of my former companions, Elder Lillywhite from Oslo and Elder Peterson from Trondheim, were there so that was cool to see them again. It was the first time that I had been on splits in Stavanger, and I've now completed my tour of all of the big cities in Norway so I considered that a real accomplishment haha. Elder Abrams, the zone leader, and I spent most of the time walking around in the city contacting, although we did have two dinner appointments with some cool families. With one of the families we had planned to ask for a referral. We shared a great spiritual thought after dinner and the atmosphere was perfect to ask for the referral...it was going to be the next sentence out of Elder Abrams' mouth. And then, the father said they had to run the kids to the church and asked us to close with a prayer. So that was a real bummer haha. The family reacted really positively though and they'll get the referral the next time they go over there I'm sure.
It's still snowing outside, though not as much as it did in December. It's a bit cold, though again not as cold as it was in December. The days are starting to get a bit longer though, so I'm looking forward to some more sunlight and maybe even warmth at some point haha.
Til next week!
Elder Sessions
14 January 2013
Kjære familie og venner
The finding of our apartment was pretty easy. The mission office gave us a list of apartments to go check out and we settled on this one. The tough part is moving all the furniture. We're still in the process of that. The new apartment is pre-furnished, so we have the unique challenge of finding a place to store everything until it's needed again.
There are no bike areas in Norway. We take busses everywhere and borrow the senior couple's car pretty much everyday. They only really use it to get to and from the city, so the car is really shared by the both of us.
Well we had another tough week. Our teach with Nancy this past Friday didn't go very well, and there just wasn't much else happening for us. Nancy is just focusing on the wrong things...she can't get past the fact that the women wear skirts to church and that we have separate classes for Relief Society and Priesthood. No matter what we teach her, her concerns always come back to that. So we're going to take a break from teaching her for a little while and just get her to some activities and things in the church.
I went on splits to Arendal this week to do a baptismal interview. I interviewed a lady named Lene who got baptized on Saturday. She had been best friends with a member here in Kristiansand basically their whole lives, but the member had never really done much to share the Gospel with her other than living her live and sticking to her standards. That was enough for Lene to notice something about her and to grow up with that influence in her life. She even had missionaries around the house when she was younger, but was never taught. 5 weeks ago, she met the missionaries in Arendal and immediately knew the message was true. It was a pretty cool story, and her mother, who I met this past week as well, now wants to be taught as well. Her mom, Unni, has been along for the whole ride and she's a pretty fantastic lady. She invited me for dinner the next time I'm in Arendal haha.
This next week, I'll be going to Stavanger. I'm going on splits with one of the zone leaders. So that'll be good. Then, this Sunday, we're having our moves call. I'm pretty sure I'll be staying in Kristiansand next transfer, the question is just whether or not I'll be getting a new companion. So tune in next week =)
The finding of our apartment was pretty easy. The mission office gave us a list of apartments to go check out and we settled on this one. The tough part is moving all the furniture. We're still in the process of that. The new apartment is pre-furnished, so we have the unique challenge of finding a place to store everything until it's needed again.
There are no bike areas in Norway. We take busses everywhere and borrow the senior couple's car pretty much everyday. They only really use it to get to and from the city, so the car is really shared by the both of us.
Well we had another tough week. Our teach with Nancy this past Friday didn't go very well, and there just wasn't much else happening for us. Nancy is just focusing on the wrong things...she can't get past the fact that the women wear skirts to church and that we have separate classes for Relief Society and Priesthood. No matter what we teach her, her concerns always come back to that. So we're going to take a break from teaching her for a little while and just get her to some activities and things in the church.
I went on splits to Arendal this week to do a baptismal interview. I interviewed a lady named Lene who got baptized on Saturday. She had been best friends with a member here in Kristiansand basically their whole lives, but the member had never really done much to share the Gospel with her other than living her live and sticking to her standards. That was enough for Lene to notice something about her and to grow up with that influence in her life. She even had missionaries around the house when she was younger, but was never taught. 5 weeks ago, she met the missionaries in Arendal and immediately knew the message was true. It was a pretty cool story, and her mother, who I met this past week as well, now wants to be taught as well. Her mom, Unni, has been along for the whole ride and she's a pretty fantastic lady. She invited me for dinner the next time I'm in Arendal haha.
This next week, I'll be going to Stavanger. I'm going on splits with one of the zone leaders. So that'll be good. Then, this Sunday, we're having our moves call. I'm pretty sure I'll be staying in Kristiansand next transfer, the question is just whether or not I'll be getting a new companion. So tune in next week =)
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