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

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