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

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 =)

7 January 2013

Kjære familie og venner

Well, I've moved again. Haha it seems like every time I get settled into a new apartment, I end up moving. This time it was closer into the city. The apartment we were in was moldy and run down. It was also a little far outside of the city without a car. So now we live in a pretty nice place right in sentrum. It sounds like our new apartment with probably go to the sisters once there are sisters in Kristiansand, but that will be after I leave anyways, so it's all good =)

We had two investigators in church yesterday so that was pretty cool. One was Nancy, and the other is a lady named Nicole. Nicole is engaged and lives with a less active member here in Kristiansand. We went to go visit them this past week and invited them both to church. Nicole has been taught many times before by the missionaries, but she's had a tough time understanding a couple different things and it seems as though missionaries have just been beating a dead horse with her. So we're going to take a different approach haha. We decided actually to focus on her fiance. Get him active and coming to church and then we hope to work with Nicole a little bit down the road. She can't get baptized until after they are married since they live together anyways. Nicole is way supportive though, in helping John George (her fiance). She basically told him that he was going to be active in the Church, and I don't think he had a choice in the matter haha.

We met with Nancy this week and she came to church so that was good. The biggest problem with her is she is so dang shy. It's really hard to teach her and know what she is understanding and where she is at because she won't ask questions. She says she understands it and that she doesn't have any questions, but we know she does haha. I had a conversation with her this morning about a bunch of different things. Mainly, she doesn't understand why we say it is so important that Christ has a church on the earth. She is just as fine with the Norwegian state church as she is with ours. It all really goes back to the first missionary lesson, which is on the Restoration. If investigators don't understand that Christ had a church with a specific organization and a specific doctrine and a specific authority that was lost after the death of the Apostles, then they won't understand the need to a Restoration of those very things. 99% of investigators' concerns go back to the first lesson. I would say all of them, but I'll say 99% just in case someone ever thinks of an exception. But I can't think of any.

So we're going to have to rehash the first lesson again with her. I wasn't there when it was taught the first time so I don't know exactly how that went. It probably went about how our lesson with her went this week. It seemed to go well, but she just has questions and thoughts that don't get expressed. We'll see how that goes =)

Other than that, we've been busy this weekend getting packed up and cleaning out the old apartment, moving stuff to the new apartment, etc. Luckily, the new apartment came furnished so that makes things a bit easier.

Til next week!

Elder Sessions

PS, there's also pictures of our district ping pong tournament on new years eve. i came 3rd....out of 4 people haha.

New Address:

Festningsgate 47, #210

4612 Kristiansand

31 December 2012

Kjære familie og venner

Don't worry, I'm not going apostate. I was joking when I said that I didn't care cause I only have two months left. Now is no different than 10 months ago for me.

Christmas was great. Spent some time with a couple different families in the area and ate a lot of great food. I've realized that our family Christmas traditions are very Norwegian in a lot of ways. I don't know if that's intentional or if it's just kind of stuck in the family over time...but I didn't realize it until I came to Norway.

Mission Conference was good. Everyone kept asking how it felt to be the oldest missionaries in the mission...dunno why, it didn't feel very different than being the youngest haha. It was the last conference for me and Elder Bekker, so we gave our "burniemonies" at the very end...basically our final conference testimony. It was tougher than I thought it would be, and I'm glad it's over with now.

We're still having a tough time meeting with some of our investigators regularly. They live so far out and they've all been busy with family stuff over Christmas, so that's been a little frustrating. But I hope that we can meet with some of them this week. Dag was in England this weekend, but he said he wanted to come to church when he gets back, so hopefully that will happen this upcoming Sunday. 

Happy New Year everyone!
Elder Sessions

24 December 2012

God Jul Alle Sammen!

We got a skikkelig winter storm in here this weekend! Seriously, most snow I've ever seen in my life. I'll send a couple pictures along for visual proof, but we had a bush in our backyard that was completely covered with snow. Ridiculous.

This morning, we had planned to take a nice relaxing P-day at the institute center in the city, write some emails, play some ping-pong and get ready for our dinner appointment tonight. Unfortunately, our car got stuck in the snow. After two hours of trying to dig it out, putting sticks under the wheels for traction and all kinds of stuff, we tried calling for help from some members in the area, but no one could get out to us. I finally sat down in the snow in frustration. 

Here we were in the middle of no-mans land on Christmas Eve, with our wheels spinning in a 6 inch deep hole and nothing we did to dig or push was getting the car to budge. At some point I think one of the two of us said some sort of prayer. Out of nowhere a foreign guy comes running up to our car and says, "Folk kommer. Bare vent."

I didn't quite believe him at first but suddenly there were 5 people around our car, pushing and digging and screaming Arabic at each other. It was quite the sight. I don't know if they appreciated the "God Jul" we shouted in thanks as we left, but I learned a pretty good lesson I think...around Christmas, God will give everyone a chance to serve...even those who don't celebrate it. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Elder Sessions

17 December 2012

Kjære familie og venner!

 Got some more pictures from this week! A couple from our drive from 
 Kristiansand to Stavanger for a training meeting. A picture of the 
 gingerbread house my companion and I made the other night, and a 
 picture of our car in the middle of the snowstorm this weekend. 
 Finally a picture of my apartment after we cleaned it this morning =P

 I got a request for the lowdown on my companion haha. He's from Oregon.
 He's 26, the oldest of 3 kids I think. He sent his mission papers in 
 one week before his 26th birthday, which is the deadline. He worked in 
 steel construction before his mission and he's probably going to go 
 back to school when he gets home to get his degree. Kristiansand is his first area.
 He just got here about 3 months ago. He was trained by my greenie, 
 Elder Bird, which makes him my "grandson" haha. Cool kid. named Elder Donahue.
 Dunno, let me know if I missed anything =)

 We had a pretty good meeting with Dag this past week. Taught the Plan 
 of Salvation. We invited him to church but he wasn't able to come, so 
 we've just got to get an appointment to hopefully meet with him again this week.
 It went well with him though, and we had a member with us, so that was 
 good. We didn't meet with Nancy or Adam this week. Nancy is gonna come 
 to FHE tonight. Adam wants us to come visit the first week of January.

 Starting on Friday night, we have dinner appointments with members all 
 the ways until New Year's Eve. Well, minus the days we'll be in Oslo 
 for Mission Conference. We're going to spend Christmas Eve and morning 
 here in Kristiansand, and then we're going to drive about an hour away 
 to Evje and spend the rest of the day with the branch president's 
 family there. Play some games, eat some food, skype our families and 
 just be lazy =P

 I'll send out an email next Monday. Christmas Eve. So stoked =)

Merry Christmas everyone!

Elder Sessions