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

Kjære familie og venner.

Well, the apartment I was living in was sold, so we're moving haha. Luckily we still had the apartment from the second Elder companionship here in Trondheim so we're just moving in there. But my new address is here:

Dyre Halses gate 5 #26
7014 Trondheim

Yep, well that's been taking up some time this week. But Yongqing is still doing well. He came to a baptism that the Sisters had yesterday and he seemed to like it. The biggest problem is he is kinda quiet, so it's somewhat hard to gauge where he's at. But he keeps all the commitments we give him, so that's good. He'll be baptized this Saturday.

Other than him, we have a couple of other pretty positive people right now. Jenny is a friend to a member who we've started teaching. She took a Book of Mormon and seemed excited to read it. Then we have Lars, who is a referral from Fernanda, our recent convert. He really liked the Plan of Salvation, although they met with him while I was on splits this week, so I actually have taught him yet haha. We'll see where we get with them this week.

I had a cool study this week that I wanted to share, but I really don't have time. We've got some members who are planning to meet up with us to help us move today. But, I'll just have to send it out next week.

Talk to ya soon
Elder Sessions

Kjære familie og venner

It's an exciting time in Norway. We just got a second stake and our mission president is already talking about a 3rd. He's already got it planned and everything haha. I definitely don't think it will take us 35 years like it did last time. In order to show that the mission is serious about building that 3rd stake, President Johansen made some changes in the missionary areas. He opened a second area down in Tønsberg, my good ol' greenie area =) Now there are 4 missionaries working on that one branch of 25 people, because Tønsberg growing into a ward is a huge part of President's plan for a 3rd stake. In order to have enough missionaries for that, the second elder's area in Trondheim was closed.

Which means more work for me! haha

One of the investigators who was being taught by the other elders is a Chinese man named Yongqing. We met with him on Saturday and set a baptismal date for the 2nd of June. So that's pretty exciting. We had a dinner party at a members house later that night and he really enjoyed himself. Then, he came to church the next day and seemed to be really excited. We'll be meeting with him again on Wednesday. The hardest part is the language barrier. He can understand English pretty well, he just has a hard time expressing himself in english. So we have a chinese member who lives in Oslo that is going to skype in for our teaching appointments with him. so that'll be fun haha.

Elder Peterson seems to be enjoying himself here. It's his first transfer as a zone leader so it's been fun for me as well haha. He was a district leader down in Kristiansand, in the south of Norway, so the weather has also been an adjustment for him. He says he lives about 2 hours away from Coon Rapids, where mom used to live.

Fun fact, which your email actually just reminded me of. One of the AP's this transfer is named Elder Tarver from Austin, Texas. When we were in Oslo for the Norway Conference, we stayed at the AP's apartment for that weekend and I got to talking with Elder Tarver about Texas. The cool thing is that he was actually a part of the exact same performance that I was back when the San Antonio Temple was dedicated. The Austin stakes were also a part of the practice we had the week before the performance at that high school football field down in San Antonio. So that was a cool little "small world moment"

We've got a pretty normal week ahead of us though. President Johansen is coming to Trondheim tomorrow for a specialized training meeting. Elder Peterson and I are presenting there. Other than that abnormality, we'll just be meeting with some people for the first time and getting some return appointments. You know, normal stuff =P

Good luck to everyone who's starting exam season =) Kinda glad I don't have to worry about that for a few more semesters, haha

We'll talk
Elder Session

Kjære familie og venner

I've had a pretty busy week this time around. We had transfers on Tuesday so I got a new companion, Elder Peterson. He's from Minnesota, the only other place in the world besides Norway which can claim to be the home of the vikings. He's been on his mission for about 10 months now. We're pretty excited about the zone we have this transfer, so it'll be good to see how it turns out. Elder Bekker moved into the mission office in Sandvika. So I'll be here in Trondheim for at least another 2 months, which is fine cause I like it alright here =)

The second elders' area here in Trondheim closed with transfers as well, so we inherited all of their investigators. We suddenly became very busy. I'm still trying to sort out all the names and things, so get back to me next week and I'll let you know where we're at haha. Just kidding, we've got a couple of people to work with over the next few days so it should be some fun. We don't have any baptismal dates at the moment though, so I'll let you know when we find some people who start progressing towards that.

You may be wondering why my email is late this week. Actually, it's because today is the 17th of May, which is the Norwegian independence day. It's a non-proselyting day, mainly because it's illegal to proselyte haha. So we're having our preparation day on Thursday this week instead of Monday. So we have a day to kind of just hang out with the members and have a good rest. They have parades in all the cities during the day and then usually everyone goes back in huge family groups and has a barbecue dinner.

Well, other than that, it's just another week of work. We'll be getting back at it tomorrow. One of these days, I'll stay up and take a picture of the midnight sun to send home. Another cool thing about living up north =)

Have a good week everyone!
Elder Session