Week 4: Exploding Toilets and Fridays Don't Count

10 DAYS TO NORWAYYYY!!!!!! We have a thing in our district that we have decided that in our countdown we shouldn't count p-days, general conference, or Fridays. And no Fridays are not special but it makes our departure date seem sooner if we don't count them so we say were leaving in 5 days! We are all itching to get out of here. We received an email this week about our flight and what exactly will happen the 24 hours after we arrive at the Oslo airport. Its crazy to think that just a day after arriving i will have my companion and first assignment and i will have departed for my first area.

I have been continuing to progress in the language and i'm feeling very comfortable with it so far, but i know it will be a whole new story once i actually get to Norway. But this week my companion and i committed one of our fake investigators to baptism so we were super pumped about that. Even though we know it's fake, it's still so satisfying just to be good enough at the language to communicate freely with our teachers, and to convince their characters to be baptized. I'm really proud of myself and the others at our growth and i cant wait to get out there and do it for real! This morning i saw some germany-bound elders so i said something to them in german and when they replied i realized that i no longer have any german skills whatsoever and that space has been filled by norwegian. I am ok with that though because norsk is a much prettier language i think and german is not much more useful anyway.

I think I was getting sick a little bit from all the junk food i've been eating. I am definitely not eating healthy food here at the MTC but now i am trying to eat less unhealthy food which is good. I decided a while ago that i should cut back on chocolate milk and junk food so my life has been better since then. Now i'm mostly just drinking water and not eating dessert stuff. Actually a lot of people are sick here. It's kinda a recipe for disaster to bring in thousands of people from around the world to a place with bad hygiene. Almost everyone i've met has been sick since they've got here. Also i've learned that if you are feeling a little intestinally gross, a nice glass of mtc orange juice will clear it out real quick haha. 

Most interesting thing that happened this week (clean version): Yesterday during class Eldste Parrish, one of my roommates, got up and went to the bathroom. While he was sitting on the toilet it exploded and soaked him with toilet water and flooded the entire bathroom. His comp had to run back to the residence and get an entirely new change of clothes for him and we're not sure if the bathroom has been cleaned up or what because all they did was leave a little note on the door which said "toilet exploded". So there is a little taste of the MTC life for you, sorry if that was too much info. Not much else happened this week so that is the best email material i got.

Another interesting little thing i did was i learned the Norwegian happy birthday song because it was Eldste Baldwin's birthday a few days ago. I'm attaching a picture of it and i highly reccommend singing it because it's awesome!!!

Anyways, i hope all of you had awesome weeks and none of you experienced exploding toilets. And please email me because I would love to hear what's going on back home! Ha det bra!

Happy Birthday in Norwegian!

Week 3: Love and Diligence

Hallo alle!!!

This week was pretty awesome but not a lot happened. The MTC life is starting to get a little bit repetitive and Norway is sounding better every day. Yesterday we were looking at pictures of Norway and it is literally the most beautiful place on earth! My companion and roommates all agree that we are ready to get out of here and be there. I am still very glad to be here though and im still learning and having an awesome time, because i am surrounded by such awesome people all the time and the spirit is here to help me get through it, which i definitely need.

The most noteworthy thing this week was probably that we had a devotional on tuesday by Quentin L Cook and his wife. He talked about being a successful missionary through love. He stressed 4 things that we need to learn to love on our mission to be a good missionary:

1. Love your companion

2. Love the people of Norway

3. Love your mission president

4. Love the Savior

If we can have love for those 4 things, it will help us throughout our lives, and especially on our mission.

As a district a Christlike attribute that we focused on last week was charity, so that talk was perfect for that. This week we are focusing on diligence because we know its going to take a lot of that to get through the last few weeks here with the language and everything.

Vær så godt!

Eldste Spencer

Week 2: Learning by Experience

Hey yall this week was super awesome! 

On Sunday we got to hear an awesome talk from Chad Lewis, a former byu/nfl tight end. I didn't actually get a ton of spiritual stuff out of his talk because he just shared stories of his life but they were pretty interesting and entertaining haha. The main thing I learned from it was how much he loves the feeling of jumping over someone in a football game.

On Wednesday we had a new batch of missionaries come in, and they called my district to help host some of them. I had never done this before. When we host, we're supposed to meet a new missionary as they get dropped off, take them to their room to drop off luggage, and then to their classroom to immediately start learning and getting to know their teachers. I was pretty excited about it so I didn't think as much as i should have. I took elder martin him to his classroom first, then took his luggage and residence key to his room and dropped it off without him, and left. So his key was locked in his room. I realized after how bad i messed up but im sure he will be fine (: also i learned a lot from that experience so if i ever have to host again i have a higher chance of not messing up.

Home sweet home

A funny quote from this week: one of my norwegian teachers is from england and he is pretty patriotic and thinks he's superior to america. But I love him and he's hilarious and he's a good teacher so its ok. He plays soccer and this is something he said in class. "Norwegians are born with skis on their feet, and Englanders are born with soccer cleats on their feet. Americans are born with twinkies on their feet and 10 extra pounds".

So yeah i like all my teachers and I'm still doing well with the language. It's amazing how quickly you can learn a language. Its crazy to think that some of the missionaries in my class didn't know a speck of norsk 2 weeks ago and now everyone can at least bear their testimonies and make basic sentences. In class we're teaching fake investigators in Norwegian and that's going pretty well. The language is coming along super well for me and I love speaking norwegian. Eldste Lowther is struggling with it though. I like him as a person and a friend but he's not very motivated all the time. We've struggled with teaching because he can't really say much so i get stressed out cuz i feel like i have to do everything. Also we get sidetracked pretty easily as a companionship and we're not super good at preparing the lessons. We are improving slowly though, and we always pray that we can have help from the spirit in our preparation and our lessons.

Me and Eldste Lowther

I heard Kimball is applying to work at the mtc so that would be awesome if i could see him here. So far I've seen 3 people that I know: Tanner Allen, Tyler West, and Cambria. Its really cool to see them but at the same time it's kinda weird cuz we have to act a little differently being missionaries. Also it's kinda weird to see parts of my old life being mixed in with what i'm doing now. There are things i miss about home but I am so happy to be here and have a fresh start from everything. 

We went to the temple as a district. The provo temple is kinda funny looking haha but it was still really cool. I love everyone in my district and ive become good friends with most of them. I'm so happy to be here and i'm having an awesome time!

Vær så godt!

Eldste Spencer​​​​​​​​​​

Week 1: So excited to be a missionary... and TRUE ICE

Look out, Norway!

Hey everybody my first week at the MTC has been so awesome!!!! The spirit is so strong here all the time and im loving it. My companion is Eldste Lowther and he's already one of my best friends! Also all of my room mates are super fun and we have totally bonded super well as a group. I feel like I have already been here for a long time and i'm completely used to it now. Actually a new group of missionaries came in yesterday so i'm a veteran now haha. The food is not quite as good as my moms but we do get lots of chocolate milk here so its ok.

The Norwegian is coming along very well and i'm getting better every day. I did have a pretty good head start over the other Nords but they're also getting way better really fast and i'm really proud of all of them. We actually have 4 teachers. but so far 2 of them have just acted as investigators for us to paractice teaching in norsk. We have been teaching a fake invesitator named Karoline and that's going pretty well even though the language is definitely a barrier. One thing I've found is that the more we prepare to teach her the more the spirit is there to teach with us. It's going really well and its fun to be surrounded by norwegian speakers. I like my teachers and i love speaking norwegian and i try to do it with my comp as much as possible, until he gets sick of me haha. Its much harder to articulate all of your thoughts in a different language but that has never been a barrier for the spirit to teach and thats what ive found to be most important anyway. The other big struggle is that there is free ice cream and soda, so eating healthy is really hard!

Fun story/thing of the week is the true ice tradition. I live in a building with hundreds of other elders and you already know the kind of stuff that happens when you put that much testosterone in one building. We have lots of crazy traditions and its super fun. Most of the rooms on my floor are for people going to scandinavia (norway, sweden, finland, denmark, iceland, and the netherlands) and our tradition is that to prepare to baptize in the cold water of the baltic & nordic seas, we have to take all our showers on the coldest setting possible while singing in our language. Its a little crazy and awful but its awesome and i love it.

 I am so excited to be in Norway, but im also super happy where im at right now because i can always feel the spirit and everyone loves each other here and im speaking the divine language and its incredible!!!! 

If anyone knows anyone who wants to be a part of these group emails please have them email me because i would love to add them in.

Eldste Spencer's MTC district. Apparently, this group headed to Norway is currently the largest district in the MTC.

Safely at the MTC!

Elder Spencer wanted street tacos for his last meal, and we found a great place in Provo that met all his expectations! 

Killing just a little time before heading up the street to the MTC at 1:45.

Fun to bump into a few familiar faces at the BYU bookstore!

And now, it's goodbye! Love you, Grandma!

Last family hug for awhile.

Our people. Love, love, love the smile on this Elder's face!

(This letter came the day after we said goodbye to Elder Spencer. It makes us laugh because we delivered him to the MTC ourselves. Nevertheless, it is ALWAYS joyful to hear from our missionary son!)

hey everyone just checking in to let you know i have safely arrived to the MTC and i am doing very well and having an awesome time! my p-day is thursday so i will be replying to emails then. Ha det bra!!

Preparing to Launch....

Monday, August 28: Nick gets set apart as a missionary. Great day!

Great friends come to say goodbye.