Week 13: Ups and Downs

Today was an ups and downs week.

I didnt have a really cool P-day this week because apparently the only time people actually want to meet with us is on p-day. so last p-day and this p-day actually will be more of a missionary work day than any other days of the week.

On Tuesday it started snowing in the morning and didnt stop all day. By the time we went to sleep there was about 2 inches on the ground and it was still going strong. Then when we woke up it was raining and all the snow had turned to slush.

 We were on fire from last week and we had about 7 appointments planned with investigators or potential investigators. Then 6 of them cancelled. and one got postponed. So yeah it was kinda rough, but that left plenty of time for other stuff which was good.

I used part of that time to write my sacrament meeting talk for sunday. It went really well and i was super pumped about that because it was the best/longest talk i have ever given and it was in a foreign language.

On Saturday we celebrated Thanksgiving! The Cooks (senior missionary couple) invited all our district over to have thanksgiving dinner after district meeting. They made turkey and stuffing and potatoes and pie and it was amazing. Elder Brooks and I contributed by making like 60 cookies (the recipe was bigger than we thought). Only about 15 got eaten so we made ourselves sick on sunday eating all the leftover cookies.

Also a highlight of this week was we traveled back to Kilsund, a tiny town on the ocean, to do more tracting and we saw deer and got 2 more potential investigators.

Pictures: Kilsund

Week 12: Staying in the Bahamas of Norway!

Norwegians like trolls. Sinnatrolla translates to the angry troll.

Transfers are this week!!!!! And............. i'm staying in Arendal with Eldste Brooks. I'm really happy about that though because I love Arendal and I'm excited to spend Christmas here. I love our branch here and know almost all of the members. They don't actually invite us over for middag very often but there's only like 40-50 of them and I see them for 3 hours every sunday so i'm familiar with all of them.

I am loving the cold! It's so fun! I like going out in my big warm clothing and not sweating and seeing frost and frozen puddles so it's awesome. I've heard Arendal compared to " the bahamas of Norway". Yes it is the least cold place in Norway. No it is not the Bahamas. It's usually right around 0 degrees Celcius, and I slipped on my first ice this week. The issue was the puddle was only partially frozen so it was solid enough for me to slip on it  but thin enough that there was still a lot of ice cold liquid water under it. So I got soaked and that was cold but it was funny so #worthit

There is no snow yet. I've asked some people here and they've said that they don't get much at all here. Maybe a few inches in december/january but that's it. One awesome thing though is that the city puts up a ton of Christmas trees everywhere so when we go contacting on the gågate there are like 2-3 trees all lit up in front of every single shop in town so it's really pretty. And there's Christmas lights hung up everywhere. 

P-DAY: We went to Grimstad to find a second-hand store that we heard was good, because I need a scarf and hat for winter, and i'm cheap. I don't think we found it, but we found 2 other little ones that were cool but didn't have what i was looking for. So we gave up and went on a hike near the town up a cool hill called lille binabb where we found a stray cat that liked us.

Stray cat on lille Binabb (ok maybe it didn't like me that much)

Lille Binabb

Lille Binabb

We went back to Longum this week for one of our appointments and got sent away as soon as we knocked on their door again. So that was a little disappointing. The other follow up appointment is scheduled for this Friday so we'll find out if that one goes through.

We had another fun Finding week: We found another tiny town about a 30 min bus ride away called Kilsund. That was fun and we found 2 potentials there. Also Kilsund was one of the most beautiful places I have seen so far here in Norway, and that's saying a lot. Pictures are included below.

Kilsund

Kilsund

Also this week I hit a big landmark on my mission. We got our first official investigator that was found and taught completely by us! Before this point we had gotten 2 other official investigators, but they were either a referral from a member, or a previous investigator who became re-interested. So i'm pretty proud and happy about that.

Ha det godt dere!

Week 11: A New Finding Strategy

Hallo alle sammen! This has probably been the best week of my mission! We had lots of adventures and a lot of success!

Tuesday and Wednesday we did splits with the Kristiansand missionaries and that was really fun. Kristiansand is a way bigger city than Arendal so it was fun and interesting to have more than 2 blocks of good contacting area. by the end of the days, I was actually missing Arendal a little bit so it is good to be back. Not too much happened on splits excpet that we taught a guy from Sudan who said he spoke Arabic but almost no norwegian or english. So we found out how to get a restoration video with Arabic commentary. So we showed him that and tried to discuss it a little but he didnt really respond to it so were not sure how much he really understood haha.

The next day, Elder brooks and I got back together and we went into beast mode. We decided that we wanted to try something new for our finding strategy. So we went on google maps and found some small towns/boonies away from Arendal that we wanted to go tracting in: Eydehavn, Longum, and Tvedestrand.

Eydehavn was not packed with success but we got a lot of good stories out of it. I will just share one for the sake of time. There was one guy who was out changing his tire so we walked up and asked if we could help. Fun fact: almost all Norwegians do not like recieving help from others because they think it means that they are weak if they need help, and vikings arent weak. But this guy actually immediately said ja! vær så god! This caught us off gaurd because we werent used to people accepting service, and secondly because we didnt really know how to help him. So he said some other stuff and went back to doing it himself. So we awkwardly walked away thinking that he didn't really want our help and was just messing with us.

Longum: This is where the real stories were made. First of all, we banked on doors in Longum for about 2 hours and we got 2 people who said we could come back for appointments next week. Up to this point on my mission we have had a total of 0 people who we met and set up a first appointment with. So 2 in one night was incredible. We were so pumped after we finished that we were distracted and missed our bus. Busses only come out to Longum every 2 hours. So we started walking. It was hovering right around 0 degrees celcius and it was totally dark outside at 6:00. We walked along the side of the highway for a mile or so then there was construction so we got detoured onto a sketchy little path that took us in a different direction. We walked and proceeded to get lost. We eventually found our way to some weird constuction place where we asked someone how to get to Arendal. We walked a couple more miles before we found the edge of the city, where we were able to catch a bus back home. 

Stranded in Longum

Tvedestrand was awesome too because we found someone and got another appointment! So it was a success. The only issue was it was a few degrees below 0 C and my hands were freezing off so we had to take a break and go buy me some gloves. So that was fun.

Then to top it off, Sunday night we met a girl contacting and got an appointment with her too! So we are currently on fire #jit

Anyways, Arendal is still awesome as usual. Winter is coming and the puddles have frozen. Were just praying for snow now. We are in Christmas mode now and we have 15 christmas songs on a thumbdrive that we listen to on repeat whenever were home. So part of today will be spent trying to expand our appropriate christmas music collection. and shopping.

Have an awesome week yall!

Sunday night tradition: Vanilla sauce chocolate milk

Sunsets at 4:08 pm

Week 10: Epic, awesome, best

The time has gone by so fast out here! I cant believe im almost done with my first transfer. i love it here in Arendal and I am so happy to be here. 

Last P-day was fun. We took a bus out to Tromøy and went to the beach! Actually I dont know if you would call it a beach because there was no sand, but there was the ocean and cool rock formations and stuff so I got some awesome pictures of that which I will attach at the end. Then we went shopping and I made some purchases which I am extremely pumped about. I bought a nice warm coat to prepare me for the next few months and for when I get sent to Alta. Also I think it looks really cool so thats a plus. Then I made possibly the single best purchase of my life. When we were in the store to buy me the coat, we found a rack of traditional Norwegian Sweaters and of course i had to buy one. It looks so cool and ive been obsessed with it over the last week since i got it. Pics will be included of course.

Then Monday night we got on a train to Oslo for First Transfer Training. That is where all the new missionaries meet up and get some extra missionary training. Mostly it was just fun to see more of my MTC squad. They split us up into 2 sessions so i didnt get to see everyone from my MTC group, but it was still super fun and awesome. While there we got to go see the Royal Palace and do some other fun stuff.

We still work hard every day and so far we have mostly just had lots of people who dont show up to appointments but we did find one guy on the street who said he might be interested and took a book of mormon this week so that was cool. 

Fun Fact: Norwegians love Christmas. A lot. All they stores in Arendal have started putting up Christmas decorations and I am so glad I have the opportunity to be here for the Christmas season. One thing I tried for the first time this week was Julebrus. This is a Norwegian tradition: Every decently sized town in Norway makes their own flavor of soda every year for Christmas and its called Julebrus, which literally translates to "Christmas Soda". So I got to have some Arendalsk Julebrus this week and it was delicous and we listened to Christmas music while we did it. 

Ha en god uke videre (Have a good week ahead)

Julebrus and my sweater

Bus stop in the Boonies of Norway

Possibly one of the most epic pics ever taken of me (not saying much)

Me at the ocean #viking

I found some muskeg here while we were at the coast and it reminded me of Petersburg. Actually everything here reminds me of Petersburg. Anyways heres some muskeg for y'all. enjoy