Uke 63: God Jul!

GOD JUL!

It was an awesome week for us here in Haugesund! We don't have any snow, but the members here have been super nice and fed us lots of good food recently and given us socks and scarves and chocolate and other good stuff. It's great to have people who treat me like family even though I'm so far from home! I love these people but I am very excited to be talking to my real family later today! I hope you guys have a fantastic Christmas too! God Jul!

Uke 62: Serving, Hiking, and Cool Norwegian Pants

Ja... riktig god morgen til alle dere som sitter og leser den her eposten.

It's been a good week! My companion and I are having a blast over here, staying busy and having some adventures. We did a lot of service and some hiking.

We spent one full day helping members with lots of different stuff, such as moving beds, cleaning houses, and cutting wood. It was a long day but it felt good to do some physical labor again to remind me of my Hamar days. We spent the whole day with a funny old member of the church here named Jens, and between jobs, we chilled with him and sang some songs and tried to play guitar.

The subject of Light the World this week was to light your family, so we planned an activity for yesterday to help people learn how to do family history. It was mostly the sisters idea but we went along with it and invited people to it, both members and people we are teaching and whoever is interested. We showed up at the church last night at 6 and nobody came. So the sisters just taught us a little bit and that was it.

Last p-day, we hiked a little mountain right by the city and found some nazi bunkers from WW2. That was pretty cool and the weather was perfect so the view from the top of the mountain was deilig. There was another day we were going to go hiking with somebody but they cancelled last minute so we decided to just go anyway because we were already there (and we really wanted to try out our new tur-pants). We didn't find a trail so we just walked/climbed upwards through the trees and bushes until we got to the top. There was a cliff at the top that dropped almost straight down 200 meters! The weather wasn't the best but we got some good pics 

Uke 61: High on Sunshine

God morgen dokær!

This week was pretty frikkin exciting because I moved to Haugesund on Wednesday! I was greeted at the airport by a Filipino guy saying something happened with my companion and they couldn't find him. So I was a little confused but I quickly found out I was getting pranked by Elder Martineau and a couple of members. This place is pretty awesome from what I have seen so far! I think it's about 3 times bigger than Alta, and there is a lot more going on. There are more members of the church here and 2 other missionaries, and lots more people out in the city. It's still not super big and crazy by American standards but it's pretty crazy for me! In the last 6 days since I arrived, we have been pretty busy every day.

One of my favorite activities we did in Alta was playing basketball every week, so I was happy to find out that we play volleyball with people here every week! I'm not very good at volleyball but it's fun anyway.

We took a bus ride up through some fjords yesterday to Sauda to visit an old man named Willem and that was fun! The drive was beautiful (and 3 hours long each way) and it was fun hanging out with Willem. He's a funny guy! I got to see lots of sunlight on the way back and that was amazing. The first time I saw the sun was on Saturday and it was so good I almost had a heart attack and I now know how it feels to get high  just kidding, but seriously it was amazing. I never appreciated the sun like I do now. Every time I see the sun now I almost cry with joy. Don't take it for granted, yall.

Nyt livet!

Uke 60: A Lot of Good

I'M MOVING TO HAUGESUND TOMORROW! We found out about moves yesterday and my companion and I are both leaving. I have been here in Alta for the last 4 months and I feel so lucky to have been able to be here! I didn't baptize anyone but I think I did a lot of good,  grew to love a lot of people, made a lot of good memories, saw northern lights, reindeer, and all the other awesome nature of the North, and I think I had some personal growth too. We went on a hike with Geir this morning to kinda say goodbye to him before we both leave tomorrow. In a few hours we are meeting up with Filip, and then tonight we're playing basketball one last time. 

I LOVE this place and it is a little hard saying goodbye, but I am really excited to be going to Haugesund! It is a much bigger city than Alta and it's in West-Norway. There is a larger branch of the church there an extra set of missionaries. This will be my first time in a city with more missionaries so I am super excited for that!! It's cool in some ways being really isolated but you can get a little lonely after a year of it.

Nothing super crazy happened this week other than finding out about moves, so I don't have much to write about, but I hope yall have a good week, vi snakkes! Btw my new address will be Uelands Gate 2, 5531 Haugesund.

Uke 59: Bringing Out the Dogsled

I haven't seen the sun in 20 days 

We went to Nordkapp this week! Nordkapp is the northernmost point in Norway, which is a few hours away from where we live. I had been there once a few months ago with my last companion, but it was still super cool this time! The weather wasn't the best and the sun never came up, but the landscape was amazing anyway!

It was good we took that drive when we did because if we waited one more day, we couldn't have done it because there would have been too much snow! It snowed nonstop for a few days this week and the temperature has been below 0 C so we have almost a foot of it on the ground. Runar, our branch president, is breaking out the sled today because there is now enough snow to start doing actual dog sledding.

My companion and I are kinda obsessed with homemade bread right now so we made that 3 times this week. You gotta get interested in something when you're cold and lonely up north haha. Other than that, nothing else happened this week. Next week is moves so I am excited to see what will happen! Until then, ha det bra dere!

Uke 58: A Visit from President and Sister Tew

Not a ton of exciting stuff happened this week so I am probably not going to write that much. 

We went to Hammerfest on Friday and visited an awesome guy named Stig. We saw some cool clouds on the drive up there! I would call it a sunset but the sun never came up in the first place so I don't know if I can still call it that. Anyways, I got some pictures of that down below We talked with Stig for a couple hours and he took us out to get pizza. He is super positive towards the church, and he wants to get baptized but he doesn't come to church because he lives so far away.

Other stuff that happened this week: Filip made us some homemade bread and we ate it with butter and honey  My companion passed his test to get his driving license, and we played basketball!

The highlight of the week was probably this weekend because the mission president and his wife traveled all the way up to Alta to talk to us and the members about the area. He wanted to meet as many members as possible up here so we scheduled dinner with Johan, a Sami guy we went on a couple hikes with at the end of the summer. He stopped coming to church a long time ago and he's not interested in coming back but he is a nice guy and he made some good nordnorsk fiskesuppe (north Norwegian fish soup) for us. The rest of the time while the Tews were here was spent studying with us, going to church, and having a koselig time with the members.

Uke 57: Farewell Sun, Hello Northern Lights!

I saw people this week!!! I absolutely love being up here in Alta but it is a really small isolated town so it can get a little lonely sometimes. This week, we got to travel to Trondheim for a conference and after that, the Tromsø missionaries came up to Alta to do splits! So it was fun getting some extra human interaction this week, as well as some other cool stuff that happened.

The conference in Trondheim was awesome because it was fun to talk to a lot of other missionaries I haven't seen in a while, and it was really spiritually uplifting too! We focused on developing faith. A lot of people contributed to it and we did lots of different activities and things to keep our attention. We spent the night in Trondheim after conference along with about 10 other missionaries so it was a little crowded and crazy but really fun. Also, while in Trondheim, I got to see the sun for the last time until the next time I leave Alta, because this week, it stopped rising over the surrounding mountains.

The next morning, we took a flight back home along with the Tromsø boys, both of which were in my MTC group a year ago so I know them well. All 4 of us went out that night and got to see some amazing northern lights! So we had to stop banking on doors for a while to watch them and get some good pictures. The Tromsø missionaries got a skikkelig Alta experience with that along with huskies and disko parties with Geir!

We also played basketball a couple of times this week. It is a great activity for us because 1. Basketball is fun, and 2. It gives other people a chance to see as the normal cool guys we are outside of a church related setting. Whenever we play basketball, people are always super friendly and want to talk to us, which isn't normally the case.

On Sunday evening, our friend Filip invited us to come to the Filadelfia Pentecostal church because he was giving a sermon. I had heard a lot about that church before but it was cool being able to experience it in person. I guess I kinda thought it would be a little weird, but it was much more normal than I expected. There was some stuff that was a little different, like speaking in tongues, but mostly it was just a bunch of people who loved singing and Jesus. It was a really positive experience and everyone was really nice and welcoming to us!

That's all for this week, kos dere med noen bilder på nordlyset!

Uke 56: Channeling Faith

God morgen dokker! It has been a pretty good week! Not a lot of cool exciting stuff happened this time but overall it was good. 

I usually write emails every Tuesday but I'm writing today because we will be traveling most of the day tomorrow. We have zone conference down in Trondheim so we will be flying there tomorrow.

One of the highlights was meeting with Filip, who is an awesome guy we have been kinda teaching for a while. When missionaries first started talking to him about 6 months ago, they were giving him structured lessons to teach him about our church, but he wasn't so interested in that teacher-student type of relationship. So our weekly meetings with him have turned into dinner and theology discussions. He made some good Tandoori stuff for dinner and we brought some pepperkaker for dessert. We talked about a lot of stuff with him, especially faith, grace, and mercy. He is a very faithful christian and has a firm belief in the Bible. He has studied the bible more than anyone else I know, and from all that studying, his beliefs align more closely with ours than those of his own church (Pentecostal). The biggest difference is that he doesn't believe there is really one true church, and the most important thing is your personal relationship with God. He absolutely has a great faith in God and Jesus, so now we are just trying to subtly channel that towards the true church of Jesus Christ.

Another cool thing that happened this week was that we got more snow! But it melted away a few days later ): The road to our house though is still very icy and we accidentally slid the car pretty close to the edge of the road and the river a couple times. We will be safer once the snow banks build up a bit!

Other than that, we had a few good discos with Geir that were fun. This morning, we sang a song with him about potatoes. Apparently it is a song from some Norwegian commercial and it was pretty lit. That's about it for the week, so ha det bra!

Uke 55: Cold, Dark, and Happy

A CRAZY GUY JUST PUNCHED OUR CAR. We were on a bridge crossing a river to get to the church to send emails, when the car in front of us stopped suddenly. At first, we thought the car might have died or something, but after a few seconds, 2 women and one angry guy got out of the car. The guy took a book out of the car and threw it in the river, and started yelling. He then looked at us and saw we were looking at him (we were just stopped behind his car in the middle of the road so there wasn't much else we could do) and then he started yelling and came over and punched the car on the hood. I drove out of there real quick. I never expected to experience anything like that in Norway but I guess people can be crazy no matter where you live.

Anyways... It has been a great week with my new companion, Elder Baughan! We are both super happy to be here and we are getting along really well! I hope we do 2 transfers together because he's a bro and also I really want to be here for Christmas.

Winter is getting closer and closer up here. It got down to -10 C a few days this week, and probably colder in the nights. It snowed a little and a lot of rivers and lakes froze. Also the roads are icy so that is really fun! We only get about 4 hours of sunlight every day, but luckily the skies have been pretty clear so we can at least get the most out of that. We went on a hike with Geir today and it was sunny but FREEZING!  Geir didn't want gloves but somehow he survived. The view was beautiful and we sang a disko song at the top.

Another cool thing we did this week was driving to Hammerfest! We left after lunch a couple days ago. I guess we forgot that the sun sets at 2:00 in the afternoon. We should have left earlier, but we got some nice sunset pictures on the drive before we arrived in the worlds northernmost city. We tried to visit some members and some other people formerly taught by missionaries.

We haven't seen northern lights at all since Elder Baughan moved up north last week so please pray for us! Hope yall have a good week

Uke 54: How Deep Will the Cracks Be?

Hey yall it was an awesome week here in Alta!

The most exciting news is that I am getting a new companion tomorrow! His name is Elder Baughan and he is moving here from Hamar just like I did a few months ago! I don't know him super well yet but I think we will have an awesome time together! This is going to be a good transfer! We will officially be entering "mørketid" in a few weeks, which means the sun will not rise up here again until February next year. 

We drove up to a town called Skaidi this week with Linnea and had dinner with Knut and Jorun Altmann, who are some members that live there. Knut is a hardcore fisherman and wildlife guy. He goes on long hikes in the mountains with his dog every day. He also held the record for catching biggest salmon of the year in this area twice in the last few decades. Jorun made Lapskaus for dinner and it was awesome! They were planning on using some fresh fish or reindeer meat but it ended up not working out so they made what they called "muslimsk lapskaus" (muslim stew) because they used lamb meat. We ate lots of food and had a koselig kveld.

I want to share a story Linnea told me this week that was one of the funniest things I have ever heard: You need to know Geir to fully appreciate this but oh well. So Geir is really obsessed with elevations and distances and things like that. He knows the exact elevations of like 100 mountains, and how many light years it is to many different stars. He just thinks its really interesting. One day, when Geir was chilling out on the porch, some Jehovahs witnesses came up to him and started talking to him, not knowing who he was before. They told him about how the end of the world was coming very soon and how there would be lots of disasters and big earthquakes. Gier thought that sounded interesting and he listened to them for a couple minutes of them talking about earthquakes that would crack the earth. And then he asked them "How deep will the cracks be?" The JW's left after that haha... I love Geir.

That's about it for this week. I am really excited for next week! Ha det bra.

Uke 53: A pretty good week!

Not a lot happened this week but it was a pretty good week! We took a trip to Kautokeino on Friday so that was cool! We went there to visit our new member, the Danish lady who just moved there. She works there as a silversmith at a silver museum/shop and she gave us a tour of that, which was pretty cool. Then we had dinner with her and it was really hyggelig! Before we met up with her, we had a little bit of time to wait before she got off work so we took that as an opportunity to explore Kautokeino a little bit. It didn't take long to see everything there was to see in that tiny little boonie Sami town but it was pretty fun!

Another highlight was church on Sunday! We had 11 people in church plus one on Skype, doubling the usual number of people! We had a testimony meeting and a good lesson about Monarch butterflies. A few hours after church, we had dinner with one of the more active members who just recently got back from a few months of traveling. He made some deilig får i kål (lamb in cabbage) for us and told us about his home country of Ukraine. He struggles with speaking Norwegian so it was a little hard to communicate but we kept pretty busy eating that awesome food! 

Other than that, we saw some good northern lights, played basketball again, and banked on a lot of doors. We met a few people who said we could come back and teach them about the church which was awesome because we haven't had many people to teach here recently.

Here are some pics of nordlyset, Kautokeino, and our husky puppies

Uke 52: Getting Involved in the Community and Feeling Blessed!

Tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of the day I came to Norway!!!! This week was an awesome way to celebrate that! 

We started off the week with a good p-day spent exploring one of the nearby rivers. We wanted to drive further down the river to go see the only canyon in Norway but we got there and found out it had been closed for the season a couple days earlier. So we didn't see the canyon but we ended up having fun exploring and we found a lot of cool stuff including big cliffs, waterfalls, and things like that.

The next day, we got to travel to Tromsø!! Tromsø is the biggest city within thousands of kilometers of our little town up here, and this was my first time being there. We got to have our first in-person district council since I first moved up to Alta, and then we went on splits with the missionaries there. Splits was fun and it was cool to do missionary work in a decently big city for the first time in a while. I absolutely love Alta but it's definitely nice to get out every once in a while!

When President Tew came up to Alta to visit us about a month ago, he suggested getting involved in community activities to get a chance to talk to more people here. So Elder Memmott and I looked on the community website and saw that people get together twice a week to play basketball at the university gym, so Elder Memmott and I showed up to that and it was super fun! We got to meet some cool fun people, and now we have some Filipino bros! 

We also saw on the website that there would be a race held in the city and it was free to participate so I went for it! It was a 6.6 km race and I actually did really well! So that was fun, and I actually ended up winning a gift card for breakfast for 2 at one of the hotels here! So this morning, we had a deilig continental breakfast before we started emailing!

Another awesome thing happened yesterday! We were in the city yesterday when we saw one of the kids that was in a class we gave a presentation to at the high school a few weeks ago. He remembered us and he is a super awesome friendly guy named Gustav. We started talking and then he suggested we sit down inside the mall and talk because it was pretty cold. So we went in and talked for a while and then he wanted to eat sushi with us so we did! We didn't talk a lot about the church, we just had a hyggelig time with him and after we ate, he actually paid for our sushi as well as his!! 

So today was a great week! I hope yall had a great week too! If I learned one thing this week, it would be that we are blessed! So count your blessings, everyone!