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!