MISSIONARY WORK IS THE BEST!

Hei Sann!

So it sounds like things are very busy back home!  That is awesome!  Things are smooth there.  Taylor didn't email... so beat him up for me.  

Things have been going really well here!  The back pack is doing fine here, someone gave me his backpack cover so that waterproofs it for me.  Bergen is pretty much the best place in the whole mission. Everyone wants to come here and serve.  We have had a lot of rain and snow and sleet and what not though.  So I have been using the boots and the raincoat a lot.  Everything works great.  We get fed by members a lot here.  So that is pretty good too.

The first week was pretty interesting. Bergen has a very distinct dialect of Norway.  I am struggling a lot to understand the people that speak bergensk, but I can understand the missionaries much easier and those people that have the Oslo dialect.  I definitely get most of the missionary side of the conversation but not nearly as much as the Norwegian side.   That will just come in time.  That is all okay though.  I have definitely been blessed with some good language skills, so at least I can get something across to them even if I cannot understand what they say after so well. 

We taught about 4 or 5 lessons last week. We have one progressor with a baptismal date. He came to church yesterday, however he has a chronic sickness that causes him to be tired all of the time.  So he came for the first 2 hours and then left.  We have sacrament last... so he ended up missing sacrament.  But we were still happy he came.  

We focused a lot on finding new investigators because that is what we are hurting for here.  So that meant a lot of street contacting.  Street contacting is actually really fun... when you get people to stop.  Most of the time people here just kind of walk past and say <Nei takk (no thanks).>  But we get people that stop and then we can usually have a pretty good conversation with them.  We met a family from Egypt that we will be teaching this week that I am really excited about and a couple other people.  So good experiences there.

Today I had to go register in Norway and get my oppholdstillatelse, which is basically my permission to be in the Land.  So that was fun.  

We are going to go get my first kebab later today, a kebab is basically the missionary fast food here.  The first one in the land is always paid for by the trainer... so no complaints there.

It has been a really awesome week and I am so pumped to be a missionary.  I have been somewhat unsatisfied with my studies just because jetlag is hitting me still.  But I now know just how crucial Personal Study is in the Morning, it makes or breaks the rest of the day.     

The thing that I have been studying recently is faith. It is something that we can all understand better and continue to build.  It is very easy for someone to be complacent with their faith and not actively try to improve it.  So that is something that I would like to improve on so that I can have such faith that people cannot deny the truthfulness of my testimony.

I am so happy to be here though and serve the Lord. Missionary work is the best!

Din Sønn,

Eldste Jones