MOVING TO OSLO

Hello again!

Well I feel like I blinked and 4 days went by.  It literally feels like yesterday that I talked to you haha.  I am glad to hear that you had a good Christmas, a nice relaxing one at least.  

The week was pretty magical though.  I loved Christmas here in Trondheim.  Unfortunately the week ended not so magically.  We had Moves call, and I will leaving Trondheim this next week to go to Oslo.  I will be serving as Zone leader there with Elder B. So that was a huge surprise.  I didn't know anything about it till the moves call Sunday Morning.  So the plan for this week now is to work till Friday and then fly to Oslo.  We have a pretty big Christmas conference on thursday, so I should be going out with a bang!  Elder J will be staying here and he is getting Elder W as a companion.  Elder Sk is also staying here in Trondheim.  Elder Sh will be coming with me down to the East land.  So we will be sticking together!

Really though, it was a huge bummer when i found out I was leaving the North, but I am excited for the new adventures in the east.  It will be a completely different experience than I have had here in the Trondheim.  So things are looking like they will change a lot!

I guess I don't really have a whole ton to tell you about the rest of the week.  It was basically spent with members doing Chirstmas-like things.  I ate way too much food and just sat around the whole week.  My favorite part was being a Christmas troll for my MMK.  That was awesome.  the little kids just loved it, it might have been the sweetest thing ever.  I have to admit that I am super sad that that was my only Christmas here in Norway.  I feel like it just came too quick and left even quicker.

We spent a fair amount of time out on the streets too.  So I think next week will be good to finish off on here in Trondheim.  I think we will have a lot of success this last week!

Anyways, I can't really think of a whole lot else.  

Du må vite at jeg elsker deg så mye! 

Eldste Jones

GOD JUL

Heia igjen!

Well thanks so much for all of the pictures!  It was so great to get to see everyones faces!  Luckily for me I get to speak to everyone soon!

The past week has been pretty good.  Definitely not nearly as hectic as the previous week.  Still pretty good though.  It definitely feels like Christmas here that is for sure. Things are really begining to slow down because of the holiday season.

I don't feel like I have a whole lot to tell you, we didn't really get to meet with anyone because they are all so busy with Christmas stuff.  So it was a week of focusing on the members and getting stuff done with them.  We delivered a lot of flowers and tried to visit as many people as possible.  So that was pretty much the story of the whole week. 

On church on sunday we had a ton of people there!  It was probably double the amount of people that are normally there.  So that was weird.  We had a lot of families that were visiting their parents for christmas or just families that came because it was the Christmas Sunday.  So that was typical Norwegian Chirstmas sunday, a lot of people in Church. 

Other than that we have been eating a ton of food here.  It feels like the holiday season brings a ton of food, which has been a change.  We haven't had to cook really at all in the last week.  Just a lot fo meals with members and other things.  So that has been good I guess. 

On Saturday we had a baptism in the district.  The sisters baptized one of their investigators.  So that was a great baptism, it went really well.  I got to be a part of the circle in giving the gift of the holy ghost.  Elder B (a senior missionary) was able to baptize her and to give her the gift of the holy ghost.  So that was a huge thing for him! 

I really feel like I don't have a lot to talk about though from the previous week.  It really does slow down here in the Christmas time.  Norway will shut down for the next couple of days.  We are just going to try and visit members for the next week.  Especially tomorrow and on Christmas.  We will pretty much be at members houses all day.  So I will be sure to tell you all about that on Skype.

Other than that I hope that you have a great Christmas and I look forward to talking to you soon!

Jeg elsker deg!

Dallin

I AM STUDYING THE FOUR GOSPELS AND 3RD NEPHI, REALLY THE RECORDS OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY. IT HAS BEEN AWESOME GROWING CLOSER TO HIM BY DOING THAT!

Hello again!

Well this has been one of the craziest weeks we have had here in Trondheim and one of the craziest I have had on the mission!

First off, it was ZLT this week.  Fortunately for us we had president and sister evans who were here for it so that meant that I didn't have to give the meeting, I just conducted!  So that was a huge relief for me.  Unfortunately that same day we had a hurricane come through Trondheim that night! So the airport was closed and we had 20 missionaries that were stuck here in Trondheim.  So after a lot of phone calls we found out that president had a hotel room but all of the Elders and sisters did not.  The missionaries that belonged in Trondheim were confined to the church because the police put out a warning to stay indoors and all of the buses stopped running.  So luckily the Elders and sisters at the airport got some transportation to the church and joined the rest of us here.  I set up the projector in the Chapel and we all settled in to watch our favorite and only disney movie, Monsters Inc.  Luckily the storm blew through pretty quickly and we were able to move to our apartment before the night was over.  We slept all 18 elders there!

So that was an adventure to say the least.  Some of the unfortunate elders in the North didn't get home for a couple days haha!  But that describes the weather up in the North perfectly!

The chaos continued as we prepared for a baptism on Saturday.  The Elders baptized a man named T. The other three converts that have been baptized this year all took part in the Ordinance, as either the one baptizing or one of the witnesses!  I will forward a picture of it later.  It was definitely a spiritual moment for us missionaries!

The craziness continued on Sunday for our christmas concert that we had.  you have already seen the video so that speaks for itself.  I also sang with the choir for two other songs. So that was a pretty interesting night.  Lots of fun!

The rest of the week was spent running around trying to prep for all of these things.  That was a welcome change because Norway is beginning to shut down.  Christmas is a 4 day event here.  They have little christmas eve (23rd), Christmas eve (24th), Christmas Day (25th), and the second day of Chrismas (26th).  So yeah.  People shut and lock their doors, shops close down, and nothing happens for at least those days.  most people will leave the cities to and go out to their cabins, which means that our city will literally be a ghost town.

Our investigators are becoming really hard to meet with to because of Christmas, so not much has changed with them. Unfortunately we only met with A.  He made some huge improvements though in the last week. He is looking great for baptism in January!  We have found out that M and I are not married yet, but we haven't taught chastity yet either.  So that is probably coming this next week.  So there should be a lot of growth for everyone this next week!

Finally to try and answer some of the questions.  Transfers are on the 3rd of January.  I just had my interview at ZLT and president didn't give any indication of me leaving but gave me a long list of others that will be. So I think that I will stay.  We have a mini moves this week to as we have an assistant that will be traveling home, so one missionary should be moving as a result of that.  Not sure who it is that will be moving though.

i did get the package.  I am waiting to open all of the presents as they are currently sitting under the christmas tree!  I am plenty warm here.  I got a new coat and it has been surprisingly warm.

I think I just like learning in general now.  It is fun to have new information and things to use in life.  So I like the process of learning now I would say!  I am currently studying the four gospels and 3rd nephi.  really the records of christ's ministry.  It has been awesome growing closer to him by doing that!

Other than that I don't think that I have anything else.

Jeg elsker deg!

Eldste Jones

IT WAS A NICE COLD, DARK NORWEGIAN MORNING. . . .

Hello again!

Well it has been another crazy week.  Things here in Trondheim have changed a lot in the past week.  We have got like 2 feet of snow and it has dropped to like negative 15 here.  So that has been a pleasant change.  I think that Norway is so much more beautiful here in the Winter.  I like it so much more.  However it made for some hectic stories as far as my week of travel has been.

On Wednesday we had to go to Oslo for our Mission Leadership Conference.  So that meant that we woke up at about 4:30 to get ready for our train to the Airport.  As we walked to the train station the ground was dry and things were looking great.  It was a nice cold, dark norwegian morning.  The meeting went really well in Oslo, nothing to controversial came up.  It was nice to be back in the mission home for a while with President and sister evans.  Sister Evans made us a really good breakfast and lunch while we were there, that is always one of the highlights of being there.

The real story comes when we had to come back.  We got on our plane alright and the whole flight was good until we started our approach.   It was apparent that there was bad weather outside as we were shaking all over the place with turbulence.  The pilot then comes on and in some pretty thick dialect tells us that we would begin to enter a holding pattern above the airport.  After about 30 minutes of being in the Holding pattern we began a trip back to Oslo.  The runway in Trondheim was so iced over that we could not safely land.  So we return back to Oslo.  We then got back there and the people told us that we would be taking a redeye back to Trondheim at like 1:00 in the Morning.  We were hoping they would give a hotel that we could stay in for the night and just go back the next day, unfortunately our prayers where not answered.  So we waited there until the next flight.  So we ended up getting to sleep at like 3ish that night.  It was definitely a good experience though.  One to remember.

The real problem was that elder J and I had Weekly planning the next day. So I was just wiped for that.  I was struggling to stay awake so it was a long 3 hour planning session haha.

Finally the final traveling story.  I was supposed to go to Bodø on Friday.  As I got to the airport that morning I realized that might flight was delayed for 2 hours, so I found a bench to sleep on.  Unfortunately two hours later my flight was cancelled.  So that was a waste of my entire morning.  It turned out that almost all the flights in Norway where cancelled that day.  There was a huge storm that made it impossible to land and in some places so all of the aircraft crews couldn't make it to their scheduled flights, including mine.  So I started to walk back to the bus and I saw one of the members in the ward.  So he bought me some lunch in the airport and then I went back into to Trondheim.

I know that all of that happened for a reason though because Elder J and I taught our appointment we had a got another baptismal date with a guy.  that brings us up to a total of 5 dates in our companionship with 12 in our district and 16 in our zone!  I am not sure why the Lord is blessing us so much! It is just crazy to see him work with us everyday. 

M and her family where able to come to Church on Sunday!  Even the kids came.  The daughter, however has Asbergers and so it was really difficult for her to be there through all of church.  So they just came for Primary.  But is was the coolest thing to be able to walk into Church with a family with us.  A also came to church to!

Unfortunately we couldn't get S to meet with us because he is doing exams and a bunch of other stuff.  So we are going to try and meet with him this week and set more concrete stuff up.

Other than that I thought I would just explain so stuff I forgot to talk about last time.  You asked a little bit more about dialects.  All of the dialects are mutually-intelligible.  So basically it is more of an accent.   However, dialect do have different words and stuff that they can use that other dialects do not use. Each dialect is tied with a geographical area.  So I speak trøndursk which is the Trondhiem dialect.  It is pretty cool though I can totally speak and communicate with people from sweden and denmark as well! 

I got a call for a person trying to deliver a package to me, so it looks like I should be getting that soon as well.  We just put up a ton of christmas decorations in our apartment so we will have to send some pictures next week.

I look forward to hear about all of the things that are happening!

Elder Jones

I KNOW THAT THE LORD HAS REACHED DOWN AND WORKED WITH EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US THIS WEEK. SO WE HAD A LOT OF REASONS TO BE THANKFUL.

Heia!

Well I am glad to hear that things have been good for you guys this last week!  It certainly was a great week for us!

I have a lot to say so I am just going to jump into it.  We got 3 new baptismal dates!  Two of them come from a family! The zone had its best week since president had been in the land!   And the district here is just shredding it!

First thing is first, we got a baptismal date with a man named A.  He is Norwegian and is from around here in the Trondheim area.  We learned that he also is a 2 time norwegian boxing champion!  We tried meeting with him several times last week and he ditched us every time we had an appointment.  That was super frustrating because I was super excited to teach him.  So on thursday we woke up and about 3 minutes into the day we got a text from him saying that he would like to meet up!  So that was a little miracle that came out of no where, but the miracles continues as we actually got a teach with him that day.  It was a great teach that came to end with an accepted baptismal commitment!

During that teach I had missed a phone call, it was from a number I didn't recognize.  I called it back and spoke with an inactive member that gave me a referral, for her daughter and son-in-law.  There names are M and I.  They to are norwegian.  Monica was active as a child in primary but was unfortunately never baptized.  She had seen missionaries on the bus and decided that now was the time to come back.  She told her mother and the mother took contact with us!  She and her husband had recently been struggling with depression and bagan reading the bible together and it helped!  So they have a burning testimony of the savior, and want to learn more. 

We taught them the next day, that teach also ending with a baptismal commitment.  They both accepted.  We are going to help them learn more and be sure of their testimony of the book of mormon. 

The miracles continue, we didn't have any appointments with S yet, but during our teach with M and I we had another telephone.  it was the elders, saying that S was in the church waiting for us!  So we got to teach him and help him out that day to! He is still doing good, he wants to be very sure about the things that he is doing and therefore wants to take it very slow.  His date is pretty far out there though, so that is just fine!

Finally at the end of all of these miracles in our area we learned of other miracles in the district.  Every single area in the district had one this week. I don't know if there has ever been a week like this one!

So needless to say, I am more than happy!  I know that the Lord has reached down and worked with every single one of us this week.  So we had a lot of reasons to be thankful. So when we had the thanksgiving here in church on Saturday it was just amazing.  We had 75 people at our thanksgiving dinner.  Everyone bring a little bit of something to contribute.  I think we had something like 8 turkeys to, so it was a pretty big feast!

I really can't begin to describe all of the blessing that we got this past week.  I know that the Savior is real and that he is here with us on a daily basis.  

This next week should be equally special, I have the opportunity to be Oslo for a mission leadership conference and then I get to go to Bodø on splits!  So I will have a lot more plan rides by the end of the week haha. That will make it really busy trying to get teaches for everyone during the off days!  

Anyways, I think I have to go.

Jeg elsker deg!

Eldste Jones