Here we are along with the other new missionaries to Norway.

This photo was taken a couple of weeks after the "new missionaries" photo. As you can see, we have eaten too much delicious Norwegian pastry and ris krem.

Here are some of our new Norwegian friends. We met them in Finland at the festinord youth conference.

Activities through August 15, 2010

This past week has been eventful and wonderful. Among many other things, we taught a discussion to a super Scottish lady, named Francis. (This is actually the third time we have taught her). We taught an institute class. We attended a symphony with Francis, another investigator who will be getting baptized this coming Sunday, the mission president and his wife, the Springers, who are serving as the office couple, and one of the young single adults, named Elizabeth. Bob was the concluding speaker in sacrament meeting today and spoke about the purpose of life and the importance of joyfully enduring to the end. Since Bob spoke in Norwegian, Debbie listened through the earphones to what he said translated into English.

We have met many new wonderful people, young and old. We are working with newly baptized members and a terrific investigator from China, name Li. She is very humble, but very bright too. She has a master's degree in architecture. Another one of our new friends is Johnny, a recent convert. He is black, comes from one of the countries in Africa, and is a MD. He graduated from Johns Hopkins in the US with a specialty in radiology. Once again, despite being very bright, he is humble and simply a joy to be around. Today we met a foreign exchange student from Chile. She came to Norway all alone to study, without knowing any Norwegian at all. She made a tremendous effort to seek out the church, figure out public transportation, and travel for about an hour to come to church. The faith and capacity of many of the young people is inspiring. It is really obvious to us, perhaps more so than ever, that the Lord loves all of his children and that there are fabulous people the world over.

We are working very hard, but are firmly convinced that we made the right choice to serve a mission. Nonetheless, we miss you very much.

LIFE IN NORWAY

We are here working at the Insititute and Outreach Center in Oslo, Norway. It is a spacious facility visited by dozens of people each day. We teach discussions, family home evenings and institute classes. We post photos, keep the facility clean, help with food preparation and do what we can to make the center a place where members and investigators want to come. In short, we have been extremely busy. Bob had not even picked up a tennis racket until this morning, August 9. Since we have been here, there have been three baptisms in Oslo. The three new members all attend the ward where we go. Another thing that we do is to fellowship the new members, these three brand new ones and others.

Since we have been in Norway, we traveled to Finland for a large muli-country youth conference known as Festi-Nord. Additionally, we flew to Trondheim, a large Norwegian City about 500 miles Northwest of Oslo for a conference with other couple missionaries and young missionaries. The youth in Norway are wonderful. For the most part, they are faithful, dedicated and commited to the church.

We have not figured out how to post photos on this blog yet. Once we figure that out, hopefully before our mission is over, we will post some photos so that you can see the beautiful Norwegian countryside and some of the young Norwegians who frequent the Center.