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.