July 28

Had such an awesome week this week! For several different reasons. 

The first being we got to go to Ålesund,
which is just downright sick. I loved it!

I was able to perform the baptism for Øystein in the ocean (fjord, sound, water, whatever you want to call it) and it was a very humbling experience.

 

He was just so happy and you could really see the light shining from him all day long. I love baptisms:)        

The next day was transfers! I dropped Elder Skøien off at the airport at around two, and then had about 5 hours. Alone. By myself. To do. Whatever I wanted. Before Elder Vause arrived later that night.. SCARY! haha Robert is in Germany so I had nobody to stay with. So I read some scriptures, listened to some talks, and bought some food. Wasn't that bad, just felt a little weird:)

My new companion is awesome! Elder Vause is from Farr West, Utah and is just a great guy! He came out six weeks after me so we are at about the same stage, which is fun. He has a ton of energy and we get along great! It's going to be a sweet transfer. I'm pumped! We went way hard these last couple of days, and really have been focusing on finding people who are prepared and will be able to help us build up a branch here. I know they are out there! We were able to find a couple of potentials, but we are praying and expecting some awesome miracles to come. 

To answer some of your questions mom!

That burger king hat (from the last post) was just something I got at burger king when we ate there right before we went fishing:) Burger King is the only fast food resteraunt in Kristiansund! I swear it's the hang out spot for all of the teenagers..

None of the flights we take are too long:) It's only about 30-40 minutes to Trondheim, and about 50 minutes to Bergen, so it goes really quick.

One of my favorite things ever is flying over Norway! It is unbelievably breathtaking! Unfortunately it has been cloudy the last few times, but especially when I was in Tromsø and would fly, it was unreal. I'll get some good pics in the future! It's just a bunch of fjords and mountains with random tiny little villages and cities on the edge of the water. Crazy awesome!

It will be a little weird going back to three hour church, but I'm looking forward to it! It will be nice to been in a ward again, but I have felt the spirit just the same. I think we are going to start having sunday school here too! So I'll ease my way back into the three hours by having some two hour church:)

We play hymns from a laptop with some nice speakers. The first couple of weeks and and Elder Skoien would play the 4 hymns we knew how and have to just sing them every week, but we did sing acapella a couple of times. But now we have a laptop and have downloaded all of the hymns. Church was just us and Wencke this week! Oh, and Elder Russel M. Nelson, who was our guest speaker haha. It went well and Wencke is going to talk to the Bishop in Trondheim this week so we can find out what we need to do to get her back and active!

Thanks again for all of the videos of my cute little nieces and my beautiful sister mom! I was just smiling the whole time! Millie is the cutest thing to walk the face of the earth and so is Layla! And Aub's wedding video was incredible! Everyone looked so good! I loved it so thank you so much! I love you guys!

 

Elder Nilsson 

 

 Cool house!

 and my first ferry ride! With Elder Hill and Elder Skoien.

The two sisters in my district, Sister Kitchen and Sister Hornback, and there investigator Øystein!

 Suprise! I was actually able to baptize him:)

 

If Ålesund isn't one of the most beautiful cities ever, then I don't know what is!

 We had a pretty good photo shoot this morning. We found a nice flag as a prop when we got up there!

 

 

July 21

                Happy 24th of July week everyone

            from warm and sunny Kristiansund! 

 (Disclaimer: McKay didn't send any pictures so his mom added all these pics off the internet...haha)
We've had a couple days here recently where I have walked outside and been like, "wow, this actually almost feels like it could be summer!" But we never get that ridiculously hot 90-100 degree weather like back in Utah. But, it is a lot more humid here, so that makes it feel pretty warm sometimes.. But like I said before, bring on winter:) 

I am staying in Kristiansund for at least another transfer, but I'm getting a new companion! My current companion is on his way to Arendal, the place where Frozen takes place,

and my new companion is Elder Vause! He is from somewhere in Utah and has been out about as long as I have, so I'm way pumped!

         Earlier this week we got to fly to Bergen

for a big training meeting where we just focused on our missionary skills all day and practiced and practiced and practiced. It was really long, but very helpful and I learned a ton! President Evans was there and said that he was trying to make it possible for the whole mission to go and be there for when Elder Bednar comes, so there is still hope that I'll get to see him! 

We spent a ton of time trying to keep finding this week. We found some potentials, but we'll found out this week how it plays out. Church was just us, Robert, and his friend Stein who was the guy we had the baptismal date with. He is UNBELIEVABLY quiet. haha it's impossible to know what he is thinking. But he did let us teach him another lesson afterwards, so we taught him the plan of salvation.

He would still just give us one word answers if we asked him questions. It seems like he really is interested in learning more, and he has been reading in the Book of Mormon and he likes coming to church. And get this, we got him to say the prayer at the end of the lesson!! I didn't think there was any way he would do it, but we invited him anyways and he gave a prayer, short and sweet:) It was awesome haha. But Robert is leaving this week for Germany to visit his wife and little kid who live there so It's going to be hard to get in contact with Stein since he never answers us.. But it was good to teach him again. 

On Saturday we played a little soccer with some kids from Eritrea! I'm so out of shape it's ridiculous. I do my 30 minutes of exercise in the mornings, but that just doesn't keep you in any kind of good shape to play sports and run around like I used to. But it was still way fun and the kids were cool. Two of them are in the family that we are teaching and they said they would come to church next week, so that was good!

We are taking the four hour bus ride down to Ålesund tomorrow for a baptism in the fjord!

There is only one priesthood holder down there in that branch so they needed us to go and be the witnesses. It should be fun:)

Good luck everyone in your missionary efforts this week! Always remember to pray for opportunities, and just be bold and courageous and be like Robert! I love you all!

Elder Nilsson

July 14

                     Happy Monday everyone! 

We had some really nice weather this last week, which actually made me kind of grateful that I serve in a cold mission. Walking around in Sunday clothes all day in hot weather and getting all sweaty is the worst! It wasn't even that hot either haha. For some reason I have just been getting really excited for Christmas. Bring on the cold! ;)

Well this week consisted of a lot of knocking doors and street contacting. We met up with Johan on Tuesday, and despite the strong spirit which he had felt during our meetings, he wasn't really willing to do anything with it or learn more, so he kind of closed the door on it. But I think a strong seed was planting, and one day in the future it will grow. He's a nice and sincere man and will find his way back to the gospel:)

We were supposed to meet with the family from Eritrea this week but had to cancel, but on Saturday night we went and stopped by their house to see how they were doing and had a nice talk with them. We also got the number of the 16 year old son and agreed that we were going to play some soccer this week! So I'm really looking forward to that:) 

 

Church yesterday was just us and Robert, and I gave a little talk, we sang some hymns, had the sacrament, and watched Elder Bednar's most recent talk. Robert is going to Germany next week, so it might just be us for a couple of weeks! But we'll see! 

 

We will be doing a little bit of traveling too in the coming weeks. On Wednesday we are flying down to Bergen for a Training by the AP's on Thursday, and then next Tuesday we are going down to Ålesund, which is about a 4 hour bus ride, for a baptism! They don't have enough priesthood holders there, so they need us to go down. We will being taking the bus back to Ålesund again next Sunday for the confirmation. Transfers are next week too! So there should be some sort of excited news from that! 

Maybe my favorite moment of the week happened yesterday. Last night we had a long knocking session, and we had been out for a couple of hours and had gotten nothing. It was rough, and I was feeling a little discouraged. Then, our phone rang, and Robert was calling! We talk to him every single day, and he loves to talk! So I answered, and he said in his hard to understand Norwegian that he just felt like he should call us and tell us to keep going. And then he gave the best motivational talk I've ever heard! 

 

He was just telling us how he just wanted to call us and just say how much the church means to him and then he promised that he would do better to invite people to church and share the Gospel. This is coming from the man that invites EVERYONE to church. And then he just told me that he knows it's hard here but that we can never give up, because the Gospel means too much. 

 

It's hard to describe the phone call in a way that does it justice, but it was one of the most humbling moments of my mission. I love Robert so much, and it made me want to be so much better and dedicate myself so much more to this work and to the Gospel, because as Robert said, "It means way too much!"

Robert is such a good example of humility, dedication, and commitment, and I hope to be as good as him some day! It was just what I needed after a difficult night of knocking, and a pretty slow week. I know that God answers our prayers through other people. I hope we are all praying for opportunities to be answers to others' prayers so that we can help people just like Robert helped me last night!

I love you all very much! The church is true!

Elder Nilsson

                 The cathedral in Trondheim!

       It's so detailed and old, it was amazing.

                                                   fishing trip with Robert!

 

                     Robert's Burmese food.....

                            Lunch with Robert!

                     (write your own caption....)

 

Eldste Nilsson & Eldste Skøein,

Her kommer bilder av oss som vi tok sammen med Eldste Bradford i Kirke.

Vennligst åpen vedlagt fil for å se på det.

Med beste hilsen,

Robert.

 (Google Translation)

Oldest Oldest Nilsson & Skøein,
Here are pictures of us as we took along with Elder Bradford in the Church.
Please open the attached file to view it.

With best regards,
Robert.

July 7

God bless America, and happy 4th of July!
We were supposed to go over to Wenke's house, since it was her birthday too, but she was sick, so we had no celebrations or anything. I played God Bless America in our apartment at night, but I don't think my Canadian friend Elder Skoien enjoyed it as much as I did:)

We had a good week! We were able to get some new investigators this week. There is one man named Dawit from Eritrea that came to church a few weeks ago because Robert invited him. He is a really good guy but we hadn't really been able to get contact with him since then, and it sounded like his wife might have been kind of against the whole thing.

On Wednesday, we decided to go around and try a bunch of people back and try and share the Book of Mormon with them, but we ended up missing our first bus (I swear it came early), so we just took the next one, which took us to a different try back that we had. We got off the bus and started looking for the address that we had. We were checking a bunch of mailboxes to see if we could find the right house, and when we came to one house which we knew wasn't the right one, we both just decided we would try it. So we did, and a 14 year old kid opened up, went and got his mom, and she let us in! 

I was really confused because we hadn't even said anything yet other than that we were missionaries, but they just let us in like they were expecting us. And that doesn't happen very often haha. So we were pumped! We got upstairs, and saw Dawit! We ended up teaching them the Restoration and giving them all a Book of Mormon, and committed them to read and pray. And then we ended with a kneeling prayer. It was awesome! Dawit's wife wasn't against it at all, and their three kids totally loved it! So that was a miracle, and we are excited about that:) 

Things are going up and down with Johan. He is super sensitive to the Holy Ghost, and says he has been feeling a really strong "Energy" when he meets with us. It's great too because we can tell when he is feeling it because he stops talking and starts breathing really fast haha and he feels it a lot! He just has a lot of beliefs and ideas that he isn't quite willing to give up yet, but he comes to our little church meeting every week, and is willing to meet with us and learn more!  

On Sunday, we decided that instead of just having me and Elder Skoien give talks every week, that we would watch a general conference talk. So Elder Skoien gave an awesome talk about prophets, and then we watched Christoffersons talk about the Resurrection. 
And it was awesome. (watch this 1 1/2 min clip)

 We watched the movie Joseph Smith Prophet of the Restoration after church with Johan Robert, and Stein (the guy we got the baptismal date with who then fell of the face of the earth), and of course that movie was awesome too, and brought a strong spirit.

For some reason, Johan just won't accept that if Joseph Smith was a prophet then this church is the only true church. So that's a little frustrating, but the Holy Ghost will help him understand that:)

To answer some of your questions mom; no, I haven't really had any good dog stories yet haha but I've still got some time;) 

The weather is ok. It doesn't feel like summer at all. We have had a couple of nice sunny days, but they aren't ever hot like a summer day in Utah. There is usually a cool breeze, and most days have been pretty cloudy and we've had some drizzling rain. Our apartment is really nice, but I don't think most apartments or houses really have air conditioning, people just open there windows. Some people will have some kind of fan in there house to keep it cool. And we don't have a car anymore, so actually do a lot of walking and take busses every once in a while:) 

About Norwegian! We hardly ever speak English with Norwegians, and if they try then we just keep speaking Norwegian haha. I feel pretty comfortable speaking it, although understanding the dialect is tricky sometimes, but it's getting a lot better. But we do talk to a lot of foreigners, so we just ask them if it's better to speak Norwegian or English, and most prefer Norwegian, so we just speak really slow and try and understand their broken Norwegian haha. But God has definitely helped with the language. It's gotten a lot better:) Our two main investigators right now are Johan from Sweden, and Dolly from Liberia, so we speak English with both of them just because it's easier, even though Johan can understand Norwegian, and Dolly can speak Norwegian. So we definitely speak a lot of Norwegian!

OH! And I found out last week that David A. Bednar is coming to visit our mission in September!!!!!! I'm so pumped!! I don't know any details or anything, or if I'll get to see him, but still!! I guess it's been years since an apostle has come to the Norway mission. So I'm way excited for that!

Love you all so much! By the way, the internet here is way to slow to send pictures, so I'm really sorry about that.. ;( The church and the gospel are true! And when we LIVE it's teachings, that's when we are most happy and most prepared for the future. What a wonderful thing:)

Elder Nilsson

(mom likes pics, so she adds them if I don't send any..haha)

June 30

Hey, sorry I don't really have much time to write a big email this week. We had an awesome Zone Conference on Tuesday and it was all about the Book of Mormon! I loved it! Things slowed down a little this week as far as teaching goes, but no problem:) We went fishing today with Robert for a little! We just cast from the shore, and didn't end up catching anything. I'll have some pictures next time! 

Hope everyone has a great 4th of July!

  (Mom: Wish our fireworks look like yours!)

The Book of Mormon is true, and so is the church! I love it!

Elder Nilsson