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)