Oct 13

Dear loved ones,

This week was ridiculous. Straight up ridiculous! In a good way:)

I'm falling in love with Oslo. It has taking some time, but it's definitely happening. I think my favorite part is working so much with the YSA!

Here's a picture of us watching General Conference:)

The YSA are so great here. They help us with the language, they help us on teaches, they invite friends to activities, they fellowship investigators like their life depended on it, and it just makes things so much better! Plus our ward missionary leader is Brother Kerr, who is like, 25 years old, from Scotland and served his mission in Norway, and he is the MAN! The first half of this week we were kind of struggling to get appointments, but then on Wednesday, the cloud of miracles and blessings just starting pouring over our heads! We were able to set up a bunch of appointments with members, investigators, and less actives, and it turned out to be a pretty good week. But now to the good stuff..

On Thursday, there was a 20 yr old kid who just walked into the YSA center and wanted to talk with missionaries. We luckily walked in right at the same time. He said he met missionaries about a year ago just to learn a little bit more about the church, and now he is really ready to learn more. This guy is Norwegian by the way! So, long story short, he came to institute the next day, loved it, already knows a ton about the church. We taught him for the first time on Saturday morning, and he has already read a good chunk of the Book of Mormon, knows it's true, and is preparing to get baptized on November 15. And during our lesson, he talked about serving a mission already! Then he came to church. Loved it, and the YSA has already just taken him in and it's been beautiful to watch! He is probably the coolest kid I have ever met. I have never seen anyone so prepared by the Lord. Ever. His name is Fredrik. Stay tuned... :)

But wait.. There's more!! For the last couple of weeks my district has been planning a big street stand for this last Saturday, and it was LEGIT!! We got a spot on Karl Johans gate, which is like THE street in Oslo which leads right up to Kings palace, and there were tons of people! So we set up a table with a bunch of Book of Mormons from different languages on it and had a little language guessing game to get people interested so that we could start a conversation about the book. Plus we miraculously found this HUGE 12x12 foot Jesus Christ picture in our storage to put up to catch people's attention. We were out there for about 3 hours and ended up getting like 40 numbers and dished out a ton of pamphlets and information about the church! 40 numbers in one day in a city in Norway is pretty good by the way! So that was a huge success! The work is totally hastening! The past couple years in Oslo has been pretty rough when it comes to baptisms, especially baptisms of Norwegians. When Elin got baptized, it was the first Norwegian baptism in Oslo in over a year.. but right now we have about 4 or 5 Norwegian baptisms happening in the next few months! Plus a couple of other non Norwegian baptisms! It just gets me pumped:)

October is flying by and it's getting cold here! I can't wait for winter though:) Last year was a supposedly a pretty weak winter here in Norway so hopefully we will get a real Norwegian winter this year. Halloween is growing here, but it's still not nearly as big as in the states. And I'm pretty sure members are the only ones who celebrate Thanksgiving, and it's only because they make thanksgiving dinner for missionaries haha. 

And to answer a question, we don't really get that many referrals from the internet.. Every once in a while, but not too often. And no word on ipads yet! 

I'll get my new companion, Elder Christiansen on Wednesday. He's from Nampa! haha A lot of changes in the district this week, but we'll keep rolling forward:) The church is true!

Elder Nilsson