love,
mom and dad/gerald and Nancy/grandma and grandpa/Nana and granddad
Spring
Sprung!! In about a week everything
turned green. Spring is such a beautiful
time of year. We have seen daffodils,
tulips and some pansies. Now it is time
to start mowing the lawn at church. It
isn’t very big, but still needs care.
Last Sunday,
Caryn, Jim and the kids sang in church.
It was really special to have a “family” sing. We only have one teenager in the branch and
he is the same age as Trenton. So a “family” is good! We spent the rest of the day just enjoying
Sunday. Our car is small and can hold
five people. So while they were here we
all had a turn riding the bus to town—church is there, 17th of May
parade, etc. Busses run on a regular
basis and are very good transportation here.
Monday was
the 17th of May—a Norwegian celebration similar to the 4th
of July. It is the day they gained their
independence from Denmark. In the morning we met at the St. Olav statue
in the middle of town to watch the children’s parade. Every school marches—all grades, a band, flag
or baton twirlers and a big banner telling what school it is.
This parade lasted about an hour and a half. Then we started walking back to our church,
but stopped at the Nidar church (Cathedral) for a sermon and choir concert
(something like Music and the Spoken Word). After,iInstead of going to the church we
walked back to the parade area to see the adult parade—which is a lot of groups
of people representing clubs, etc walking in the parade. We saw about half and then left. We went to the church where we had brought disposable
grills (a 9x12 foil pan with briquettes and a grill on top) to BBQ
hotdogs. We had all the trimmings. We were joined by several of the young single
adults and after eating, they stayed and played volleyball.
Tuesday we
rented a “rent a wreck” big enough for all of us. We went to the”Rustkammeret” (Army and
Resistance) museum. Sister Jørgensen
arranged this tour for us as the museum hadn’t officially opened yet. There are 3 floors in the museum-the first
floor contains items from medieval the time of the Vikings (900 AD) to the
Napoleonic war (1792-1814), the second floor is from the Norwegian-Swedish
union (1814-1905)—in opposition to Denmark. The 3rd floor
is memorabilia from the Second World War, especially aspects of the war in
mid-Norway. We opted for the 3rd
floor, as we only had an hour before we had to take Jim to the airport. Jim had
to leave this day as there had been more ash cloud from Iceland and he was concerned about getting home
to photograph a wedding on Friday (he ended up spending the night in Amsterdam and then
arrived safely home).
When we returned
we bought pizza and went up to Kristiansten Festning (fortress) which was built to
protect Trondheim
during the Swedish siege in 1718-1719.
The kids enjoyed seeing the cannon here and just being able to run free
a little. The fortress provides a beautiful view over the city. From here we
went to the other side of town to get a different view of the city.
Wednesday
morning was souvenir shopping day. There
were several kiosks in the sentrum (city center). Caryn, Shayla, Marissa and Trenton
found things to remember Norway. Caryn and I went to the grocery store to get
food for dinner before institute. She
made fajitas.
The grocery
store is a shopping experience here. Grocery
carts require payment to use (but the carts are all returned as people can get
their money back). They have a lot of
“not so much”. They are always stocking
the shelves. Norway does not have big cans,
cartons, or boxes of anything. They do
have a lot of prepared foods. Big
potatoes are bought wrapped in foil ready to bake. Milk is 1.5 liter—the biggest. Choose the bread you want, take it to the
slicer, put it in and when it is sliced you put it on metal arm and slide the
plastic sack over it and seal it at the top.
They have many kinds of bread and most of it is hard--similar to
American French bread. The aisles are
short. Mayo is found is the refrigerator
section—nothing larger than a pint. The
fruit comes from South America or Spain. It is very hard to choose meat. Mostly we buy hamburger or chicken—fresh or
frozen. As you can tell this is Mom,
Nancy, Grandma writing.
Wednesday
night we had a small group for dinner as the missionaries had already gone to Oslo for an all mission
conference. But we enjoyed dinner and
institute. Caryn’s family enjoyed being
with and meeting the people as well as a little sight seeing along the way.
Thursday we
all got up at 3:30 am to go to the airport.
We were leaving for Oslo for the mission
conference at 6:10 and they were leaving at 6:15 to start for Amsterdam and their journey home. We left at 4:15 to arrive at the airport by
5am. We arrived in Oslo at 7am and no one came to pick us up
until Gerald called our district leader and he made things happen. We finally had a ride about 8:30. As I was helping prepare food for the lunch,
two senior sisters were talking about going to dinner that night. They informed me that all the senior couples
were staying overnight and going to dinner that evening together. Well, that was news to us! We ended up staying the night. Gerald did buy us toothbrushes and
toothpaste. We did have an enjoyable
evening with the couples following the daylong conference.
Caryn and
kids arrived home and so did we about 11 am on Friday. We spent the day washing, cleaning and taking
a nap to recover from the week’s activities.
We went to the church to meet with the sisters and an investigator, but
the person did not come.
Saturday we
went for sports—volleyball, basketball, table tennis. Then we had splits with the sisters for their
“teaches”. In the evening we visited a
family whose daughter was having a birthday party—we were invited along with the
sisters. When we arrived there were 15
children outside. I told the sisters
there were probably as many parents inside.
Yes there was. One family was
from the branch and they live near by. The
mother is Filipino and the father is Norwegian.
All the people that were there were Filipino women and Norwegian
men—about 8 couples. The house was
filled with people, children and toys all over.
Norwegians usually have small roomed homes and then have out buildings
to accommodate other things. We had
dinner and birthday cake.
Sunday was a
Mission Conference for all of Norway
that is outside the Oslo Stake. It was
held in Bergen
and was presented to us by video conference. It was a 2 hour session. It was the first conference like this and the
sound-picture quality has room for improvement.
A young man was there who we had seen at church last week. He joined the church as a teenager and was
active for a few years. He has a class
with a member and she brought him to church.
He seems interested in returning to church. He is the only member in his family. He wanted a Book of Mormon as his was in Kristiansand—his home
town. This is missionary work that one
does not expect but will work.
Two weeks ago
there was a new branch president called in Mo I Rana—Bengt Andreasen, who was
mostly inactive when we first started going there last October. He has been attending regularly since about
December and is nervous about this call, but will do a great job. We will be up there again on June 5-6 to help
him in his new calling.
We love this
work and the people we are privileged to serve with. We have some amazing young
missionaries and great young adults.
Love to all
Mom and
dad/Gerald and Nancy/grandma and grandpa/Nana and granddad
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