Farewell to Norway 2/2011

This will be our last report from Norway and as you can see, you are not getting a full report on the past couple of weeks. The time has gone by too fast!  
I will just say that this has been an amazing experience that we will never forget. We have made friends with a lot of wonderful people--both old and young. We have come to love people we did not know when we arrived in Trondheim in August 2009 and it will be hard to leave. We have said good bye to many.  The hardest will be tonight when we say good bye to our wonderful group of young single adults. This will be our last dinner and institute class with them and just thinking about it gets both of us teary eyed, it will be terrible when we are actually looking at them and know that this will be the last--for a while at least. We hope to have some of them take our offer to come visit. 
On Sunday the branch held a common "break the fast" meal together and we had the opportunity to exchange greetings and hugs with most of the older members of the branch.  Monday night was our last family home evening with the young adults and I gave a lesson on the "promises of the Lord".  We had fun activities afterward and enjoyed the left over desserts from Sunday. It was not hard to say goodbye to them on Monday night, because we knew we would be back on Wednesday. Tonight is when the flood gates will open.
On Monday afternoon, we took the 6 young missionaries serving here to lunch at EGON, a nice restaurant on the top of a tower (similar to the Seattle space needle, but not near as high). It sits on a hill and gives a good view over trondheim. The floor rotates, so in an hour you see for 360 degrees round the city.  They offer a 99 kroner (~$15.00) "all you can eat pizza and salad buffet". Some of the elders were looking at that while salivating, but mom reminded them that they can afford to do that on their own, they better try something better than pizza since she was buying.  So we had a great lunch, wonderful scenery and great companionship--all for a paltry 1800 knorner (~$300).
Yesterday, the missionaries cooked breakfast for us at the church--breakfast burritos. Then they all left to fly to Stavanger to attend a zone conference. They will return late tonight, but we will be gone by then, so we said our good byes to them yesterday. It was not as hard as it will be to say good bye to the young adults, because we know the missionaries will also be back in the US in the next year and they live in places we visit--like Utah and AZ.

Our replacements, the Springers, arrived by train from Oslo yesterday afternoon and we got them into their apartment. I am amazed at how much stuff we are able to cram into a VW Polo--however, I am not considering buying one in place of a truck!  We have been moving things to their apt for the past couple of weeks, so they have lots of bags of "stuff"--some supplies, some food, some papers, our printer, etc. etc. to figure out what to do with in addition to all the things they brought.  We enjoyed a good dinner with them at a nice restaurant in town (Carl Johan) and then returned to our apartments to get some sleep. It was hard for us to get to sleep, as there were a thousand things going through our minds. In fact, mom got up at about 2 and did some family search indexing on the computer for an hour or so. Now she is sleeping soundly.

It snowed off and on all day yesterday and there is probably 3 inches of new snow on the ground now. It is wet and sloppy, but we hope will not delay plane arrivals and departures. 
This has been a marvelous experience, to share the gospel with wonderful people here in Norway. We have grown to love the members, new converts, missionaries and many whom they have brought to church who have not yet accepted the invitation to be baptized.  It is hard to leave, knowing that we may not see some of them again and they have had such a great impact on our lives--and we hope we have had a good impact on theirs.
On the other hand, there is a loving family and many loving friends waiting at home and we are anxious to see all of you once again. People ask "what is the first thing you are going to do when you get home?"  Mom says "get a pedicure" and I say, "go water skiing". Do we have any plans for the coming months?--Oh yes!  Speak in church (Feb 20 and 27), watch Meghan and Paige play basketball, also several of the younger grandchildren, visit new grandchildren (Ammon and Taylee) as well as their siblings in AZ, attend Marissa's wedding in March, visit Rustin and family in FL, attend General conference in April, Shayla's wedding in May, College World Series in June, hill Cumorah pageant in july, Twin Lakes in July, Lea's baptism in AZ in August, mom's class reunion in CA in Sept, and so it goes. In January 2012, we plan to visit with Gaye and Bud in Ghana, so there is much to do. Somewhere in all of that there will be yard work to do (probably can't convince the kids to keep doing it after we get home. But we hear from the neighbors that they have done a better job than I did and other chores to catch up on. Kristin told me she has already started on my "to do" list at home, just to make sure I don't get lazy.
We love each of you and appreciate your love and support while  we have been enjoying our opportunity to serve here in Norway May God bless each of you with the things you need to find happiness in this life and the life to come. That comes through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Picture of our young adults after family home evening on Monday.

love,
mom and dad/Gerald and Nancy/grandma and grandpa/nana and granddad