OCTOBER Report

GREETINGS FROM NORWAY
OCTOBER REPORT

Dear friends and family. I will try to use this format to get a message out to all of you at one time. We love and appreciate our relationship with each of you and hope through our emails and letters you can come to love the land of Norway and its people as we do.

October has been a busy month for us, as we have been given additional assignments (I guess to make sure we don’t have too much free time for me to longingly look at the water around here and try to figure out how I can get acquainted with the owners of some of the fine boats I see in the harbor). In late September we moved to a lovely apt owned by some members here in Trondheim who have gone to Sweden for 6 months to serve in the temple. When they are finished there, they said they will live in their county home until we are finished here. Our address is:

Elder and Sister Sorensen
Romolslia 19 E
7029 Trondheim
Norway

We have attended a zone conference in Tromsø, a 2 hour flight north of us—and well above the arctic circle, visited the small northern city of Mo I Rana (means Mo in Rana—Rana being the county in which the town of Mo is found) where Nancy had a chance to polish her sacrament meeting talk in Norwegian on the Prophet Noah. Mo is a 7 hour drive or train ride north of Trondheim. Here is a photo looking down the main street of Mo. It was snowing hard when we arrived, but soon cleared. The second pictures is from Tromsø with Sisters Engebretsen and Johnson. It may not show clearly, but the hills in the background are covered with snow (Oct. 2)

We opted to take the train this first time. We have been asked to visit there at least once per month to encourage and support the small branch of the church in that city, as the president has just moved the missionaries out of Mo to concentrate the missionary effort in the larger cities (the elders from Mo moved to Trondheim). We just returned from another zone conference, this time held in the Oslo area, where we were instructed by the first counselor in the Europe Area Presidency, Elder Gerald Causse. Elder Causse is a member of the First Quorum of Seventy and the first General Authority of the Church from France. He was delightful and gave good instruction to all of we missionaries. This conference included all of the missionaries in the mission who are not serving in the Oslo Stake, so there were about 12 missionary pairs, including 2 pairs of sisters.

We also enjoyed a “Mission conference” (similar to a Stake Conference, but we are in the mission, not a stake) where we got to meet the two counselors to President Johansen. Nancy spent from Thursday afternoon that week until Sunday afternoon in the hospital with an infection around her ear—similar to what she had suffered back in Richland in June, in the MTC in August and here in Trondheim in September. While she was in the hospital, they allowed her to leave to attend the meetings on Saturday and Sunday; she just had to return to the hospital to get her IV connected to a bag of penicillin every 6 hours.

We have looked for and found a new apartment for the sisters, as their apartment is being sold, then moved them—making many trips using our small VW Polo. We were able to move everything except a couch, coffee table and two book cases, which one of the members moved in a trailer (a trailer in Norwegian is a til henger—a hanger on). Now that we have 2 elders here also, we are looking for an apartment in the city center area for them, as they are living in the apt we occupied when we first arrived here and it is a ways out of town--not convenient when you do not have a car. We will then get to move them.

Last Saturday, (October 24, we enjoyed a breakfast in our apartment with 4 missionaries, 4 young single adults from the branch and two investigators whom the sisters are teaching—one from China and one from Nigeria. After a breakfast of hash browns, scrambled eggs, fresh strawberries, Norwegian waffles, bread, cheese (brown, goats cheese) and lingon berry jam (a favorite here in Norway), they played some games around the table before all departed to take care of their other duties.

On October 19, I began teaching an early morning seminary class with the one young man in the branch who is of seminary age (15). Since his family lives about an hour and a half out of town, we do seminary via Skype each morning. It has been fun and a good experience for both of us. Occasionally the member who teaches Institute will call (usually about an hour before) and ask if I can teach the institute class that night. She has a young baby and therefore gets interrupted quite a bit in preparation.





Nancy plays the piano about every other week in church, cuts hair for the missionaries and YSA, mends clothing for the same group, cooks dinner for the YSA and others who attend the institute class on Wednesday evenings, makes treats for family home evening on Monday nights (we have found that the people here have never enjoyed the opportunity to taste Rice Krispie treats and they are smitten by them), plus tries to look interested in meetings when she does not understand much of what is being said, smiles a lot and in general is the one the young adult women and ladies in the branch love to get hugs from. She is a mother/grandmother to the missionaries and YSA and a great friend to the members. Her language is coming slowly and she does well with what she understands. She wanted to make scotcharoos and rice krispie treats, but we could not find Rice Krispies and we did not think they would be the same with Corn Flakes. Finally one day I saw some Rice Krispies in a grocery store, so bought two boxes. It is the only store we have found that sells them and we may be the only people who buy them, although I think Nancy has hooked the members on them, so more will be sold in the future.


On Monday this week, sisters Engebretsen and Johnson invited us to a “house warming” so we could see how they have decorated and arranged their new apt. They fed us tacos for lunch, then invited us up to their study area (the apt is on two levels) for dessert, where they surprised me with an apple pie for my birthday.

We are enjoying our experiences here and love the people and the country. Nancy said one good reason to take the train when we travel long distances is because then we are assured of getting there, as I seem to find a better scene to photograph around every turn in the road (and there are many). Below are some of those scenes. Our desire is to fill the chapel with young people so they can marry and raise strong families to build up the church in Norway.


Love to all,
Elder and Sister Sorensen