March 31, 2014

I am back safely after a trip to Trondheim, and I think that Trondheim is the best! It is a beautiful city, and I had a great time being there with the rest of the missionaries in the zone. I took some pictures of a cathedral which I will send later, but it feels good to back in Narvik.

A little about Narvik:  It is above the Arctic Circle, which is really cool, but for the most part you don't even notice. The thing is that it gets light really early and stays light really late. It gets lighter every day now, so before we know it, I will be seeing the midnight sun. (In the summer the sun never sets.) I saw the northern lights the night I got here, but other than that it has been cloudy every day. They are really cool, though.   In WWII, Narvik got bombed by the Nazis, so there aren't really any old buildings here because they all got knocked over in the war. I don't know why anything happened in such a small city, but it did.  When it gets a little warmer I want to go fishing.  I went to the store today where the guy showed me lures that are guaranteed to catch me fish out here. I am really excited. Besides cod, he said it is also possible to catch sea trout or salmon as well as a few other kinds, so I will definitely send some pictures when that happens.

The other missionaries in my district are in Bodø, which is about an hour by plane from Narvik, so district meetings are via Skype. It is horrible trying to sing hymns a capella through a computer, but I am sure that the Lord understands our good intentions. Exciting stuff. I will be flying down to Bodø for splits next week, and then President Evans is bringing all of the mission leaders into Oslo on Thursday, so we will be there until Friday. I swear we are not going to have any time to work in Narvik! But it is exciting. My goals this transfer are to try to figure out how to get the members involved here (which is easier said than done), and I just want to find someone to baptize. I have the same goals as always, but I just want to feel like I am making a difference here.

There are technically 44 members on the branch list, but a lot of them have moved, or are not interested at all, or are old and sick in the hospital. In church we have two old women who make up the relief society, and one mother with her small children who are the primary. It is really interesting, but it is fun.  Our branch has a branch president at the moment named President Nyman, but he is moving, so we will see how long that will last. He was born in Finland, lived in Sweden for a while, and married a Norwegian, so he has the funniest accent I have ever heard. He is really nice though, and we go over there for dinner every Sunday. He is an eccentric Einstein kind of character, and I really like him a lot. Our teaching pool is pretty good right now, we are teaching about 5 lessons a week. We have a lot of investigators that have been around for years, but we also found four new investigators this week, so hopefully things will start to pick up.

Have a great week!

Eldste Childs