October 13

First things first, we had moves call on Sunday, and I found out that I will be staying in Trondheim for another transfer! Woohoo! I love this place, and I am grateful for the opportunity to stay and continue to serve with Elder Shanklin. Keeping the dream team united. That is what I am talking about :) It has been a good week and we have positive things for the future, so I can't really complain much, but I don't believe that anyone has the right to complain as a missionary. We are so blessed.

On Monday we started off the week strong by going to a new mall that was opened in our area (which had a grocery that reminded me A LOT of Walmart. For those of you who haven't been to Norway, the stores here are nothing like Walmart, so I almost felt at home.) We got ice cream and then bought hot dogs and went out to the beach to have a grilling party and hang out and take some pictures. It was a lot of fun, even if the Norwegian "beach" isn't much of a tourist attraction. It was a lot of fun to have a pday as a district, because two of the sisters in our district are reaching the end of their missions this week, and we are going to miss them.

On Tuesday we had a zone leader training meeting, for which the whole zone came down to Trondheim. As always, I was dealing with a lot of stress leading up to the meeting, but it turned out to be alright, and we even incorporated an auction into the proceedings. I really enjoyed myself and I think that the missionaries got some inspiration from the Holy Ghost, so I count it as a success :) Later that day, we were able to Skype with our friend Charlie, who was baptized in Oslo a while back and then moved back to Taiwan (he is our Asian friend :) It made me so grateful for the technology we have to be able to talk to people from across the world. We also visited a less active lady who loves the fact that we are knitting and who gave us the best chair ever. I will probably have to take a picture of it just so you can see, because it was quite the adventure to get it to our apartment, and it is so comfortable. I love it. 

On Wednesday and Thursday we were on splits. Wednesday was here in Trondheim with the other elders, and then we flew up to Bodø the next day to work with them for a while. Both were really good experiences, but the highlight was Bodø, because we went up there and destroyed their area. The Lord blessed us so much and we were able to teach a lot of lessons and find new investigators- miracles really do happen. It was really cold and extremely windy, and Elder Shanklin ended up having a bike crash, but miraculously, he did not get injured, and we made it back in one piece. 

The rest of the week kind of blends together in my mind, but some highlights are that we played soccer with the members on Saturday, which is always a blast, we found tons of new investigators for our area (something that we really needed) and I was able to accompany a violin duet in sacrament meeting for ward conference, and it was beautiful. We played "Be Still, My Soul" and I really enjoyed it. While playing, however, I got to the next to last page and realized that I hadn't copied the last page while I copied the others to make life easier, so I had a mini freak out mid song while I was digging through my pile of papers and trying to keep the song going so I could play the last part. But everyone said they didn't notice, so I guess it went okay :) 

It was a crazy week, like it always is, but I love it. I have such a strong testimony that the Lord's hand is in this work and that he blesses His missionaries. The "regular" members are his missionaries as well :) Let's live our faith out loud this week, and be the best disciples of Christ this world has ever seen! I know we can do it. I love you all!

Zone selfie! I was pretty impressed with the skills to be honest... but that is our zone :)

The Zone!

Alright I know the selfies are getting ridiculous, but hey, it's a mission.

This is us taking senior pics round two, but it was good to get a picture with the elders.