Hallo!

People have been talking about the Olympics, and it has been fun to
hear about it from the members.

Things have been going really well for us here in Oslo, and this last
week was the best week the district has had since I got here. So
things are great! We have 8 investigators who are going to be baptized
in March, and we found 15 new investigators this week, so the Lord is
really blessing us. I am just not really sure what the difference is.
But that is okay, because I am just way excited about it.

This week we visited Rhoda and we got an appointment for
a couple of days later to come and teach her about the gospel. When we got there, we rang the doorbell, and called her a couple of times, but there was no answer at all. We
were pretty bummed about it, because we really just want to help Rhoda
out, so we decided to pray about what to do next and then to leave.
Elder Duncan prayed, and while he spoke, I just felt a warm feeling
come over me. I felt at peace with the world, and life just felt good,
despite everything. I knew Heavenly Father loved me. As soon as we
said amen, however, Rhoda walked out onto her balcony. It was the most
random thing, and she didn't even know we were there, but we said
hello, and she let us in and she said that she has been thinking about baptism a lot
lately and she agreed to be baptized on the 22nd of March.  She
doesn't have a testimony that our church is the only true church yet,
so we have a lot of work to do still, but I am excited for her, and I
know the Lord will help her.  I know that the
Lord blesses us in the things that we do because He knows His children
and He knows what is best for us.

Other than Rhoda, we don't have any investigators who are really progressing right now. Viviana called and
said she is really busy right now and wants to take a break from
things, so we are giving it a rest with her right now. This week Elder
Duncan and I set a goal to find 9 new investigators, which is like six
more than I have ever found in a week, but we really felt like it was
what the Lord wanted us to do and that it was possible, so we set the
goal and went out this week and work as hard as we could towards it,
and we did it! We found 9 new investigators this week, so we should
have good things ahead. It is just cool to see the Lord's hand in our
work.

Today we are going to go out to a lake here to have a fire and roast
hot dogs and marshmallows, and that is way exciting. Things are
warming up right now, and I am really looking forward to the spring.
The winter is passing and that is a really great thing.

Sometimes on my mission I have moments when I
just think, "What is even going on right now? How did I get here?"
Missions are so much fun and so crazy and so hard and so worth it all
at the same time, that I feel like I am just a big ball of stress
walking around most of the time. But I love it. In the Doctrine and
Covenants section 15 (or near to there) there is a scripture that says
that the thing that will be of most worth for [us] right now will be
to share the gospel. And I have a testimony that is true. I love this
work, and I love you all!

Eldste Childs

Knockin' on Heaven's Door

So my mom asked me several questions this week, the answers of which I am now going to turn into a blog post. Thanks mom! :)

It has been a good week, and I really feel like things are picking up here in Oslo and also in Norway. The most exciting thing that happened with the work was that we found an investigator on Saturday on the street who met with us right then and said that she would be baptized! Her name is Viviana, she was born in Spain but has lived in Norway for most of her life, and she has such a strong desire to learn about the gospel. She has a sickness which makes her tired a lot and sometimes hard to concentrate, but she is so prepared and she even came to church with us yesterday. She got tired and had to leave part way through, but she came which was a huge step.

As far as our other investigators go, nothing is really happening with Malika or Rhoda yet, but this week is Winter Break, so hopefully they will have a little time to meet with us over the course of this week. I did talk to Malika when I saw her at the Tax Office when we were checking Elder Duncan into the city though, so that was a good reminder for her that we are still here.

Now for the weather report in Oslo. The weathermen here have been horribly wrong, but the weather has actually been pretty nice lately. There has been no problem staying warm, and it has actually mostly just been raining all the time the past little while. Sometimes it snows in the morning, but the rain always comes in the afternoon, and the streets just turn into a big lake. Which is a little lame, but today the sun is out, the skies are blue, and I am not wearing my boots for the first time in a long time :)

My new companion, Elder Duncan, is from Logan, and he is a really great guy. I am happy to be serving with him, and I think that the quality I admire most in him is that he is really motivated to work hard, which is a great quality as a missionary, of course. 

I absolutely love serving in Oslo. I hope that I get to continue serving here for a long time, because I know that I am really going to miss this place when I am gone. My favorite member here is a man named Kjetil, if he is in Norway, Justin, if he is in America, or some Chinese thing if he is in Taiwan. He is really really sarcastic and works as a professor at the university here. I just think he is really funny and he is always willing to help us out.

When I go to bed at night, the parts of my day that are the most rewarding are the conversations that I had with people about the gospel. I don't really enjoy the long line of rejections, but at the end of the day I don't remember them anyway. Joy really does come from sharing the gospel.

And now I will end with a thought about work. I felt like I had a decent work ethic when I got to Norway, even though it was different than the kind of work that we do here, and I felt like I was prepared in a few ways. One was through basketball and the dedication and effort that required of me over a long period of time, another was through having a job through high school, and a really important one was having my dad as an example for me to help me learn what it really means to work. I don't really think it is possible to prepare someone for what a mission is going to be like, but I do think we can help by teaching them the importance of setting goals and then developing the skills necessary to live in a way that allows us to achieve those goals. I think that is the secret of life, actually, and without learning that one thing, I don't think there is any way we will ever reach our true potential as children of God.

It has been a great week for me, so I hope that you all can say the same. Talk to you next week!

Some Sushi I made!

 Standing by Main Street

 At the ski jump again! but this time there is snow :)

One Step at a Time

My week has been going well, and it is getting warmer here, so I can't complain. It has been raining all week, so I am enjoying life pretty well. Today we didn't even take jackets when we left, so basically it feels like I am at the beach. Life is good!

My new companion is here, and things are great with us. We are working hard, and so I have faith, like always, that we are going to find people who are going to be baptized. I can't leave Oslo without conquering this area :) I am enjoying working hard, and it makes for good sleep every night. . . . there are definitely worse things.

We haven't met with Malika this week because she has been really busy getting Norwegian passports for her kids so that they can go to the barnehage here. That is like.... well it means kindergarten, but it is like daycare for all of the parents here, because most of the men and the women work during the day so the kids have to have somewhere to go. She told us that we could meet this coming week, though, so I think that we can look forward to a good lesson with her coming up. I just hope that we are able to find a way to help her to realize that we have the only true church on the earth today. As far as other investigators go, we finally have another appointment with Rhoda tonight. I don't know if you remember her, but I found her way back in October, and I thought she was pretty positive from our first lesson with her, but then we haven't been able to nail down an appointment with her until now. But we are going to commit her to be baptized, so I hope that that goes well. I will be praying, so you can join if you would like :) Other than that, we are just finding and finding, but it is okay, because I am actually starting to actually enjoying going around and talking to people on the street. I actually want to do it, which feels weird. But nice. So let's all pray for new investigators!

With the weather turning a little warmer and the sun shining a little more often in my beautiful city, I have been thinking a lot lately about change. On a mission, we experience a lot of change. We change companions, we change areas, we help other people to change their lives, and, if we are doing things correctly, we should be changing ourselves. I have been thinking about what it really takes to become a truly great person. For example, when did Captain Moroni become the Captain Moroni we know and love in the scriptures? Was he born that way, or did he have something figured out that a lot of us don't? I wasn't really sure and I couldn't really see myself turning into a Captain Moroni anytime soon, but then I read a talk by Elder Scott from the October 2010 general conference of the church, entitled, "The Transforming Power of Faith and Character."

One of my favorite quotes in that talk is this: "We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day. Righteous character is a precious manifestation of what you are becoming."

I read that one line in his talk and everything seemed to just become so simple. We can become the people that we want to be by taking life one week, one day, one decision at a time, and be the people that we want to be. Through the enabling power of the atonement of Christ, we literally have the power to become a new creation and actually make a difference. Richard G. Scott is basically my hero, and I am so grateful for the gift of change. I am not stuck the way I am now and it really is possible to become a saint through the atonement of Christ. I love that.

The works is going slowly but surely, and life is good for me now. I am taking life one day at a time, focusing on the next investigator, the next decision, or the next person on the street, and I know that is all that I can do. Left alone out here, I would accomplish nothing, but I know that I can do all things through Christ who strenghtens really. And let me tell you, His strengthening power is really.

I love you all, and Happy Valentine's Day! Go share Christ's love with someone else :)

Here Comes the Sun!

Well, transfers have come around again, and I have found out that I will be staying right here in Oslo for another transfer, which means that the first 8 months of my mission will have been spent in the same area. I will be getting another companion, and life in Norway is good. 

Nothing happened with Malika this week, but we should be meeting with her soon. She just said that she wanted to wait until winter break starts in a week so that she will have more time to talk to us. So hopefully things will be good this week.

We watched the Hastening the Work of Salvation special broadcast this morning as a refresher for all of us, and it just really reminded me of how missionary work should really be. We have a long way to go, and it was good for me to remember the instruction we have been getting from the apostles and the prophet. Do you get on the hastening the work website ever? I would recommend it   :)

For the past few months, life in Norway has been dark and dreary, and people walk through the city with their heads now and earphones in, running from one place to another, and never really taking the time to enjoy the journey. It has been cloudy every day, the snow and wind have been never-ceasing, and it has been pressing down on us, without us really noticing it. People have tended to be a bit less happy lately.

But today, a miracle happened. The clouds disappeared, the sun came up, and Oslo changed. It is incredible to think about how much difference just a few rays of sunshine can make.  It was so great to see the sun and blue skies, and everyone has been a lot happier :) One of the investigators in Oslo took us ice skating and it was good to just be outside exercising for a while. One minute life is normal, business as usual, and then the sun begins to shine and everything becomes the happiest thing in the whole world. 

I think that the same thing can be said about our lives. We all have trials and hard times, but it is always good to remember that no matter how dark or depressing our lives may seem at the present, the sun will always come out tomorrow, and things really will look up. We should always receive strength and comfort from the knowledge that we will never be alone and that the light will come again to fill our lives.

I am so grateful for the ultimate light in my life- the light that is brought through the gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope that you all can receive more of that light as we try to share it with others.

I love you all, have a wonderful week!

Ice Skating

With Elder Tate

Kebab with the Zone Leaders

January 27

Every time I get an email from home I am always surprised by just how much it is that really happens in the course of just one week. I can't believe that life just keeps moving like it is doing...it is so strange for me. I like what you said about how the things we focus on tend to expand, though....I have noticed that here. There are a lot of missionaries who focus a lot on how hard the work is or about how miserable they are doing it, but the only thing that happens is that it gets harder and they get more miserable. It is my goal to be more like the missionaries who focus on the positive and always just try to be happy. They just get happier and happier and life is good. And life is always good, am I right?

This week a Moroccan family was referred to us from a man in the ward who happens to be their landlord. Malika, the mother, just got divorced from her husband and moved here from Morocco. She has three daughters, and they are Muslim, but the daughters have said that they don't like being Muslim. They needed some help moving and setting up furniture, so Elder Tate and I spent some time doing that for them this week. They said that we can go over there this week to talk about the gospel, so hopefully that will go well for us :) 

Two of Malika's daughters:

 

As for Green, our investigator from Nigeria...nothing is happening with him really. He always just tells us that he is really busy with his dad, who is sick, so we haven't had the chance to meet with him for a while. It is kind of lame, but I am not sure how committed he is to learning about our message anyway, so I suppose it is alright.

The YSA Arctic Party was this weekend, and apparently it was a lot of fun. There were YSA here who came from all over Europe to participate, and they all came to church yesterday to support a girl named Rebecca, who gave her farewell talk. She left today for the England MTC, and then she is going to the Temple Square mission! That is exciting that she is going so close to home, so I think it would be a lot of fun to go find her when I get back and before she goes back to Norway :) We had a few less active YSA come as well, so I think that the party was a success.

When we were at a member's house over Christmas, we ate balut (They are from the Phillipines).  The only problem was that it smelled funny and looked really really gross while we were getting ready to eat it. It actually wasn't bad when you actually eat it, though, and I guess it is a delicacy in the Philippines. It basically just tastes like a boiled egg. So that was really weird, but it was a good experience :) I guess that in the Philippines they make all the new missionaries eat it and the members there think it is really funny to watch the Americans their first time.

It has snowed every day and we are probably getting pretty close to a meter, so it has been a lot of snow. It is really really dry snow, though, so when you walk it kind of just puffs out from under your feet. And it squeaks when you walk...I think I remember you telling me something about how that is what the snow is like in Wyoming... It has been anywhere from -5 to -10 degrees celsius, so it hasn't been that bad :) I can't complain, at least, and I am used to it by now.

I hope that you have a great week! I am doing well, and I appreciate all of your support :)

Eldste Childs :) 

P-day on a cold winter's day in Oslo:  Popcorn and a Disney Movie!

Technology and Missionary Work

In Norway there are obviously Norwegians that live here, but there are also a lot of people from other countries as well. When we go and talk to people on the street, it is almost every other person doesn't come from Norway it seems like, so there are a lot of different languages and cultures represented here. Sometimes when we are teaching, that presents a challenge and a language barrier between the missionaries and the investigators. There have always been ways to cope with this issue, but now with the advancement of technology, missionaries from our mission have been able to Skype missionaries serving in the native countries of investigators here to help with teaching. So, in the past month, missionaries have been Skyping a couple of elders in Albania so that they can teach a lady from there, and she got baptized this last week! The missionaries were able to participate in the meeting via Skype. One of them gave a talk, and they both bore their testimonies at the end, and it was really cool. I know that the Lord is hastening His work, and He is using all of the resources available to do it. There are so many ways we can get involved, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be here as a part of His army on the front lines.

Random Christmastime Pictures

Dallin put a bunch of pictures in our Drop Box today.  Here's a sampling:

Elder Badger (First Companion) on Dallin's right and Elder Tate (Current Companion) on Dallin's left.

Freia Chocolate Factory

Ward Christmas Party

 Does this Santa make you smile or what?

Balut.  Always an adventure as a missionary...