As Of Now The Sun Won't Come Up Anymore

Elder Mickelson and Elder Jefferies in the Trondheim church building

November 23, 2015

Dear Family & Friends,

So mørketid has officially begun! As of now, the sun won't come up anymore in Alta until end of January. It's actually a really cool sight, well lack of sight I guess, to not be seeing the sun. Because Alta is settled in a fjord and mountains surround it, I haven't actually seen the sun in the last week and a half haha! It's really cool though. Whenever we have some.... light?....., it comes out as a sunrise/sunset which is really beautiful. I love it up here. It's unique, which makes it so great.

The Nord Zone!

This week we went to Trondheim for a Zone Conference. President and Sister Hill were there, along with the entire zone of course. We talked about using our family history as a teaching tool. It was great to learn about how we need to keep changing things up as missionaries. Our work and goal doesn't really change, but the way we go about it can. We also talked about unity as a mission. We need to be united with our companions and also as a mission. We have such a great mission. We try to always be making friendships, and I'm seeing how it just continues to bring us closer together.

Also, while I was in Trondheim, I got an amazing kebab. So the kebab shop is called Golden Kebab. I neglected to take a picture... sorry about that, but just wanted to let everyone know it tastes amazing. It's a kebab... with fries inside of it... Delicious! haha

This week we started visiting less active members of our branch. We started getting a list together of all of the members and we've made it a goal to go visit all of them. It is just so nice to start seeing members who haven't been to church in a long time and try to help them come back.

On the way to Trondheim I had a really nice conversation with the man next to me. We talked about different things and religion got brought up, naturally, most people my age don't come to Norway for no reason, especially if they aren't students here. At one point he just asked, in Norwegian of course, 'So what is your message that you go around sharing with others?'. Normally most people aren't just super open to hearing what we have to say. But for him, he was super open to learning about our faith. He was open to hearing everything I had to say, and for me, it was just so great just to be able to say what I wanted to, and not worry that he'd just start arguing. It was a really nice conversation we had.

So this week I'd have to say that I learned more about what I've learned in the past. We can have opportunities to share our beliefs with anyone. A person's faith can come up anytime, anywhere. It's a matter of whether or not we choose to shrug off the opportunity to share what we know, or whether we be open with our beliefs. We don't always have to go out of our way to share the Gospel, many times, those chances come in regular conversations.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone! Take care!

-Elder Mickelson