This Week Has Been So Fun!

Me with a random cat that lives somewhere by our house. The cat likes to follow us around sometimes too.

February 8, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

This week has been so fun! This last week was an "English fast" where we tried to go the entire week with just speaking Norwegian. It was really fun. Now that it's over, I've realized that I can speak Norwegian more fluently. It isn't as rough as it was when I started. It was quite good to see how much Norwegian I actually know. I was told before my mission that at about the 6 month mark is when you finally start to figure out the language. Surprisingly enough, they were right! I've been out for nearly 8 months now, and I think I'm getting a hang of it. Of course I still have tons to learn and will keep improving my pronunciation, but I can talk to most people now, actually understand them, and be able to respond. I'm marking that one up as a success.

We had a very cool miracle story this week. We were walking up and down the streets this week. We had walked past this woman on the street and we thought she would not be interested at all. We kept walking and stopped other people and tried talking with them. We saw the lady again later, just sitting down and upset. We thought she would probably just want her space. As we turned the corner, Elder Mitchell and I had this feeling that we needed to talk to her. We knew that she needed to hear our message. We had gone back and she wasn't there anymore. Still feeling the need to talk with her, we searched the streets trying to find her. After a few minutes, we had seen her coming towards us. As we stopped and talked with her, she talked about all of these different problems she was having. She talked about how she's been trying to find some direction in her life. It was really great to talk with her and help her out. If it hadn't for feeling a prompting to talk with her, we probably wouldn't have been able to help her when she needed it.

Big news! We, the four of us missionaries in Fredrikstad, will not all be in the same cozy little apartment together. Now, we will just be a snowball's throw away. We are getting a second apartment now, so each set of missionaries will be in separate apartments. The apartment is just next door so it works perfect. We can just lean out the window and talk to each other! One plus of having gotten the new apartment means that I will be sleeping on a bed now instead of a fold down couch! It's pretty exciting! Today, Elder Mitchell and I put together the bunkbed for the other apartment. The big move will be here in a couple of days!

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Mickelson