Happy Easter Everyone!!!

Telemark Zone (Our Largest Zone)

April 17, 2017

Happy Easter everyone!!!

I hope you all had a great vacation and weekend and stuff! Something that is pretty cool here is that in Norway, people celebrate Easter week. So everything from Palm Sunday, to Good Friday and Easter. Even today, being Monday, is the second day of Easter. So, it's different celebrating more than just one day for Easter. I think it's pretty great!

It was quite an eventful week! That's for sure! We helped a member in the ward paint his house, and it's looking pretty good if I do say so myself haha! It was real fun though. I got a bunch of paint on my jeans so we'll see how well it goes trying to get it off. It'll be an adventure nonetheless.

A ton of people from the ward got together to play soccer over Easter break and we went and played with them. There was a couple dozen there. Proper sized teams. Us Americans suck at playing soccer. Luckily, because of my time in Sandvika and here in Drammen, I've gotten better. I'm not completely hopeless. Just somewhat of a lost cause. But no, we did alright haha! (Still lost though, but just barely).

Speaking of soccer, one afternoon we spent the evening with a family, and after dinner us and their kids all headed out to this little soccer field and played soccer. It was a blast, but we still lost to their kids. I'm not that great after all. Oh well.

No weekly email would quite be the same without the train update. Well, the trains are still running, and I'm still catching them. This week I went on splits to Tønsberg. And it was a lot of fun. I was with Elder Rogers again and it was a blast seeing him again. We got to go help an older couple with some yard work too. I can thank my mom for teaching me how to clean out flowerbeds! :) Thanks mom!

We spent Easter yesterday over at the mission home with the mission president and his wife, along with some other senior couples and a bunch of other missionaries. We had a nice dinner (the food was amazing) and we sang a ton of songs together. A really nice way to spend Easter afternoon!

Elder Mickelson is playing the piano

Well we are headed out soon to go climb Norway's biggest ski jump, so that'll be fun!

Hope you all have a great week! Happy 2nd day of Easter!

Sincerely,

Elder Justin Mickelson

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for

his friends." John 15:13

Elder Decker with our super small shopping cart :)

Elder Mickelson and Elder Mitchell spent the morning 

teaching the missionaries how to keep their “line in the water.”

There are wonderful large windows around the top of the Drammen Chapel. They let in lots of light 🙂 We were happy to have a visitor Eivind Top join us for the day!

Spring Is Around The Corner

Elder Johnson and I

March 20, 2017

Wow! Hello Everyone!

With the passing of the season (winter leaving) and spring around the corner, it was about that time that moves happened! Well, more like just 6 weeks had passed, but oh well. With it having been a hectic week, we managed to have a busy week, but a really fun one at that.

Our deeply missed Elder Johnson left.... :'( but that's ok, we'll see him around. But, we did get someone just as great to replace him. Elder Decker!!! He's from Oregon, and he's a pretty cool cat.

We found out about the moves on Monday morning. So we decided as a district to all meet at the church and have waffles for breakfast to kick off moves week. So we showed up, had some delicious Norwegian waffles, with everything on top of it from brown cheese, to jam, to

whipped cream, to sour cream. Yes, sour cream gets put on waffles. And yes, it's surprisingly good haha!

Elder Johnson left a couple days later and Elder Decker flew in. But right before Elder Johnson had left, we met with one of the church members and got kebab all together. So it was a nice ending to the transfer.

Fufu. For those that don't know what fufu is, just go look it up on the internet (I didn't even know what it was until we had it for dinner one night). Fufu is this really good food that is like a food staple in Africa, where exactly, I couldn't tell you, but a lot of

countries make it. Anyways, we were at dinner with one of the sweetest families, and they had made fufu as a part of dinner. And boy was it delicious! If only I could just travel the world and eat food for a living, that'd be incredible. But ya, it was made from maize flour, and ya, I might just have to learn how to make it.

We had a street stand in the city center this weekend, and it was so much fun. We had given out hot dogs like last time, and we also talked a lot with people about the Plan of Salvation. It was really fun. We invited a ton of people to our Open House at our church building that was held yesterday. It was so great. Tons of members from the ward were there out inviting people to it, and it was a great time!

And now, for the long-awaited story. How does one simply lose a key? Well, I had the car key in my pocket. And I sat down on a bus seat. And when I got off, the key wasn't in my pocket. That'll make a person have a small panic attack. Not being able to get back on the bus because it was long gone, we came up with a plan. We figured out when the bus should be coming back in the opposite direction, and decided to hop onto it, as the driver if someone had returned the key, and go on our way. So we did. And the key didn't get returned to the driver... Nor was the key chilling on the seat that I had sat on.... That was awkward. So we were out of luck. Anyways, fast forward to the next day, we were in a meeting, and one of the church members walks in asking if anyone had lost a key. It was definitely our key. Apparently, someone had been on the bus at the same time with us, and

had noticed that the key had fallen out of my pocket, and just shown up to church to return it.

Long story short, I'm really grateful for so many wonderful people here in Norway that are looking out for others!

To start out this next week, I hope you all have a good one. Take care!

Sincerely,

Elder Mickelson

"Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good" D&C 90:24

Scenery from a bus

More pretty scenery from a bus