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!

As Usual, But Still Worth Noting, I'm Doing Great!

View from above the morning's fog

February 20, 2017

Hello Everyone!

Baked goods in the store (Bakevarer)

As usual, but still worth noting, I'm doing great. This week came and went and who knows where it flew off to. But anyways, I'm chilling here on the computer with a Jurassic World Band-Aid on my knee. I was hoping for a Hello Kitty one, but I can't complain. Anyways, I totally fell on the ice... twice... while running this morning. Scraped it up more than I would like, but oh well. Needless to say, the ice was VERY slick this morning. We had run down to this ice skating rink (in the summer it's a soccer field I think), and back. WAAAAY too much uphill, but such is life.

Epic P-Day Ping Pong

(yes, we put two tables together)

We kicked off the week with an epic game of ping pong as a district. We all got together and played ping pong in the church (there's totally just a couple tables chilling there, so we used them). Proudly, I can say I won a lot, but practically at the expense of being dizzy. We started playing to where you had to spin in a circle every time you hit the ball. It made it REALLY hard. I'm surprised I didn't fall over.

We (Elder Mitchell and I) also bought ourselves a couple train tickets, and hopped on the next train headed down to Tønsberg to be a part of their district meeting. That was really great getting to be with all of the missionaries down there. Elder Mitchell and I parted ways for the next day, he stayed in Tønsberg, and Elder Rogers (one of the missionaries in Tønsberg) came with me back to Drammen for splits.

Elder Rogers and I on splits

Splits was way fun. We spent some good time doing a bit of everything, and walked A TON uphill. I've only been to Bergen once, but it felt like I was ALWAYS walking uphill. That's what it seemed like when he was here in Drammen this last week haha. But it was way fun and it was really enjoyable. We even remembered to get a splits selfie!

A blurry picture of me (all bundled up for the cold)

Wednesday night, we were headed back into town and we got a text if we could start the seminary class before the teacher got there a few minutes later. So we said yes and went. It was really great because we had a chance to teach a little bit and share our experiences a bit at the beginning. One thing I'm very impressed while I've been in Norway is the youth within the church. They are just so awesome. They're an example to me of deciding what your standards are and living them. It was just so prevalent while we were there that evening. They'd talk about different things during the lesson, and I was just blown away by how incredible they are. For them, it seems to just click. So it was a great time.

So I do not know why, but now all of a sudden, I seem to be coming across more people with animal mounts chilling in their living rooms. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind, it just throws me off because I haven't seen too many here in Norway. But we were talking to this lady at her door, and Elder Nelson asks what was on the wall behind her. I was off to the

An emu (imagine a small ostrich)

side so I couldn't see, but I moved a little, and there was this GIANT moose head right at the back of the entryway. I've seen quite a few moose, but this head was like one of the largest I've ever seen! just chilling on the back wall. Anyways, it led to a fun little discussion, but it was just so shocking, just because I haven't seen too many while I've been here. There's a start for everything I guess.

Well I hope you all had a great week! Take care everyone!

Sincerely,

Elder Mickelson

"Seek forgiveness from those you have wronged. Forgive those who have wronged you. Forgive yourself." —C. Scott Grow

Headed over the bridge in the city (Those were some giant flags)

Me inside the Blueberry (our Opel Corsa)