My First Thanksgiving In Norway!

Our Thanksgiving dinner

December 2, 2015

Dear Family & Friends,

My first Thanksgiving in Norway! Well Norwegians don't celebrate Thanksgiving... I guess that's for obvious reasons, but we still celebrated it ourselves. So sadly, we didn't have turkey this year for Thanksgiving. I found out that turkeys come in boxes, not wrapped in plastic. So I didn't know I could buy one until after the fact. But that's ok! We ended up cooking up some whale instead. So we had some whale, mashed potatoes, more vegetables, some white gravy (tastes really good on whale by the way), and some rolls (well boller, but it's almost the same thing. I think it has some cinnamon in it though). To top off our feast, we bought ourselves some ice cream. This will definitely be a memorable Thanksgiving.

I got to attend my first District Meeting in person in Tromsø this week! We flew out Monday evening to Tromsø and stayed the night for splits. It was so fun. We had family home evening therein Tromsø with the senior couple and the other missionaries. It was really great to be all together for that. We had District Meeting the next morning. It was about family history. So we got to learn how we could help others start their genealogy work. I was surprised by how simple it is to help someone start their family history! We spent the rest of that day on splits with the Tromsø Elders. It was a lot of fun. We got to contact a ton of people in the streets and go knock on some houses. It was a really great time and I learned a lot more of how I can better teach people.

Alta's Christmas Tree

I will find out on Sunday whether or not I'm staying in Alta. So it's exciting! We'll see soon where I'll be for Christmas!

This week the Church came out with a great Christmas video. I really enjoyed it. The website is christmas.mormon.org It was an awesome video though. Check it out! We've been sharing the website with a lot of people on the streets and it's been working great. Christmas is definitely a time to be with families and enjoy each other's company. It also is a great time for us to think about the Savior and why we even have Christmas.

Have a great week everybody!

Love,

Elder Mickelson

This Week Has Been Super Fun!

November 9, 2015

Dear Family & Friends,

This week has been super fun! We got to help with some service, teach some more, be a part of a Nepali Cultural Celebration, and take a trip up to Hammerfest!

So for the service report for the week! We got to put some insulation up in an extension to a house up here. So that was really cool to learn how to insulate a house. I also got to help with building a deck. I'm learning how doing things on our own can be much easier than we thought it would be. Things in life can seem really hard, no matter what it is, but when we start doing it, we realize that it really isn't that difficult.

While we've been doing our service, we've gotten many opportunities to share the Gospel. We share our beliefs and discuss different doctrines and teachings of Christ. It's really cool to see that we don't have to be so formal in sharing the Gospel with others. Discussions of beliefs and religion come up so much in life, we can share simple truths with others all of the time without even really realizing it.

We were visiting one of our friends at a cultural celebration where he and a bunch of others were selling different crafts from around the world. While we were there, the theme for that week of the culture market was Nepal. So many of the Nepalese people from Alta got together and there was Nepalese food and music and dancing. It was super fun to see it and taste the food (which is REALLY good by the way), dance a bit, and learn about another culture. One really cool thing was that while we were there, we ran across someone we knew that we had shared the Gospel with before, and we talked a little bit. So we will be meeting with him again! It was just a super cool experience. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

We also had the Tromsø Elders over this week. It was wonderful to get to see them and have them over to help us. We also went to Hammerfest this week to visit the members up there and do some contacting up there also. It was really great to meet our members up there and also talk to some people on the streets and share a message about the Gospel with them. I really loved it.

One question I've got asked a lot was to tell more about my companion. We've been companions for the last week and a half. He's super cool. We came into Norway at the same time, but we weren't in the MTC together. While I was in the MTC, he was starting his mission in Arizona on a Navajo Reservation waiting for his Visa.

As for an update on the sun, or lack of, the sun is up at around 9am, and then the sun starts going down at around 1pm. By 3pm is completely dark. haha Gotta love Norway! I do think it is really cool though because it's an experience that I will probably won't have again.

Here's a picture of the Northern Lights last night! They weren't the best Northern Lights I've seen, but still super cool!

Have a great week everybody!

Love,

Elder Mickelson