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| P-day emails at the library |
Hei hei everyone! Before I get into our crazy week, I would like to take this time to wish a very special person a Happy Birthday! That's right, it's Bert's (a.k.a. mom's) Birthday on Wednesday. Happy Birthday Mom! I hope you have a wonderful birthday and know how much I love and miss you. I really got the best mom ever and I'm so grateful for her and everything she has done for me and continues to do for me. She's truly great and you all should wish her a Happy Birthday if you get the chance. I know me and all my Norwegian peeps will be wishing her a happy birthday from Norway!
Speaking of Norway it's been quite the crazy week for this missionary in Kristiansand Norway. This past P-day as most of you know, due to the many rushed emails and lame blog post, we had to head to Oslo via train for our Christmas conference. Last P-day definitely kicked off the crazy week with last-minute packing that morning to quickly emailing to doing some quick service for a member to running all of our errands with just enough time to catch our 4:00 o'clock train to Oslo. Once on the train, everything was smooth sailing until all of a sudden we were in downtown Oslo, the biggest city in Norway, not 100% sure where exactly we needed to go. After being pointed in the right direction we found the Institute center which was full of helping hands (Elders) who quickly grabbed our luggage and got us to our apartment in Oslo safely. We had a decent amount of sleep that night and woke up pumped the next morning for our Christmas conference.
Instead of doing the usual 4 different conferences, President decided to do two and bring half of the mission to one and half of the mission to the other. The first conference was the one I would be attending that Tuesday in Oslo. It would be all the missionaries from the west down and all the missionaries from the Telemark zone, so my current zone and the zone I just recently moved out of. Basically I was pumped because I would get to see all of my old friends and still be able to hang out with my new friends. It really was the best of both worlds. Well eventually the conference started with Pres. Hill talking to us for an hour about how we can improve as a missionary during this holiday season and next year as well. He had some great words for us as president Hill is truly an inspired man and I know, at least for me, I am excited to improve and be the best missionary I can be after listening to his wonderful talk.
After President Hill we were blessed to hear from Sister Hill who focused on how we can use music in our missionary work especially during the holiday season. It was a beautiful talk and a really cool perspective and one of the many ways we can do missionary work here in Norway. She closed her talk by having the members in my old district perform a musical number. They saying "Come unto Jesus" and it was just perfect. Music really is a blessing we have been given from our Father in Heaven and I'm excited to share the good music from the church with the people in Kristiansand. I love music and really enjoyed Sister Hills talk about using it more in our missionary efforts. I'm excited!
After Sister Hill it was time for The assistants to the president to talk to us for a little bit. They had created a compilation film of a bunch of the missionaries opening up the call letter before coming to Norway. It was way cool to see and brought us all back to the time we all opened up our letters and found out that we were going to be missionaries in Norway and the excitement and fear that came with that. We all wanted to be the best missionaries we could be and the assistants focused on how we all at one point had that desire and how we can keep that flame burning and ultimately be the best missionary we can be here in Norway. It was actually a really awesome presentation that got us all pumped to be great missionaries all over again. After the assistants, we were able to listen to all five missionaries who are headed back home this week bear their testimony's and then we had a delicious lunch. After lunch we had a talent show which was AWESOME! We had some really talented people perform and then we had a lot of funny skits about missionary life in Norway. Our district performed our own version of "Give Said the Little Stream" and it was pretty great. After the talent show we had another special presentation made by the assistance with everyone's baby/ toddler/ embarrassing photos included. I was a little nervous, but shouts out to my awesome parents for submitting some pretty stellar photos. Afterwards, President and Sister Hill left us with some words and then we got to chat for an hour or two before we all had to catch our trains and planes back to our areas.
My district headed back to the train station expecting to take our four hour long train ride back to Kristiansand and when we promptly found out our tickets had not been purchased, so we missed that train and had to stay another night in Oslo with Søster Geddes and Søster Hutchings (from my MTC group) It was a blast but we were definitely on a lack of sleep the next morning when we were supposed to be catching another train, we had some issues with the code they had given us and so we missed that train as well. We were beginning to think we would just have to stay in Oslo forever. We called the APs and they told us to book the next train ride and don't miss it this time. We finally got back to Kristiansand totally sleep deprived with enough time to get a good nights sleep before the STL's came. Søster Petersen came to Kristiansand and her companion Søster Jones and we had a blast. We tried another purely Norwegian meal called a Kompe which is basically a potato with meat in the middle. It was quite the adventure and a blast to get to do missionary work with Søster Petersen again. Anyways, it was a crazy sleep deprived week but still a blast. It was a great week to be a missionary in the Norway, Olso mission.
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| Kompe- Potatoes with meat in the middle |
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| Soster Peteren and and I having Kompe |
I hope you all have a fun filled week this week and I just want to wish my mom another happy birthday! I love and miss you all and hope you all spread Christmas cheer this week. Keep up the great work everyone!
Med vennlig Hilsen,
Søster Blankmeyer
grt
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