NORWAY!!

What an awesome week. Norway is easily the best country in the world. Its a whole new world, but it feels like home to me... like i've been here before. Its a lot like what a remember from Finland. So cool. Everything is just a little bit different from the US (cars, houses, bathrooms, roads, etc.). Everything is just super different and I love taking it all in. The flight here wasn't too bad, shorter than I expected. Everything went smoothly except for one of my bags didn't make the flight from London to Oslo. I got it the next morning though so it all worked out. President and Sister Evans are awesome! they were waiting for me after I got one of my bags and figured out what was going on with my other one. They were excited to finally get me after 7 weeks of waiting for that Visa. I ate dinner with them and the AP's and it was super good! I interviewed with pres and found out that i'm serving in Fredrikstad with Eldste Weaver.

So I stayed the night at the mission home, and met up with Weaver the next day. Fredrikstad is about an hour long train ride south east from Oslo. Its super great here. Its awesome to be back into cities. Fstad is awesome and I hear it only gets prettier as the summer comes along. Its nice to be back into populated area with water and trees and busy roads. We have a car currently but we use the busses a lot. Public transportation is awesome here. Works like clockwork. Back at home the busses are the loser cruisers but here everyone uses them, especially teenagers since getting a license is super expensive and such a hassle. Eldste Weaver is super cool, we get along great. I've lucked out so far when it comes to companions. He's from Irvine and loves to do all the surfing, skating, and snowboarding stuff too. Its pretty sweet to be 2 california shredders out here to do the Lord's work here in Norway. He's been out for about 7 months so he's pretty good at the language. Norwegian is tough!!! I'm quickly realizing how sucky it was to only have 6 weeks to learn it and then a whole 7 to forget it. Its coming back fast and im learning but I feel so retarded! It sucks to not be able to communicate with anyone or express myself as well as I'd like to. It's super frustrating to have people try to talk to me and i don't know what they're saying, or what to say back. I know that the language will come but its a pretty awkward and painful process. On the plus side, im in the east so I can actually understand quite a bit. Norwegian sounds awesome though, and I can't wait for it to start clicking. The good thing about Norway is that no matter how tough it is to learn the language or preach the gospel, its super pretty and the food is great. Yesterday I had the best waffles ever, with vanilla cream and berry jam. All the food that i've had so far has been awesome. I think its just because the bread, chocolate, milk, cheese, chocolate, potatoes, chocolate, ice cream, chocolate, fruits, vegetables and the chocolate are so much better/different. Kebabs!!! I've had 2 already. Amazing. Eldste Weaver and I ate hotdogs on lomper with some good norwegian sauces on my first night. Norway is known for there love of "hotdogs" and frozen pizza. You'll never guess what my first meal was with a member. Ocsehale lobscouse. It was basically a blend of meat and potatoes. It was super good and I ate a bunch of it. Only, I didn't understand that the meat part was... ox and horse tail. Weaver told me afterwards and I was cracking up. So many awesome things happened this week that I cant really explain it all. Basically we did a lot of service and had some awesome teaches. The missionary work is busy over here and we're working on a couple of solid investigators right now. So this week we're going to work on getting a couple of baptismal dates set up. The Lord has been preparing people here to recieve the truthfulness of the gospel. Its awesome to be able to meet and teach so many different people here in Norway. Its incredibly diverse over here. I've met people from different parts of Africa, people from Poland, Iran, Russia, Tunisia, Finland, all over. Just in a week.

I bore my testimony yesterday, even though I was terrified. I think it went pretty good and everyone was complicating me on my Norwegian. Little did they know that my testimony is about 75 percent of what I can say in Norwegian.  

You'll never guess who's in my ward and I see alllll the time. She's a super crazy and awesome Finnish lady with short spiked red hair. She know's the whole Fristrom family. She was your primary president in Helsinki. Her name is Helena! Haahaa. I met her my second day here while we were helping a family move. I could tell that she was Finnish  from her accent so I told her that my mom is Finnish. Suvi Fristrom. She exploded! it was super crazy. She started telling me all sorts of stories about how great the iso aitti and iso isa are, and how well behaved you all were at church. Iso isa was her home teacher she said. So basically, this is such a small world, and Helena loves me like crazy and says I remind her of uncle Visa. 

Anyways, I absolutely love it here and am so blessed to serve here. Everything is outrageously expensive so im grateful for the sufficient missionary funds we recieve (probably the most out of any mission). But Norway is  Incredibly pretty no matter where you are. The people are awesome. The ward is small but we'll strengthen and build it up. I love being a missionary no matter how tough it gets at times. Thanks for all the love and support. Love you!

Eldste Skinner