July 15, 2013

Where did you read the article about the dress code changes? I've been dying for something like this to happen! I really think that a little bit more style wont hurt the missionary work. Thats an awesome story about the missionaries in Ramona, I wish I felt the same promptings. They sound like they're awesome... make sure you dont feed them too early on monday if thats they're Pday. Today we have a dinner at 4 so our P day gets cut way short:/ its alright though.. Im grateful for dinners. We're gonna go to gamlebyen today which is where 2 missionaries were thrown into jail way back in the 1850's I believe. My area is old!

 We've been trying find like crazy and it never really ends up being as effective as we plan for. One day we really wanted to find people, especially families, so we knocked on doors from 12 to 8 pm. It was intense and we did end up finding some potentials, so that was good. One of them we taught on tuesday. She is from the Congo and has 2 kids and a husband from Serbia. She was way awesome and has a strong faith in christ. She will come to know that the book of mormon is true, and then hopefully things will go from there. We will see. It was cool because we had our 17 year summer missionary with us so he was able to experience a good lesson. His name was Simon and he has lived in Norway for 4 years. He was born in Nigeria and then lived in Canada. He was a cool kid and he still wants to go on a mission after a week with us so thats good. 

Waiting at a busstop about to go home for dinner after knocking some doors in a neighborhood, we met a funny italian dude who spoke norwegian/english. He kept telling us about how he has the voice of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Michael Bolton, Frank Sinatra, and guys like that. I wanted to ask him to sing to us, but he just went ahead and started belting out these love songs at the busstop. It was totally entertaining. He wasn't drunk or on drugs or anything either. Legendary dude!

Some Bulgarians from our language class talked to us for a while the other day about "how tough it is to be a Bulgarian". The one dude who does all the talking in english, has been looking all over for a job or volunteer work but cant find anything. Poor dude. After talking and talking (bulgarians love to talk, no matter what language) he showed us his sick cultural bagpipe. It was a way ancient bulgarian instrument but I cant remember what its called. Hopefully we can help this dude and his family learn the language and start teaching them the gospel in the near future. 

So things are going great over here.. has been nice and sunny 23c for about 12 days straight. Everyone is out boating or on vacation somewhere. I have come to find out that church attendence is terrible in the summer. So the ward consisted of mainly misionaries yesterday haha. Its so wierd and different compared to church back home.

Thanks for another awesome and informative email:) I really appreciate it. Thats so exciting that your coming up to Finland in August! You'll pretty much be right next door. Life is great over here in Scandinavia! Love you!

Eldste Skinner