November 17, 2014

buenos dias!

We're getting some good momentum here in Sandvika. I'm grateful for the gift of profesy and how solutions always come when you ask in faith. On Saturday morning we invited some of the youth to play some sports with us in the church. Although there wasn't too many that came, it was a lot of fun to run around playing free-for-all soccer and dodgeball. No one got killed so it was successful. Time spent with youth is always a good thing.

This week I got to go on splits with the Zoneleaders in Oslo. It was my first time getting to experience missionary work in Norways biggest city. I had a lot of fun and it was for sure nice to be able to get out of the office for a whole day. We had tuna for lunch and salmon for dinner. We visited this lady that the elders found a while back who turned out to be an inactive member from San Diego. She's lived in Norway for a while now and isn't looking to come back any time soon. I positive that she was feeling the spirit as we were talking though, so that gave us a great environment to be bold and bear testimony. She was a cool and I think she liked us too! I couldn't believe how many people live in Oslo! It was just endless flows of people from all over the world. I felt like I never stopped talking the whole day. Streets, doosteps, trolleys, bustops, you name it... We were straight spitting truth, constantly switching back and forth from norwegian to english. We worked hard. It was insane. It was fun. 

We've had some awesome dinner appointments this week with our members here in Sandvika.  We've been trying really hard to make our dinner appointments more productive and spiritual. So we've been working on having natural converstations with solid inspired questions to ask. One night we went to eat with one of our investigators who is married to an active member who served her mission in Brazil. We got her to start sharing some amazing miracle stories from her mission which got her feeling the spirit as well as everyone else at the table. We could tell that our investigator never heard of these stories before and it seemed as if the visit had a whole different feel to it compared to some of the previous ones. The spirit was way stronger and everyone left feeling spiritually pumped up. We also visited the Brown family. He's a pilot in the US Airforce and they made us some delicious square pizza ("like you used to always make us in monterey" haha). We had a great time with them and that was another productive dinner because we had purpose and didn't feel like we were there to just take a break and waste time. I'm hoping that we're helping out the members here in Sandvika as we're trying to make some progress. It feels as if we're trying to steer this huge ship. I most likely won't see the results of anything we do but luckily there should be some good missionaries that follow us.

We got to eat dinner (and wash dishes) at the mission home on thursday night with the departing missionaries. It was sad to see them go, especially knowing that our group is next. We made several trips to oslo and back, trying to get everyone and their stuff where it needed to be. Eventually we drove everyone to the airport, checked their bags, and then sent them off. President was teasing Elder Holden and I because he knew we were next.

We had stake conference this week as well which made it my last stake conference as a missionary. It was incredible and I got to see a lot of my old friends from Trondheim and fredrikstad. So that's was pretty random update on what went down this week. This work is still fun but unfortunately you guys only get to read about the things that pop into my mind as I try to remember everything that happened. Thanks for all the love and prayers. I pray for you guys too! Have a great week traveling around:) Don't forget to take pictures and stuff.

Love,

Eldste Niklas Skinner