Kjære Familie,
Happy Thanksgiving this week!! Funny story with that... Here in Norway, they don't have Thanksgiving, but Åse Marie asked me a few wekks ago when it was, and I confidently answered that it was always the third Thursday in November..... But apparently that isn't true... so we had Thanksgiving a week early here in Ålesund :) Oh well! It was still fantastic. Åse Marie made a delicious thanksgiving middag for us and Søster Buhler made a yummy apple crumble dessert and it was just incredible :) Even if it was a week early... whoops!
On Tuesday, we made the two hour trip to Molde by bus to have a district meeting. We usually do it over the phone, but once a month, the Elders from Kristiansund and the Søsters from Ålesund meet up in the middle, in Molde. Our district leader is Elder Vause, and he is SO great! I actually fell bad for the missionaries that don't get to have him for their district leader :) We had an awesome meeting, ate some lunch then seperated to go back to Ålesund and Kristiansund. Søster Buhler and I left Molde at about 2:30 in the afternoon and watched the sunset as we got on the bus... yeah... SUNSET!!! AT 2:30pm! Norway is crazy! The sun usually rises here around 9:30 ish then sets at three. And it only gets darker... But that's ok! That just means that I get to bring light to people that are literally living in the dark! haha!
This past week was actually really hard for us. It's exam time here in Ålesund and a lot of our appointments fell through... In fact, ALL of our appointments fell through... For the entire week. WE did get to visit with quite a few less actives from our branch which was good, but all in all, it was a pretty discouraging week. Yesterday we were dreading calling Elder Vause to give him our numbers for the week because we felt like complete failures. On our way back to the apartment, we met this guy named Andreas. We asked him if he believed in God and he told us he wasn't sure but he used to. He asked us a lot of questions about what the purpose of life was and he really listened to what we had to say. We showed him the Book of Mormon and told him that it strengthened our faith in God, then asked if he had ever heard of the Book before. He said "No, but can you tell me more about it?" So right there, on the streets of Ålesund, in the POURING rain, we taught him the Restoration. He thought it was really cool and asked a lot of follow up questions. We asked if we could meet with him again soon, and he told us he was leaving the next day to go to Las Vegas to do some Christmas shopping....But that he would be back in a couple weeks, and that he would give us a call when he comes back. So we'll keep praying for that for sure. It was really a miracle to end the week.
To answer some questions: We have had snow, but just in the mountains, and it is GORGEOUS to look across the fjord and see the snow capped mountains with snow! AHH! I'll have to get ya a picture of it soon because it is just incredible! The language is coming pretty well and I can understand most of the people that we talk to. I sometimes find myself thinking in Norwegian... which is weird but good! :) Søster Buhler is doing surprisingly well understanding the dialect, though I have to tell her what some words mean because they are SO different. For example, here they say "Ka" instead of "Hva" for "What". It's pretty different and definitely takes some getting used to. We do have more than 5 members in the branch, there are just a lot that are less active right now, but not for long! Soon our little bakery meeting house will be filled, and they'll have to build us a chapel! Søster Buhler and I do a musical number every week and one of us usually holds a talk as well. Giving talks in Norwegian has definitely been an adventure, but I've got to practice somehow eh?
:) I'm so happy to hear the play went well, and I definitely want to see lots of pictures next week :)That is SO cool that Tami was taught by the missionaries! Tell her that she can email me if she has questions too :)
I love you all SO much! and I'll talk to ya next week!!!
Ha det kjempe bra!
Love, Søster Heywood
p.s. You can just send packages to the regular Ålesund address :) and Christmas music (for the most part) is approved.
p.p.s. The first picture is our district having it "coselig" in Molde. The second is the picture of the 2:30 sunset :)
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