Søster Heywood: Norway Bound!: *I will be found of you*‏

Hallo family!

Crazy stuff this week. SO MUCH happened! (and I'll have you know, Sister Randall has really helped me get a habit of writing in my journal EVERY NIGHT so I actually remember everything that happened this week) SCORE!

Last Monday Ricardo (from Drammen) sent me an email and said he would be in Oslo in the evening if we wanted to meet up. uh... SELVFØLGELIG (of course)! We met him by the palace, and he brought us both chocolate, (taking note of my favorite norwegian chocolate, SMIL which is basically like Rolos but SO MUCH BETTER!) He and I talked for a while while Sister Randall was on the phone and OH MAN! he is doing so good. He has been helping to bless and pass the sacrament, and he teaches the missionaries the Preach My gospel lessons once or twice a week. He opened his scriptures to show me Alma 26:15, and thanked me for giving him that chance. I feel like I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. He went on an on for an hour about the blessings he has been receiving. He's just so good! AH!

Wednesday was transfers and we got another 14 missionaries! So now officially half of the Elders in the mission are greenies and EVERY other Elder is training. Cray. Yup! We went to the mission home to return the car and got to meet them all. they were all SO jet lagged but SO happy to be in Norway. Aw man! I remember that day like it was yesterday. Those Elders don't even know the awesome stuff that is coming for them :)

Sister Randall woke up pretty sick halfway through the week, and Saturday we just decided to go home early so she could get some rest. The journey home to Nordstrand that would have taken 15 minutes with a car took TWO AND A HALF HOURS on public transportation!! Uff da! Granted it was because there was a crash in the city. But still!

Speaking of getting sick, I didn't! And I haven't... for my entire mission! So that's really awesome! Also, the other night, we were eating with a member, and after I had eaten two platefuls of this curry stuff with rice, she told us how she made it.... Coconut milk. My heart kinda dropped and Sister Randall looked at me like... CRAP! We didn't say anything, but I was done anyway and we didn't want the member to feel bad. But afterwards, we were walking back to the bus, and Sister Randall was like, are you okay?? I was fine. And I stayed fine. Does this mean I'm cured of being allergic to coconut? I'm way confused, but WAY thankful that nothing happened. Maybe it's just the Lord protecting His missionaries. Love it when He does that.

We ate at another members house this week, which was a tender mercy in and of itself, but we messed up on the time and got there about 20 minutes early. There were some people getting off of a bus stop a few meters away, so we stopped one of them, a 20ish year old kid that was pretty skeptical...until we brought up the Plan of Salvation. We told him that we lived with God before and that we chose to come here because we wanted to be like him. WE related it to a child wanting to grow up to be "just like daddy". For some reason that really hit him and HE asked US if we could meet again and talk more about it. Miracle! What if we hadn't have been early to that appointment?

The dinner appointment was so fun! One of the best EVER! There were three adults there and 3 kids and we prepared my favorite spiritual thought: Hide and Seek. We had the adults all hide, and had the little kids try and find them. Of course, None of the adults are hiding especially well, and they were all found pretty quickly. We all came back to the table and read Jeremiah 19:12-14. It talks about how the Lord hides sometimes, just to see if we will look for him, verse 14 says "I will be found of you, saith the Lord." He hides with the intention of being found easily, just like a parent hides form a child during the game of Hide and Seek. The parent will stick out a foot, or make a noise, or even hide in the same spot that they have been found all the other times. Our Heavenly Father gives us little hints and promptings as to where we can find him. We can find Him by looking in places where we have found him before. We just need to ACT and start looking.

Sister Randall have been studying the principle of prayer lately. We both know for a fact that prayer works, but we've been asking questions and studying how and why it works. On Saturday we went to a nonmember lady's house to do some yardwork, but instead of helping with the yard, she needed help with her cell phone. So we tried to see what the problem was. She had just lost her Sim card. So we started looking all over her house for it. We looked for about 20 minutes. Last time we had come we talked about prayer with her. She doesn't really believe in it, but in desperation, she said, "This is the only time I would ever pray". I just smiled and said that that was a good idea. She looked at me through pretty skeptical eyes, then agreed. So I said a prayer, then we kept looking. I kept praying in my head, "Heavenly Father, she really needs a testimony of prayer, please help us." Not a minute later, we found her card in a place that we had already looked. It was a testimony to all three of us that prayer really works! God is SO aware of us!

That's about that for this week. Some other fun things:

-It's still hard not to hold little kids.

-We showed up an hour early to a dinner appointment. #thoughtitwassixo'clock #itwasonly5 #SLOWDAY #whydidn'twerealizethat?

-It's Eline's birthday tomorrow and we're going out to dinner with her family!

-I gave a talk in church. First time since Ålesund.... Oslo has more people than Ålesund...

-President randomly decided to come to the Oslo ward the one week I was giving a talk #takkprez

-I tried caviar.... It's gross... I thought it would taste like the orange things dad puts on sushi... not in Norway at least!

Mom's answers:

-Having no car has been crazy and we have been able to meet some awesome people because of it. :) And it's harder to estimate times we will be places. Usually we're really late or really early.

-Elder Lemon teaches the English Institute class. There are three classes taught every Friday and another one on Thursday. Elder Lemon only teaches the one.

I love you all SO much! Sorry this week was really long! Enjoy the novel! The Church is True!!! Prayer works. God loves us!

-Love Søster Heywood