Heisann alle!
It's been a crazy week, but it's been full of great things! My companion is Soster Burkman and she's from Hawaii but grew up mostly in San Diego, Carlsbad area. We get along SO well and we push each other to do better every day. There are only two other people going to Norway. Eldste Barnes and Eldste Jaccarrd. Eldste Barnes in from Evshrem(honestly no idea how to spell that) England and Eldste Jaccarrd is from Pleasant Grove. They are both so funny. Eldste Jaccarrd's mom is Swedish and his parents taught him Swedish before English so he is fluent and understands Norsk already. We made a pact on the first day that none of us would get sick so we would use every hand sanitizer dispenser we saw. One day we counted how many we used and it was over 30. We definitely will not get sick.
Our zone is so crazy. There are 13 different languages and I think 15 different missions. No one has any idea whats going on in sacrament meeting because everyone gives a talk in a different language. But everyone is super nice and Norsk, danish, dutch and Swedish are all pretty similar so we can kinda communicate. Soster Burkam and I room with 2 Danish sosters and they are a lot of fun.
I was so happy to see Sister Blomquist here and we see each other almost every day. It was so nice on my second day to see someone familiar.The first few days were honestly the most confusing and hardest thing I've ever done. They really stress agency here because we got no instruction on almost anything and had to figure it out on our own, but doing that made us more confident as missionaries going to a foreign country. Saturday was the most overwhelming day. I felt like they were spraying a fire hose at me and my mouth wasn't big enough to drink it all. But It was selfish of us to want what we wanted right when we wanted it. So we made it a new goal to focus less about the stress of it all and more about the gospel and Christ and look out instead of in and we have felt SO much better since then.
On Tuesday we had a worldwide MTC devotional and Elder Anderson came to speak. We sang in the choir and it was so special. We sang Hope of Israel and it was so cool to sing with hundreds of other missionaries.
Now Norsk. I was prepared to learn the hardest language in the world when I arrived, but I don't know if it's the gift of tongues or if Norsk is just close enough to English, but it has been going so well. We are mostly just memorizing phrases and words right now, but God has really blessed me to understand a lot more than I thought I would. The only thing that is still bothering me is the 'r's. Norwegians roll their 'r's just once and I am completely hopeless in that, but our teachers told me that I scar my 'r's like a french person and they do that in some place of Norway so there is hope. Apparently I sound french when I speak Norsk, the British Eldste sounds american when he speaks Norsk and Eldste Jaccarrd definitely sounds Swedsh when he speaks Norsk.
We've only been here a week and we've already taught 3 lessons. Not perfect ones, but simple, spiritual ones. It was such a special experience when we each said our first prayers in Norsk.
God gives us so many tender mercies and we can see them if we just look. One that happened this week was on Sunday. Soster Burkman and I couldn't find our zone, so we sat somewhere random for lunch. Then a couple sat by us and we talked for a while. They were the nicest and most genuine people I've ever met. Apparently (I didn't know this until later) it was one of the counselors of the MTC presidency and his wife. When they asked us about our families and I told them about my brothers being on missions and how Peter will come home next month, he asked if I would still be in the MTC. I said yes and he told me that he would set up a meeting with just my brother and I for 30 minutes when he came home. God knew that I needed that. Just the day before I was feeling so discouraged and lonely, but this really lifted me up.
Something that I think is really cool is that Christs name has a special grammatical rule that no other word in norsk has and everyone recognizes it. His name is Jesus Kristus but when it's possessive, it's Jesu Kirsti. On our name tag it says Jesu Kristi and it's cool to think that it doesn't just say His name, but it says that we are His because we ARE His and we are here to do His work.
Hope everyone has a great week!
Soster Jones
PS Mom, you will be so proud of me. My companion and I run 3 miles every day. Maybe when I get back I'll run a half marathon with you. (Don't count on that)
