All is well here in Tromsø! It's been snowing non stop all week and especially this weekend. I'm amazed at how prepared the people here are for this much snow. The city buses that we take have steel chains on their tires which is pretty sweet. Rumors are that the snow will not be leaving any time soon.
It's been a little bit of a frustrating week because of all the cancellations we've had. We were able to get a lot of scheduled appointments for this week, but only a few actually showed up. Wednesday afternoon we flew down to Trondheim for Zone Conference. All of Wednesday was spent contacting on the streets of Trondheim and getting to know the other missionaries there. All day Thursday we had our conference and then we flew back that night. On our flight back I talked to this guy from Alta pretty much the whole flight. It was a great chance to practice my Norwegian. He had never heard of our church before, but when I mentioned the word "mormon" he said he had heard of us from south park haha. It was nice just having a normal conversation with him and letting him know that we are actually pretty normal people.
Saturday night we went to visit a new investigator that lives in the student dorms. He was busy and we were about to leave, but then we went over and talked to one of his roommates. We talked to him for about 20 minutes and shared a book of Mormon with him. He seemed very interested and was willing to read. The next day we met two more of their roommates and talked to them as well. It's cool because these students come from all over the world (Pakistan, Eritrea, Phillipines), and can speak about 6 languages each.
I enjoyed one of the talks on Sunday from a member in our ward who is working on his phd here at the university. He talked about how all of his colleagues think it is silly that he has a belief in God, as if religion and academia are mutually exclusive. He then said that in science and academics all your time is spent trying to disprove something. I think it is really cool that we believe that we have a God who knows all truth and that by coming to know God we can come to learn truth.
Congrats to Sean on his mission call to Spain! Thinking of Grandma after her surgery!
Love,
Eldste Parkinson
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| Trondheim! |
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| Trondheim! |
