Chillin' With My Gnomies in Norway: "Small in Number but BIG in Heart!"…Week 22

Hei sann! (Hey guys!)

How are my favorite Norway missionary fans doing?!?!?! Hahahaha!

So guess what?! TOMORROW IS MY 5 MONTH MARK! SO WEIRD! I DO NOT LIKE HOW FAST TIME GOES ON A MISSION! AH!!!!!! It seriously feels like I just left home yesterday to fly to Salt Lake! CRAZY! Anyway, life in Norway is beautiful and FULL of miracles!!!!!

This week I am officially legal in Norway! I almost got deported because I waited to long but I still had three days to my 4 month dead line! Come on people calm down! Hahaha ;) BUT IT IS ALL FIGURED OUT NOW!

We have a lot of less actives here in Ålesund so we have been visiting them like crazy! Trying to reactivate people is harder then trying to baptize someone! Goodness my!...but it is a very beautiful work that is happening in Ålesund! We have 4 active members as you know but I have said it once and will say it a million times more...”We are small in number but BIG in heart!” The active members we have here are champions! They are of SO much help! Søster Buhler and I came to into church yesterday and two of the members made us these DELICIOUS cakes! What sweet hearts! They always help in any way they possibly can and I am so grateful for them! They are my family!

MIRACLE MONDAY! Sister Buhler and I have been planning to visit our branch president, Fred, for some time now. We were going to leave early in the morning, travel 2 hours to get to his house, have breakfast and share a spiritual thought with him and his sweet wife and then travel 2 hours back to make sure we had a good rest of the day left to have other appointments and contacting time. We got up early and made our way to the bus but IT NEVER SHOWED UP!!!!! So sad! If we took the one that left 2 hours later we would miss one of our appointments that afternoon. We talked with Fred and decided to reschedule for next week... :(. Later that day while we were walking back from an appointment we would have missed, we started talking to this man! We taught him about the Book of Mormon and I shared with him my favorite scripture in Moroni 10 verse 8, it talks about the talents we receive from God and how they are gifts! I bore my testimony about eternal families and how my family is a gift from my Heavenly Father. We tried to give him the Book of Mormon but he was not very interested so we gave him a card that had our phone number on it and the address to the church... a couple hours later Søster Buhler and i are taking our Dinner break and we get a text from an un known number that asked what time church started.... WHAT?!?! This has never happened to me before! What a miracle! he said he would try to make it and was not able to but said he wants to come to church next week! AHHH!!!!!!!! MIRACLE! I am so grateful that our bus never showed up that morning because if it had, we would have never met this man! (His name is Stig!) Yay!!!!!!!!!!!

So cool right?!?!?! I know that the Lord is aware of you and the efforts you have! When hard or sad things happen, keep your chin high and I PROMISE you, something better is on its way!

Gud vær med deg til vi sees igjen!

-Søster Neilson