So Celine's still not home?? haha. I hope she comes soon!
We had an amazing week. On thursday our district leader told us he had a
referral from the bishop for us to teach. It was a man that sent a text to the
bishop saying: "Hi this is Øyvind and I'm thinking of being a member there.
When can I visit the congregation in Bergen? I have to order a translator
because I'm deaf." so the bishop told him he would send missionaries and we got
his information and planned to go visit him on saturday.
We didn't know anything about him except his name and that he was deaf. So
we had no idea what to expect when we went to visit him. We just sent him a
text telling him we would be stopping by with some reading material.
Just before we went to visit him I called a sister in another area because
she taught and baptized a deaf man a few months ago. And what she told me was
that deaf people can't read very well because they don't think in words, they
think in pictures. so writing isn't an effective way to teach. it's best to
have translation all the time. This sister and her companion even ended up
learning a lot of norwegian sign language so they could teach him when he didn't
have a translator. so I realized communication might be harder than we had
thought. But we were super excited to teach him!
so we got to his apartment saturday afternoon and he came down to the door
to open it. For some reason we were expecting him to be an old man, but he was
really young. probably in his 20s. He motioned us to follow him and we went
upstairs and got to his door and then we had to show him a note saying that we
couldn't come in because we didn't have another woman with us. But we handed
him a book of mormon and some pamphlets and another note we had written telling
him who we are and that we wanted to teach him about the church. He read the
note and nodded excitedly and then went into his apartment and came back out
with an english book of mormon. And then he wrote to us in his phone that he
had gotten the book from a couple at the airport in Florida and that he had read
a little bit of it. He said he could read english and went to a university in
washington, but he was glad to have one in norwegian because that would be
easier. He seemed dissappointed that we couldn't teach him right then, but we
were writing to each other in our phones and trying to schedule time for another
appointment, when he got a text from his mom. He wrote in his phone: "my mom's
home and she lives on the other side." And then motioned for us to follow him.
so we followed him to the other side of the building and he knocked on his
mom's door a couple times and then opened it. And she was standing inside the
hallway on the phone not fully dressed. She saw her son in the doorway with 2
girls and wasn't even phased, so Øyvind walked in, pushed her into her bedroom,
shut the door, and then turned around and motioned us in. And then his mom
came back out with more clothes on and told us to sit down and make ourselves
comfortable, so we sat down and had a conversation, part of it was just writing
back and forth and part of it was with her translating. It was awesome! His mom
was complaining about how tired she was, I couldn't understand everything they
signed back in forth, but i could tell that he was getting after her for
drinking too much wine. haha, he's cool. He's so excited to learn! And he sent
us a text later that night and he was already in 1 nephi 14 and asking questions
about it. miracle.
So we've been incredibly blessed this week. Astrid went home for christmas
a couple weeks ago, but she came back to Bergen today for a meeting tonight and
spent all of p-day with us. She's doing great:)
And it's starting to feel a lot more like christmas. There's snow on the
ground and all the lights are out. Hope you guys are having a good christmas!
Love, Søster Knapp
p.s. hey mom, people are asking for the blog to be updated:)
