Monday, December 9, 2013

Sorry everyone - I forgot about the blog - here is the latest letter and some pictures - Jill's Mom
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:)