Hello!

 

Cool to hear about your missionary experiences Mom! I always get really excited when you talk about sharing the gospel or working with less actives.  It reassures me that there will be plenty of opportunities to keep sharing the gospel when I get home.

Uncle Kyle will be a fantastic bishop! Cool.

We had an awesome week! We had Zone leader training.  We are too far away from stavanger to go there for it, so the zone leaders come to bergen and have it with just our district.  They asked me and Sister Peterson if we would take a part of it about working with new converts.  We got a whole bunch of fruit and had one of the elders try to catch and hold onto all of the fruit that was thrown at him- impossible.  So then we gave him a basket to catch the fruit in and he was able to catch most of it.  And then we shared some quotes from President Hinckley about how there is no purpose in doing missionary work if we don't hold onto the fruits of our effort.  It was a cool object lesson:)  

Then we went to Kristiansand and Arendal to go on splits with the sisters there.  It was sooo good! They are awesome missionaries!

Moves are on wednesday.  I'm leaving Bergen.  I was really hoping to stay here for the rest of my mission but I guess it's too good to be true.  I'm being released as sister training leader and I'm going to Arendal.  It's a little, little city and there's just a branch there.  So it will be very different from all the other places I have served.  But it will be good.  

I love you all! Have a great week!

Love, Søster Knapp

p.s. my release date is July 24. 

1. Happy Easter!

2 and 3. we went to Edvard Grieg's house last p-day. this is by his house

 

 

14 Apr. 2014

This week was amazing! It was soo good!

 

We have a less active member that we're working with.  He's trying to get over using drugs and when we asked him what would help to not do drugs, he said yoga.  So we are doing yoga with him once a week.  I think it's helping all of us.  

 

Then we met with some other really cool people that we've been trying to meet with for a while.  And on friday we were on our way to a ward activity, but we wanted to try back a house really close to the church that we had knocked on the week before.  We knocked on the door and a man opened the door wide and said "come in" before we had even said anything, and hardly even looking at us he just walked back into the other room where he was busy making dinner.  We just stood there in shock for a minute so he came back in and motioned us in and showed us where to hang our coats.  Then led us to the table in the other room and his wife and daughter came and sat down with us while he made dinner.  The mom told us about how she had been visited by missionaries 11 years before and she really likes our church, her daughter is getting ready to be baptised and confirmed next year when she turns 15 (Most all norwegians get confirmed in the norwegian church when they turn 15 whether they are christian or not- just for the sake of tradition)  But her daughter does believe in God and has a lot of question about Jesus Christ.  So we sat there at their dining room table and taught their daughter about Jesus Christ while they made us eat dinner with them.  They were so nice!!! We're going back tonight.

 

Saturday we met with Eva! We lost contact with her and haven't seen her in about a month.  We couldn't get a hold of her but then i remembered the other day that we had her email adress so we sent her an email.  And she responded saying she would love to meet! She had gotten a new phone number and was sending us messages but our phone wasn't receiving them.  So we finally got to meet with her and we had an amazing teach with her! And she came to church yesterday! She loved it!  She is probably my favorite person i've met on my mission.  She's soo cool! I am so happy that we found her again.  So happy! 

 

I hope you all have a good week! Love you!

 

1.we found a cat.  my companion carries cat food in her bag for these occasions.

2.  the sun! first time we've seen it in months

3.p-day

 

We had such a good week! My companion is awesome and we're having a blast:) 

 

Smith and Evelyn and Favour are doing soo good!! Smith hasn't been to church in months.  Evelyn comes sometimes with Favour, but Evelyn was really sick yesterday so Smith came to church with his 2 girls!!  And instead of coming just for sunday school and sacrament he came for all of it so that Favour could go to primary!! It was soooo good! A miracle.  And then our other investigator that we didn't think would make it to church came as well.  And he happened to know Smith from work or something.  So they sat by each other in Sacrament:) another miracle.  

I went to Ålesund on wednesday.  It's a small city between Bergen and Trondheim, on an island.  It's beautiful.  It was good to be able to visit the sisters there because they are all alone and they serve in a branch of about 6 active members.  It was a short visit, we had to wake up really early wednesday morning to catch our flight, spent the day there and slept over, and then we woke up at 5.45 the next morning to catch our flight back to Bergen.  We didn't want to wake up the other sisters when we left and we figured the city was small enough that it wouldn't be too hard to find the bus stop where we could catch the bus to the airport.  But... we got lost and missed our bus that only came once every half hour.  We took the next one and made it to the airport 15 minutes before take off.  Everyone was already on board the plane so they rushed us through security and we ran out to the plane.  I don't know how we made it.  I'm counting it as a miracle.  

There's an awesome family in the ward from Germany.  They've lived her for about 5 years and they're the coolest people.  Their oldest son has been living down south in Arendal and just moved back here with his girlfriend from portugal.  He wants her to learn norwegian so he's been bringing her to our language class and wants us to give her the discussions as well.  So we went out and visited them on saturday at their new house.  It's right on the water in a farming area.  So pretty. They showed us around their house and then sat us down and served us chocolate cake.  So much chocolate cake.  She just kept putting it on my plate until the whole cake was gone.  I think we each ate 5 pieces.  I didn't feel too good after.  

We also had an awesome teach with Håkon this week! He's the coolest guy, but he's kind of a punk.  He is super christian and loves the bible and isn't really willing to accept any more, but he knows that the spirit told him to talk to us and he really wants to keep meeting with us.  So we'd been meeting with him about once every week but he would never read the book of mormon.  Last time we told him he had to start reading or else there was no point in meeting and so he agreed to read from 3 nephi 11 to 27, and we gave him a week and a half to read it before our next appointment.  We fasted for him on sunday that he would be more open and receptive and when we met with him on saturday his heart had softened.  It was incredible.  He had read! The book of mormon is so powerful! He doesn't completely believe in it yet.  But he had questions about Joseph Smith and about the Nephites and Lamanites and just wanted to understand more of what the book of mormon is and where it came from.  Then he asked for another reading assigment:)  MIRACLE.

God's hand is in this work.  I love missionary work:) 

Jeg er glad i dere!

Søster Knapp

 

 

We had moves call yesterday. I'm staying in Bergen!!!!! 

 

I'm trying to remember everything that happened this week.  Tuesday was a really long and kind of hard day.  Appointments cancelled, my companion got sick.  Nothing was going as planned and we had about an hour left in the day when we decided to get on our knees and ask what we needed to do.  We both had a strong impression that there was someone we needed to help.  We ran out of the church and talked to everyone we saw.  No one was too interested in our message and no one needed help with anything.  As it came time to go home we got on the bybane and the people we sat by weren't too interested either, so we got off one stop early to see if we could find some people while walking home.  We had some really good conversations, but still, no one was super interested and no one needed help.  We looked at our watches and realized we had to run home to make it on time. We were quite dissappointed, but we started running and suddenly this woman called out to us as we run past her, so we stopped and she asked us for directions to the grocery store.  It was on our way home so we walked her to the store.  It was sooo cool.  It was a small thing, but it felt so good to know that we were being led by the spirit and that we did what we were supposed to do.   

 

I went to Oslo wednesday and thursday for meetings, on the train from the airport to president's house I was sitting by a man who showed me pictures of all the snow in Alabama, crazy! Our flight got delayed on the way back back to Bergen because of all the snow. But we did finally get back  thursday night, which was good because the weather is much nicer here:) 

Sunday was a miracle day! Lots of investigators came to church and one of them wants to get baptized.  His name is Sanjith, he's a christian from India and he is here working as an engineer for Statoil. He liked to go rock climbing on sundays but now he likes to go rock climbing on saturdays. He's pretty cool, and he likes things really simple.  

I love you all!! Have a great week! 

Love, Søster Knapp

pictures: 

eating shrimp and caviar

curling

 

The Kings summer castle, in a members backyard

Me and Sister Olsen

New Years

 

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

 

I feel like the timing of the new year was perfect, it's hitting right at the beginning of the last third of my mission.  So I've made some goals to make this the very very best part of my mission.  It's going to be good.

For new years we hiked up a mountain with some of the YSA to watch the fireworks.  We were looking down on the city and it was unreal.  The whole city was lit up.

Wednesday we went to visit Linn Christine, her husband is a member from Malawi, and they have a little boy.  Her husband went home for the holidays and asked if we would take care of her while he's gone, so we went and cleaned her floors and ate dinner with her.  Her husband asked us not to talk too much about religion with her, but to just be there if she needs anything.  They're the coolest family in the world!!! And someday she will be a member!!

We also had moves this week.  I'm still in Bergen with Sister Olsen. Sister Peterson, my MTC companion is also in Bergen now!!!  We will be sister training leaders together.  So our companions will be together while we will be traveling to go on splits with all the sisters in our half of the mission.  So we will go to Trondheim, Ålesund, Stavanger, Sandnes, Arendal, and Kristiansand. I'm excited to be companions with Sister Peterson again, she's pretty cool:)

I love you all! have a fantastic week!!

Jeg er glad i dere!

Søster Knapp

 

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:)  

June 3, 2013
Hey Family! It's been another good week! A lot happened.  Wednesday 21 new missionaries came to Oslo, they had their meeting with the President and they had some extra time so we took them out contacting in the rain.  There was sooo many missionaries! I can't believe how many people are here ready to contribute to the work. Everyone's so different, but for a year and a half we're all missionaries and it's kind of inspiring seeing them here fresh and all ready to go.  Sister Pace left me and went to Bergen and I got a new sister with me here in Oslo, Sister Pitts. I don't know how I feel about this training thing, but it's going good so far.  It's just a lot a lot of responsibility all the sudden.  I have a good companion though, she's excited and ready to go to work.  Really, really excited.  She reminds me of Lexi- no fear of talking to people at all.  

 

We had a lot a lot of appointments this week and got lots of new investigators, but none of them could come to church, and the one person that we did get to come to church just came for relief society and then left.  She feels the spirit when we teach her, she reads the Book of Mormon and eats it up, she absolutely loves it, but we just can't get her to come to church.  I just want them to come to church so bad! And I don't know why it's so hard to come!  And they're not going to progress if they can't come to church!  So it's kind of frustrating, but we just keep looking.  Hit the streets and ask Heavenly Father to help us find the ones that are ready. the ones that are going to accept it, that are going to go to church and keep coming.  So right now I guess I'm supposed to learn to be more patient.  It'll come, I've learned a lot the past 3 months, and the more I learn the more I realize that I have so much more to learn.  And this is the best place to learn it.  I love being a missionary :)

Today we went hiking and it was gorgeous.  It reminded me a lot of home, except a little bit greener :) We got so muddy.  There were parts where the path was covered in water and we just had to jump from rock to rock.  That's norway.  Water everywhere! It was good to spend the day outside, and out of the city.  We had a fun time! Norway is the best country in the world! Except the states :) Thanks for being the best family ever.  I love you all!

Jeg er glad i dere!

Søster Knapp   

 

June 10, 2013

Wednesday night we had an appointment cancel so we went out contacting.  We stopped a very nice woman and had a short discussion with her, but she wasn't very interested, and then suddenly this group of middle aged woman surrounds us and starts speaking super fast and excitedly and I couldn't figure out what was going on.  Then they saw our name tags and got even more excited and kept asking "Vil dere bli med!?" Then I noticed they were all wearing these cards that said "Jesuskvinner" (Jesus Women) and they finally calmed down enough for me to understand that they wanted us to come to their meeting.  I had to tell them no because we had another appointment, and so they gave me a Jesuskvinner magazine and each gave us a hug and then left to round up more people for their meeting.  We just stood their laughing for a few minutes before we could continue contacting.  Haha, it was the best. 

This week has been amazing! Full of miracles. The first one was tuesday morning, we taught a man, and it was my first time since training that we were teaching in norwegian, so i was a little bit nervous because I knew that I would have to understand everything and my companion couldn't really help me out.  But I did it, and it was amazing! I understood everything, and we had a great teach with him.  Were able to answer his questions, and the spirit was there.  The gift of tongues really helped out.  And since then speaking and understanding norwegian has been soo much better, it's definitely not easy, and sometimes I have a headache by the end of the day from trying to listen so hard, especially on sundays, but its coming.  It gets better everyday.  And I love speaking norwegian. 

 

This next one is even better.  The last half of the transfer we've been praying like crazy for a family.  We hardly ever teach families but felt like there was a familiy we needed to find.  So we prayed and tried to talk to as many families we could and nothing ever happened.  Last week we were contacting and there was one man that we had a short conversation with. His name was Jørgen.  I remember stopping him and he didn't seem super interested. He was pretty young, but I wanted to ask him if he had a family, and he did! One child and his wife is pregnant.  And you could tell how much he loved them.  But he was christian and was going to a church that he likes.  And wasn't even from Oslo- he just works here but lives in another town called Drammen.  But I told him we had missionaries there and asked if i could give them his number so they could bring his familiy a book of mormon.  And he said that would be okay.  So i got his number and called the elders in Drammen- not really thinking anything would happen. 

Then last night the elders in Drammen called to thank us for the referral.  They visited Jørgen's family and taught them last night. The wife cried the whole time.  They've been looking for the gospel.  They said it was an amazing teach.  We found them.  We found the family we've been praying for.  We're not teaching them, but that's okay because we just asked to find them:) And we did.  God really does answer prayers.  And He works miracles. 

 

It was a good week:)  Definitely not the easiest week of my mission.  I don't think it's going to get any easier... but it keeps getting better. 

MVH,

Søster Knapp 

 

June 17, 2013

 

We had an awesome week! It's kind of been a blur so i'm having a hard time thinking of what happened that I could tell you guys about. But my favorite part of the week came in the form of a text message from a potential investigator that we met almost 3 weeks ago.  Usually when we're contacting we just carry one Mormons Bok around and don't give it out. Our goal is to get appointments and tell them we'll give them a book when we meet with them. So we just had one book when we were talking with a young norwegian man named Andre. He didn't know if God existed and said he had tried to find out but had never prayed before.  So we had a short conversation about prayer and the Holy Ghost then tried to get an appointment. He was going to Germany for 2 weeks and told us to call him June 15th when he got back. So then we were about to say bye and walk away when I decided to give him my book.  I really wanted to give it to him in the moment, but then afterwards I regretted giving it away because we didn't have another one to use and who knows if he would even read it...  But then June 15th comes around and before I could call him he sent a text saying he enjoyed talking to us and felt bad because he had told us he would be back today but just found out that he will be on holiday for another month. But then he said: When I get back can i learn more? I've been reading the mormon bible and will be reading more! haha, best text ever! no one does that. another miracle. 

Jeg er glad i dere! 

Søster Knapp