I made it!

Hey family! well i dont have much time to write but i am in NORWAY and it is absolutly amazing here! it is so gorgeous and i am so happy to be here! President johansen is so great and he is such a happy guy and he deffinatly raises spirits for everyone! so all our flights went well and we are going to the mssion home here in the next like ten minutes but i wanted to let you know i am safe and that all is well so far! i need to send my sd card home soon its getting so full but i am already so excited to be here even though i dont understand everything i can usually get the jist of wahts going on? kinda haha! but i have an amazing story to tell you about the plane ride from chicago to london but i dont have time to do it right know so you will have to wait til i have the time and that i believe is next monday is when pdays are? but yes we had a five hour lay over in london and that was rediculous and the spirit is so strong here i can feel it and oh yes if you would like to see where i am assigned........ i am going to MOSS its to the right and south of oslo! so i am super excited no major fjordes there but they will come atleast from what pres johansen said and i told him about stan and he was very happy to hear that we are related to stan and he thinks stan is a great man which he is of course! but i love you tons and sorry i couldnt call i didnt want to send money and all that but i will need money for boots etc in the next coming months and remember to talk to the bank and tell them i am in norway i dont thinik they know my card wouldnt work so yea....

 

LOVE YOU!!!

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane!

well what an exciting week this has been and i am not sure what this letter will contain! i feel that there is not that much to write about but on the other hand who knows! well on bummer is that we are supposed to have a general authority about every six weeks in the mtc like on of the 12 or something and i wont get to have that chance because july and august i guess is their months off or something of the matter but anywho we have had some great people speak to us! there is always something i can get out of each message and the last two have been super strong and have really stuck out to me on being the best missionary i can be and by being obediant! i have been so blessed everyweek for my complete obediance and in everyway i receive more blessings and the ones i hope for most is the spirit and the gift of tongues of course!:) and that has been such a testimony builder! The mtc is such a great place and it makes you grow so much and its weird to think i have been here for 7 weeks and i leave on monday!! time literally has flown by with out even noticing it and i am so ready for norway! i dont care if i can not understand anything but i feel like i will get most of what they say! in TRC everyweek we teach people who have returned from missions or some that are natives and what not and the missionary we teach ( or try to teach because he is the hardest to understand and we want to understand it) is brother derdan and i love teaching him it is so crazy to listen to his voice sing up and down in crazy tone and fall! how i am so excited to leave to norway and get that feeling of what in the world kind of language is this? but no matter how hard it will be the best because i myself have the spirit with me and the spirit will losen my tongue so the words will flow in some kind of way hopefully enough to understand hahah!

    Well i am guessing you are wanting to know when i fly out..... i think i will leave you hanging andi will write you next week.........

 

Nah im kidding! so we leave on monday at 8am to the airport but yet we have not been notified about visa's? so hopefully all is well! so anyway we get on the airplane around 11 and our fist destination will be to chicago and we have a two hour layover there i believe and then we will fly to london and have a 30 minute delay at the most probably and then to norway and we will arrive 24 hours later then next day on tuesday so that is a straight 16 hours of travel and 8 hours of time change and i can feel the exhaustion already! so be expecting a call when ever i get to an airport and talk and tell you what the plans are:) seeing the travel plans made everyone in my district so so happy and we were overwhelmed with joy! we celbrated with the sweeds of course they are like our best friends and found out we will not be traveling with them at all and we all had some tears and talked and everything but later that night we celebrated in our dorms with chips and salsa and a bunch of candy to make us all happy! i cant wait for the time that i can bring all the people from the sweeds to our house and you can meet all of them because they are so great and one of them actually lives pretty close to jen in AZ so when ever we go down there i will have to have him come over! flight plans are basically the best part of the week! it just made everyone so happy and joyful and very humble!1

 

   Well this week has been exciting and the language is deffinatly increasing everyday and lately i have had the oppurtunity to learn the law of chastity and to teach it to both of my investigaters and they both actually went really well! we found out the past of one of our invertigaters and it was so sad to hear and it will be even harder in norway when it will be reall! i mean our investigaters are real people that were taught but wow it will be so much of a testimony builder! i also learned the word of wisdom and i am working on the law of tithing right now! i love seeing people progress and i cant wait for the actuallity of it in norway! they are in need of it most right now and i heard it is becoming a booming place and baptisms have gone up a little bit! i will tell you that i will deffinatly miss the temple but other oppertunities await me! I AM READY TO GO TO NORWAY!

 

   i hope everyone has been receiving my letters and all is well! i have sent a couple letters to everyone who has written me back so hopefully you have gotten them if not....sorry? haha! i love you all so much and thanks for the packages mom! i am so glad to here that all is well at home and i hope school is starting out well for everyone! dont forget to go visit mom and dad! they need company just as much as you do! cant wait to here from everyone and i hope that everyone is staying strong and keeping up all there covenents! i read a scripture today and it helped remind me of how great they are! mosiah 5:7-9!

 

   I love thiis gospel with all my heart and i am now completly devoted with all my soul! i am so blessed here at the mtc and i will never forget all the experiances that i have had here! i love mission work and it has already blessed my life so much! i am so thankfull for jesus christ and the role he has played so we can return to live with him someday! i know the scriptures are true even though they are hard to understand in norwegian i work on them everyday! i know i am loved by my heavenly father and that we will see him again! i know that the gift of tongues is real! i want everyone to know i love this gospel! the lord lives!!

Week 6! Time is already going by

SIX WEEKS DOWN!

well six weeks down and this week has not been that exciting and nothing has really happened this week haha! i have really been working on trying my hardest to make use of mystudy time and understand as much as possible! this week i have really been hitting preach my gospel very hard and make sure i can understand everything in english so i can be able to teach it in norwegian! i am studying more than ever i have been reading my mormons bok a lot and i have read about 30 pages in norwegian and i am understanding so much but those first 5-6 pages were deffinatly the hardest to get through but i am getting better everday and i hope to get to 2 nephi before i leave the mtc which would be so great if i could! as for the language it is deffinatly improved this week and all my investigators are keeping commitments and all is well with them!

    So this past week bro jaffa our main teacher left to new york and we had subs for half of the day in the class room and most the subs were very fun and we worked on street contacting and did it in as much norwegian and we would have to translate sometimes for the subs since non were usually norwegian but we did have one sub who basically told us we were horrible missionaries and came really close to telling him what was up but i kept my mout shut along with everyone else in my district ahha!

    So every saturday i told you that we go to TRC and it is litterally one of my favorite times of the week! when ever we have gone lately we have had enough people so we get to teach twice and we have had alot of fun with that! the people that come are usually returned missionaries and they are very good at the language and some better than our teachers and some even better than the natives i think! there is one who served in drammen and he served there for most of his mission and he is so hard to understand but at the sametime i can understand most of the time what he is saying and me and my comp always try to get him because he is very receptive to our messege even though we only teach him as himself. our last lesson was so perfect for him in basically everyway possible he was having hard times in school and could not  focus and was just not having a good week that was over piled with homework! our message was simple and ended up like i said being directly related to him! our message was to go to church tomorrow with a question and do all he could on sunday to feel the spirit and to pray with a sincere heart and study dillegently so he could receive his answer and he, by the end of the lesson was almost in tears and i was about to bawl as well the spirit was so strong now that i think about it and he said to us at the end "aldri har jeg følt ånden som strekte som jeg ha følt det i dag, taknemlig er jeg for din budskap du ha fordele med meg idag, tusentakk for all du gjøre for meg, takks igjen" never have i felt the spirit as strong as i have felt it today i am so greatful for your messege you have shared with me today a thousand thanks for all you do! thanks again! even though he was a returned missionary i realized we can always grow more in our testmony where ever we are and no matter where we are in life we can gaain a greater knowledge everyday!

    The mtc is truely an amazing place no matter at times how much i hate it it is a rollercoaster of emotions and yet you grow so much everyday from it and i love it so much! as i have said before the mtc  is the most amazing spiritual place loving and horriblly stressed out place you could ever go! there is so much to learn and so much todo everyday but all we do is for a purpose and that purpose is to bring people unto christ through helping them recieve the restored gospel through faith in jesus christ and his atonement repentance baptism gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end! thats what i am here to do! i am an obediant missionary i wake up on time i pray many times a day (more than my comp) study dillegently and never waste my time! i am always doing something to increase my testimony in some way or another! i know i kan do everything i kan so i will be a great missionary in everyway possible! i love the lord and he has opened up the skies and poured out his blessings upon me even if i dont realize it! i wish you could hear this talk that david bednar gave two weeks before i came in and is only availible if you work at the mtc which is rediculous because it is one of the best talks i have ever heard in my life about the spirit he says: if you are worrying about having the spirit with you STOP IT! Be a good boy be a good girl keep your covenents that you have made! keep the commanments and be obediant! STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT! even if you dont think the spirit is there it is no matter what you think if you are being a good boy and girl and doing these things you will not have to worry about anything you are being all that you can! it was a great talk and i wish i could have been there for it! i lobr it here and miss you all so very much

   Keep the letters coming and i will alwasy respond on my pday(wednesday)! i love hearing from everyone and its a huge help to keep me going sometimes

 

MOM: hope you are doing great and are feeling better! i love you so much and i hope everything went well! i have a 30 missionary mall certifiacte please go get me some ties or something!:) dont really need anything else that i can think of! i havent got my package of shaving stuff yet hopefully today maybe? and face wash! if you havent already put my blog on facebook cam says he loves reading it so i am guessing you did put it up! ill have pictures to send home pretty soon! love you so much and i will write dad a letter today by snail mail! love you so much and tell all the grand kids:) love you:):) 

   i should be getting my flight plans tomorrow or friday:) and if not you will probably get a call from me telling me i will have to wiat longer? i am not sure how it all works out but yea thats the big news for this week:)

well Five weeks have passed by and like usual the time is flying by and times are becoming better and better and i have quite abit of great news to tell you about for this week! this week has been quite the happening week that is for sure! well i told you about how i was gettting ready to teach the plan of salvation...... and well lets just say that it went absolutly horrible and my comp totally forgot that we were teaching it so i was prepared to teach my part and he was not prepared to teach his part because he thought we were teaching it the next day and then that put us in a tight squeeze and i honestly thought we were going to get dropped!! he wouldnt even let us set up another apointment so we though it was all done and over but i will finish that story in a little while:)
   So on thurday we recieved some crazy awesome news..... so i guess we are having a mission conference in norway on the 30th or i that time frame and we were told that we get to leave a week early so we can be trained and be to the meeting so we can be there for that certain event! oh how our faces were filled with so much joy...and fright at the same time it was so intense!! i am so excited and i get so overwhelmed sometimes i dont even know what to think! but i pray everyday to help me prepare and to be ready to teach the people of norway! i know we are suppose to be there early because we have become the fastest district to understand and to speak and also to teach lesson faster and to get the language down much faster than ever before thanks to this new pilot plan that we are on! it is so crazy to look back and see how fast we have learned we have been out here for five weeks and it hardly even seems like it! the days are meshed together and i feel that the weeks are days and i dont even know what day it is any more?! well now for the other exciting news.... so we have been teaching two investigators and the one that was not the one i was talking about has been keeping committments and doing the stuff but we found out his problem was repentance and how we addressed to his needs so well! it was our first time going through lesson three and we nailed it with the guidance of the spirit! it couldnt have been stronger we asked him tobe baptized and he said he wasnt ready.... so we planned our next lesson out on addressing repentance more and finding out what we could with out getting into detail which by the way is not easy at all! so we thought we would watch a movie... The Mediator... our investigator by the end was enthrawled with happyness and he knew what it was all about and he knew that he could be forgivin of passed sins and i got to extend the invitation and he said absolutly i feel so great when you are here and i know its what i need to be doing and i gave him a date to prepare for and he is now working with us and corresponding so well i can hardly even believe the progress coming from an athiest person!! the experiances are so reall i have a love for my investigators even though they are fake it feels so real! our teacher after the teach came out and told us ( which they never do because they make it as real as possible) that the scriptures we used were the same scriptures that the real investigator was taught with and used one of them that we stressed on as his scripture for baptism! it was so so so so spiritual!
   Next exciting news......well dad you said i was a leader and you were so right!! so this week was the week we got new callings and i was made the DISTRICT LEADER! oh how my face was lit up with pure excitement and my mind totally thought of you in the talk that we had before i left on my mission in the basement and that stuck out to me the most because i dont always believe that and it really made me think and now here i am with that calling! i am trying really hard to start well and to begin on the right foot and do everything that my district needs! i am so ready for more responsiblilities and i am ready for all the things that are about to come my way!
   back to the story of the first investigator.... so he asked us the question of how does jesus who is dead attone for our sins now? how is that possible? now its not that hard of a question but at the same time it is with out going in to depth and having them get even more confuesed. so through the week since one of our teachers went on vacation (the one who we were teaching) we had alot of time to think of what we could do to help him understand what we could do to help him. we found that the mediator was the same case and in our lesson he as well loved it and we taught him how we could return to christ and covered the atonement more in depth and he understood it so well! we were not planning on the next step but i felt promted to ask..... my comp was talking about how the only way we could come back to him is through repentance and baptism and he was like wow i understand now and i threw from left feild to home and asked if he would be baptised and he agian was open to that! oh how we have humbled ourselfs this past week in all the success we have had in the mtc! also me and my comp are the first to get actual dates:) others have asked and said k....when im ....ready maybe i will be! but with time it takes some to come to the knowledge and how my life has been blessed here at the mtc!
 i hope all is well with you mom and i hope the surgery is all well and you feel great and that you are walking around and i cant wait to here from you on what is going on:) keep up the reading and the lord will bless you ten fold if you as him for blessings and follow the word! if you are searching for an answer he will give openly to those who seek for greater knowledge! i hope all is well at home i miss everyone and love you!
 
  PS mom i love you so much and get on my facebook and tell people to write me and also post the blog( if you have finished the blog i know not) on my facebook so people know whats up:)
i love mission work with all my heart and i know i will do all that i can and become the best missionary the lord has in store for me if i am obediant and dilegent in all that i do! i love you so much!
 
Deg sønn hvordan elske dere så veldig mye
     Eldste Farnsworth

Week 4

 Well the days are really starting to come together and its going by faster and faster everyday! i cant even start to believe how fast the time is going by. i feel like just yesterday i was trying to teach the first lesson and now i have it down basically....! this week has been full of spiritual experiances! thanks for the package and for my ctr ring! i absolutly love it and as for rings go i have had already many experiances with loosing it and finding it! i always find it luckily! i try to remember it everywhere i go! so to start off yesterday we had a devotional and guess who came? Gerald N. Lund! it was so so great and he gave us a talk on how to excersize faith and how to use your faith with investigatorr! he gave many examples of missionary work through places he had served as mission president! when i get out in the field i really want to try after every contact to pray and to talk to the next person we see on the street! he gave many examples of as long as you just pray and have faith that you will find someone right after you teach that people will start to come and teaching the people will come because they are already exersizing their faith! i am really enjoying all the oppertunities i have in the mtc like singing in the chior 2 times a week and we get to preform once a week on tuesdays at the devotional and i am singing in either bass or beritone and i might go to tener next week but that is something i will deffinatly miss when i am gone but the experiances will be even better in the field for sure! so this week i have been focusing on finishing the book of mormon! i also have been focusing on finishing Preach My Gospel! i finished both and it has strengthed my testimony and i cant believe how much you can get out of it everytime you read it it is absolutly incredible! i am now going through pmg in norwegian and trying my hardest to read and comprehend everything i learn! its crazy how many words you know with out even realizing it! i have been working on the plan of salvation and i am suppose to teach it tonight and it is going to be so hard! but with the action of faith comes the witness from the holy ghost as long as i try the investigator will know what i am trying to say and he will be touched if he will let himself! during the devotional on tuesday lund talked about being the gate keeper to your heart and that is the quote i am using this week! we are the gate keepers in our own hearts, we decide what we want to have let in and what we keep out! if we keep our hearts open we wiill strive for more fiath and the holy ghost daily!

   This past week we have still been teaching the same mok investigators and one of them we are finally breakinng through and we are starting to see progress ( since the both of them are athiest and we are the only ones in the class who have investigators that are likke that) and they are both starting to follow the comittments they make and it love it! our last lesson was so spiritual and me and my comp were basically running down the hall afterwards and gave each other a big hug and praised the lord and humbled ourselfs! so every week on saturday we go to this thing that is called TRC trainning resource center! this is where we teach people as themselves and practice extending simple committments that people should already be doing so its good practice to get to know someone and fine out their likes and dislikes and thats really nice! this week was not nearly as good as last week but it was deffinatly different! we always teach two different people but with the same lesson. we taught a actual person born and raised in norway and that went alright and then we didnt have enough people to do a second teach and so we got to do it in english and man i killed that lesson! i didnt even have to try it was so easy and felt so weird not to do it in norwegian! i could easily answer any question instead of mumbling in broken norwegian but yet i still kept wanting to say things in nork and i did say some things in nork and the lady just starred blankly at me and i smilled and kept going:)

    The MTC is full of so many experiances and i am absolutly loving it here! i went to the temple today and did an endowment session and it felt great to go again i havent done a session in a while! i havent got mail yet today  but i hope lisa got my letter and told you what i needed! it would be awesome if you could send something super quick my companions birthday is on saturday and i bet he would love some treats or something:) gushers please:) i hope your reading is going well mom and i hope dad has started his in german! i know it will help the both of you grow as you read the book of mormon and i know that it is true! i  love this gospel and i know i am here for the right reasons to serve the lord and let him know through my own faith how much i want to be here! i pray so many times a day for help and strengh to recieve as many blessing and the gift of tongues and i know it is coming slowly but it surely is coming! i love everyday and each day is going by so fast! i cant wait to get to norway and teach everyone insight even if they reject me i want them to know with my own greenie fire that the gospel is true! i love and miss everyone! cant wait to here from you and i hope you have an absolutly great week!!

 

love eldste Farnsworth