Adventures and a Funny Story

This is the Bishop and his family and the Svendsens who are like our Norwegian Grandparents

So I need every one's help. The family we are renting our home from, our Norwegian Grandparents, have a daughter who has dreamed of going to space her whole life. I look back and go, yeah I think we all had a dream to go to space at one point, but she really is carrying out that dream. But she needs our help. She wants to be not only the first Norwegian in space but the first Female Norwegian and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is really easy. Just click on the link below to vote for her. Her name is ÅSE SVENDSEN. She has studied mechanical science with an aeronautic focus.

https://www.lynxapollo.com/nb_NO/71263/aase-svendsen click on "stem" to vote. Then put your email address in the _______ to submit your vote. This is just to make sure it is a real person voting and not someone who is cheating the system.

If you can pass this on to other friends and people who wouldn't mind taking a minute, it could make a girls dreams come true. Thanks!

Other Norwegian things. I tried Kompe this week. It is a traditional food in southern Norway. To describe it, it looks like a not smooth softball without the laces. It is big, white, and has little bumps. How they make it is they grind up raw potatoes and mix it with flour to make a pasty dough. Then they form it into a ball and put ground meet in the middle. Next they boil it for 2 hours or so. Then to eat it you dip it in sugar. It was pretty good, but different.



Look it is the Not Safe Mini Bank!

Also have you ever stopped to think, how does one know if a name is feminine or masculine? Well when you are in a foreign country, it is even more difficult. So there was this mysterious person would get mentioned every now and then at work. I had to send them an email and ask them some questions. Eventually I had the rest of the team asking me very specific questions about the response email from the person. I couldn't refer to the person as an it or they or any other fill in the blanks. If I said the name it would have been the start of each sentence and overly used in the responses. The name is spent Heljar. It sounds a bit like Helia when they say it. I felt trapped, so I laughed and said, "okay I have a super silly question but is Heljar a man or woman." Oh they had an extra good laugh. It is now the running joke when they refer to Heljar as a she, when it is really a male. It is funny.

Update for the week

-Well for work I was asked to do the recording for my learning modules. But it was much better this time. Why??? NOV in Norway has a person designated specifically for audio visual things and they have a Green room with a Recording booth!!!! It is legit! it is super cool. He is known as the movie guy and he is fantastic with all the techy stuff. I took pictures. So essentially I sit in front of the big flat microphone used for recording and he has the script shown on the screen. He checks to make sure I read it correctly and that everything sounds good. So the interesting thing is normally it is difficult for me to hear recordings of myself. But when you have sweet recording instruments, it isn't hard to hear yourself recorded. I think it might be because I sound like I really do sound. It isn't skewed by poor sound quality. So it was pretty sweet. I had the whole thing recorded in less than an hour and the sound all lined up with the animation in a day or so. Last time I did this all on my own it took a couple of weeks to get that all done. Life is great!

-This week we went cross country skiing and it was miserable. It was a positive 1 degree Celsius and since we had waxed the skis the time before, I think we had the wrong wax for warmer weather because the snow stuck to the bottom of the skis. Cross country skis normally bow so the tips are touching the ground but the middle is in the air. Well the skis would collect so much snow that none of the ski would touch the ground. It was easier to take off the skis and walk. It was miserable. So we learned to only go cross country skiing when it is below freezing.

-It was also really fun this week that we had my friend Katie over for dinner Sunday night. She is the other Next Gen doing a rotation here in Kristiansand. We had soup with bread and pears with a lemon cake for dessert. It was just so fun to visit with her and compare our experiences and the things we have learned.

-It is getting lighter each morning! You still don't see the sun until 9ish but you don't necessarily need your brights on when you drive to work. It is super exciting.

-We attend Institute every Friday. It is a bible study class for our church. The teacher does a really good job, plus he teaches it in both Norwegian and English. This week it was interesting for me to ponder on the story of the 10 virgins in Matthew. The Savior gives a parable about 10 virgins. They all had their lamps and they were going to a wedding feast but they didn't know when the bridegroom would come. It says that 5 of them took oil with them and 5 did not. The footnotes lead me to ponder the story in a new way. So all 10 virgins were doing a good job. They all had their lamps, with oil (my presumption based on a footnote), the wicks, and everything they would need. They knew about the wedding feast and the awaited the Savior's arrival. The 5 foolish virgins did not bring any extra oil with them. I think they thought they were prepared and they didn't fear. Although they are labeled as foolish, I think to an everyday person passing by they would appear good and well prepared. It wasn't until the end when judgement day came they found they difficult position. I hope to never get caught in that position, where I have done good things and lived the gospel but not sufficiently developed a testimony and continually worked to help that testimony grow and to share it with others. It was a fun way to look at it. Oh the footnote says that when the announcement that the bridegroom was coming happened, it says their lamps were going out. That meant they had oil in their lamps and the lamps worked fine but they didn't have stores of extra oil.

Look at my cute Valentines Day gift. I have the best husband ever

Check out this good looking guy!

-Valentines Day! Jake was super cute and picked me up from work with a bouquet of flowers and a poem he had written. I made him a card. We went shopping and had fun finding new and exciting foods to try. I made him a nice meal, potatoes, chicken, cooked carrots, and bread. It was fun because we just took time to cuddle and talk and relax. I had plans to go out skiing and to do so many other fun things but we were just too tired, so we relaxed instead.

-Since I got to plan Vday, Jake got to plan our Friday Date. It was super fun. We went and saw Historic Kristiansand and part of Odderoyø. Historic Kristiansand is where they took all the old buildings and moved them into an area. There is a museum but it is closed during the week right now. It was just fun to see how an old town would have been. Odderoyø is a little island thing that separates the two ports. It is really cool. It was used as a military training, base, and quarantine depending on the era. They have German bunkers there from WWII. We didn't finish hiking all the way up but it has a lighthouse and a great view. It was a fun walk

We found this hug door built into the mountain.  We think it stored something during WWII

-Nursery went really well this week. I think the little kids are starting to warm up to me. One of the girls parents have told me over and over again that she understands everything I say in English because her dad speaks English in the home. But she never acted like she understood. This week there was no one to help me with the class so pretty much everything had to be in English. She was great. I asked her to pray and she prayed in Norwegian. She did all the actions for the songs and when I asked what animals were in a picture of the creation she named them all in English. It was cute because the other little girl doesn't really know English but when the little girl said "fish" she recognized it and she said it in Norwegian with enthusiasm "fisk." It was so fun. Plus I organized the room and found all of the supplies.

-Jake had a busy sunday. He substitute taught a primary class for the first hour, taught Young Mens for the second hour, and spoke in Sacrament Meeting during the third hour. He did a great job with all of them.



Jake went skiing with the Young Men and Young Women

We feel so blessed to have this opportunity. We are enjoying all of the adventures. We are both learning a ton and growing too. Thank you for your love and support.