Feeling in Your Heart

Hello you fantastic people!

How was your Christmas? I hope you were able to enjoy the most wonderful time of the year! I truly love Christmas and it's even more amazing that Norway loves Christmas even more than I do. Sayeth whaaaaaaat?

Anyways, it was a good relaxing week. Due to the fact Norway gets like 3 weeks off from everything to celebrate Christmas, finding was super challenging. We were not allowed to go tracting and lots of people were gone. SO this week was spent with the members and getting to know them better.

Christmas Eve, Sister Johnson and I were at the Åsheims. They invited another member named Jørgen and we had a lovely time. Had an American Turkey dinner and talked about Norwegian slowtv, handball, and geneology mainly. There were points in the evening where Sister Johnson and I were asked about our past lives (aka what we did before the mission) but we seemed to always go back to those topics. When the Åsheims and Jørgen were opening presents, we expected to not open anything since we were waiting for Christmas morning. But we were given each a present from the Åsheims and Jørgen. So kind! We got to be part of the Norwegian tradition of opening presents of Christmas eve :)

Christmas morning, oh boy oh boy oh boy! We got spoiled good! The ward gave us so many presents! Most of it was chocolate, but it was so joyful that the members went out of their way to give us a little something. We opened our presents from our families, took lots of pictures, and then we went out to do some work. We went caroling to less-actives with the elders which was super fun. Then we all went over to the Horgmos for dinner. We had a Norwegian Christmas dinner (Yum!), played games, and got to Skype our families!! So good to see their happy smiling faces :)

Also we had Mission conference on Saturday! Well, only two zones could join together, but it was still great! I got to see Elder Vause and Elder Rice from my MTC group! We got fed spiritually and had a fun talent show with some super fun games. After all that fun bit, we wrapped up in the chapel. The best part was when President said, "I won't be able to look at Sister Buhler the same way again." Don't worry, he meant that in a good way. I think. I did hand rhythms and clogging in the talent show if that helps clear up things. I have a video of Sister Johnson and I performing our song.

Besides that, we had a cool experience happen on Friday with an inactive. Most inactives in this ward DO NOT want ANYTHING  to do with the church. But we got a call asking to deliver some food to an inactive named Anne. We come over and Anne answers the door. She was so grateful to receive the food and we stayed to chat with her. She's been so lonely and she really loved talking with us. She wants us to come and see her more and do some service for her! It was just really wonderful to hear that she's open to the church again. We will be working with her a lot hopefully.

Yes, lots of things happened. It'll be 2014 real soon and I feel that this is gonna be a fantastic year! Hope you will take the time to reflect on this year and take advantage of the new year to become a little better.

Merry belated Christmas and may the new year bring you lots of great experiences!