Eldste Bryce Thomas Johnson in Norway: Samisk Uka! (The Sami Week!)

Our lovely, daily-scoured mail box ;]

Frost this morning!

Hallo hallo hallo!

Hopefully Brother Swede's bounteous collection of beautiful photos made it on here. After a year of only seeing my own photos, it was a shock to realize what a nice camera could do. Wish we had that puppy on top of Preikestolen! Wow!!

Tromsø by night (or day . . . depending on the season)

And add some Northern Lights!

Elder Badger's first view of some amazing Northern Lights!

This week was Sami Week! For those of you uninformed, February 6th is the National Sami Day - to celebrate the people, culture and traditions of the Sami people. For those of you even further uninformed (myself included, before the mission!) the Sami people is the people native to Northern Scandinavia before the European and Western civilizations began industrializing and bringing technology so far north. To put it short, they are to the Oslo-citizen as an American Indian would be to a New Yorker.

The Sami Festival Official Opening Remarks (in costume!)

"take the picture. Just take the picture . . ."

Sorta. Regardless, their culture is a beautiful display of how to survive so far north - in style! Things that will give away the Sami culture in a heartbeat: plain, bright colors of blue, red and yellow; reindeer skin boots and hats; blonde hair, blue eyes, high cheek bones, and normally shorter than 5' 6" ("They're like blonde asians!" - Elder Johnson); and reindeer herding. This week also included the Sami Reindeer-Lassoing and Reindeer-Sled racing competitions - right in the middle of Tromsø city! Just think: we were within a few hundred meters of the Reindeer-Lassoing and Reindeer-Sled world champions!! Haha. What a blast.

Reindeer!Here's a picture of our District Meetings over Google Hangout. Elder Badger strongly dislikes Skype/Google. Hangout district meetings - but trust me, it's a LOT better than a district meeting over the phone!!

Narvik District Meeting! - Welcome to the Narvik District!

Other than that, we have been getting appointments like nobody's business! Sadly, though, most of these appointments have been with people who live 2+ hours away from Tromsø city. :(. To remedy that, we trade skype information for appointments later during the week. Please pray that they keep their commitments and progress throughout the week, regardless of our physical presence. This presents a whole new dimension of challenges for getting the Spirit present, committing them, following up, and obtaining return appointments. We desperately need more missionaries here in the Northern cities.

As for finding methods, our language class has been doing really well. We get Poles, Lithuanians, Morroccans, Spaniards and Bulgarians showing up all the time. It produced one person in church this past week :). Though, unfortunately, our Branch President, and First Counselor were both feeling under the weather. As a result Elder Badger got his first experience in a sacrament meeting, run completely by missionaries :D. We had a wonderful, spiritually uplifting time. This branch will continue to grow, though, regardless of some empty days once in a while!

Tromsø's Dynamic Duo :]

As for other finding methods, we were thinking of doing piano lessons. Our Mission President is all for it. Does anyone know of some free piano lesson materials available online? That would really help us.

Thank you all so much for your continued love and support :). We appreciate the prayers, the thoughts and the letters oh so very much.

May God Be With You Until We Meet Again! (A Tromsø branch hymn favorite!)

-Eldste Bryce Thomas Johnson