Week 73 Oslo Norway

 Wassup everyone this week was interesting! 

      Said bye to all of the dope people in Drammen, had a bonfire with some of the YSA and people we were teaching before I left which was super fun. I love Drammen and I hope all the progress we had there keeps going! Still stoked for Bjørn, I got to visit him in the hospital before I left because he had some health problems come up but he's all good and hyped for his baptism! Which is so exciting! Now I'm in Oslo which is Norway's capital. It's a pretty sweet city and I'm right in the middle of Sentrum! It's funny because I'm in a super nice area with all the crazy nice stores like LV, Gucci, Jimmy Choo right next to me but my apartment was kind of a dump when I came in but we cleaned her up nice and bought some stuff so that's good. We have just been calling a ton of the families to get to know them and finding people on FB and stuff so not to much has been happening. We did get a referral from a YSA here that I know and her friend has been to church a couple times and said that we could "practice" the lessons on her so that'll be tight. I'm not sure what the difference is when teaching a lesson but they can think what they want if they're willing to listen to us. Other than that I'm just trying to stay away from the Footlocker and Nike factory down the street from me and I'm playing the guitar a lot more with some of my free time. My comp is a good guy from Caldwell, Idaho! So he's a hard working obedient kid which is always nice. He's 6'6 so when were out of quarantine we're planning on hitting the courts and doing some sport contacting. I loved President Nelson's invitation he gave to everyone! I thought that was so powerful and inspired. The last time we were given an invitation with social media it was to fast from it and avoid it. But in the technology world we live in today and with people being inside so much, he received inspiration to flood the internet with positivity! It's so amazing to have living prophets who receive modern day revelation. 

Have a good week every one! 🤙🏽

Eldste Spaddy 

Eldste Bevan and I 

We're in quarantine for 10 days so a member from Drammen drove up and dropped off a thanksgiving feast for us to cook. It made our day after cooking up all this yummy food! Love the members who take good care of us and so does my mom.  

Week 72 Drammen Norway

 Wassup everyone! 

We had a solid week here in Norway for sure.

     Corona canceled a lot of stuff but we were determined to have a successful week so we grinded. We had tons of lessons which was good. Bjørn is doing great, we showed him around the baptismal font and we came to the conclusion that we will probably have to have 2 people in the font to get him up out of the water. I kid you not, we're going to have to have a splash zone around the font because he's a big dude and the font is not big enough. It will be a cool experience and I can't wait, I'm so excited for him! Transfers are this week and I got the news I'll be leaving Drammen to train again down in Oslo. It should be really fun and I'm excited but the 10 day isolation is going to be really boring. After that it'll be good, my new companion's been waiting to get to Norway for some time and I'm sure he's excited to finally get here. Elder Bevan from Moscow, Idaho and a bunch more missionaries are arriving so a lot of us are training to get the mission back up to where we need to be. We're going to be living right in the middle of Sentrum, which is a pretty big city with a university and lots of people. The area hasn't had missionaries in awhile so we'll be opening it back up and getting to work. The Nike store is a 30 second walk from my apartment so I'm chillin! HaHa  It's kind of sad that I'll be in isolation for Thanksgiving but I'm just going to make some good food for us and we'll be alright. Eldste and Sister Jackson, my favorite senior couple, are moving to Oslo too!  

      Funny story that happened, we asked the sisters if we could borrow they're bus card so we could catch an appointment with a family one night.  They said yes and then the next day they called us to see if we could meet and bring the cards to the station at 2? We were like ya ya of course! At 1:59 we get a message from the sisters saying we're here... well if you know me, I had already forgotten about it. I felt so bad, so we zoomed down to the bus station and I took off in a full sprint to find them and give them their cards before their train left in 2 minutes. As I came around the corner, sprinting into town square, I slipped on one of those metal sewage lids.  I ATE it so hard, landing on the ground in a massive puddle in front of like 20 people. The sisters just died laughing as they watched the whole thing go down. I walked away with soaking wet clothes and some broken pride but they made their train so it's all good. 

      On Friday it was my old companion Elder Meldrum's birthday and a girl we teach so we decided to celebrate together and go to dinner at this place called "Texas BBQ" and ohhhh man was that a blessing from heaven. We had baby back ribs, brisket, mac n cheese, peach cobbler and a cold glass of root beer for the boys. It has been SOOOO long since I've had any of that kind of food and it was so good. But that was the first and last time I'll be paying 6 bucks for a cold root beer but man it was good. Anyways, we've been making some videos as well which has been cool! I never thought I'd be taking pictures, filming and editing videos on my mission but that's what we have to do now. Vilde is super nice and lets us use her fancy camera so we just take it with us everywhere we go and get footy of different things we do and then tie a gospel principle to it and post it. We have a page for our mission and they post it and then we respond to all the comments and likes of those who aren't members then meet up with them later. It's pretty weird but it works so well and I don't really care how we do it as long as we're finding people to teach! We invited our recent convert and another friend we're teaching to a family home evening with the Stake President and his fam and they KILLED it! We discussed Come Follow Me and in Ether when they built the barges. He compared it to how we need to make that decision to "get in the boat" everyday and trust in God. It was awesome for both of them to here and I learned a ton as well. 

      To close,  I want to share an awesome experience we had with Bjørn this past week as well. He'd been doing so well with his plan and he slipped up and smoked again. It was super tough on him because he thought he could just quit and he was super down about it and then the next couple of days he seemed to loose motivation. But last week I called my brother Dillon and he was telling me about his mission and that he was in the same situation I'm in right now with Bjorn. He and his companion decided to stop by for a little bit at least once a day to check in and it worked. So we started doing it with Bjorn and it helped him so much. We would read and pray with him or just have a good talk and then leave. We made a plan to begin again this week and keep it up until his baptism, he was a little uncertain if he could do it and was kind of stubborn on just throwing away all his tobacco right then and there. But then we showed up yesterday and he was so hyped! We got in a good lift with him and then he tells us, "boys guess what? I threw all my tobacco in the fire this morning, I'm going to do it!!" It was so dope, Bjørn is such a stud. We printed off some great quotes for him that he loves from President Nelson and then set up a calendar for him to mark off the days until his baptism and he was stoked again so that was amazing! Shout out to "D" for the inspiration 🙌🏽 Hope you all have a good week!

Eldste McSpadden

Eldste Affleck, Eirin and Eldste McSpadden

Eldste Van Slooten and I

Week 71 Drammen Norway

 What's up everyone, 

        Corona kind of messed up our week but we ended up making the best out of it. For some stupid reason everyone and their dog decided to go get tested this week so lines for testing were insanely long and people who weren't even sick were testing positive. So the numbers have been getting "dangerously high" so they shut everything down and cancelled church and all out appointments were cancelled as well. 

     Sunday we just asked President if we could drive down to Tønsberg  to go to church so he gave the green light so that was fire. But on the bright side Bjørn is doing good and has been 1 week without tobacco! He's so happy right now and just loving life so that's really motivating. His baptismal interview is scheduled for the 2nd of December which is exciting. Transfers is next week though so we will see how that goes! It would be cool to be here for his baptism but if I dip it's in the Lords hands! We found some new people to start meeting with which is cool, I got a message from some random girl asking about missionary work and stuff so we are going on a hike this week with her and giving her a book of Mormon which is dope. We've just been making friends in the community and then bringing up the gospel so that's been fun! We've met some interesting but cool people, my comp is super musically talented so he just joined a Facebook group and asked people if we could meet up and "jam" and we had this guy say, "yeh I'm in my studio every day from 9-1 just come over!" So we pulled up and it was in this sketchy cellar thing and I was like oh man this is gonna be so ghetto but we get down there and this dude had a legit full studio with probably over 200 guitars hanging on the wall and a full set of drums and ukuleles and violins it was so cool. He had all this sick recording gear and massive speakers with huge subs and stuff it was legit! So we started talking and then he just gives my comp a guitar and they just start going off it was dope. Then I looked over and I saw a guitar with Jesus on it and thought aye there's my opportunity! So I picked it up and said, "I think this one is my fav! Jesus is a good guy!" And then we started talking about religion and what he believes in and stuff. He was agnostic but we can change that ;) so we will meet up with him again sometime and we're gunna make a song or something so that'll be swaggy. 

      This week I've been reading in the Book of Mormon and the Old Testament and one thing I've realized is the amount of symbolism in the scriptures. I read along with the institute manuals and the gospel doctrine books and it has helped so much to learn more deeply about what the prophets really meant and man Isaiah is a stud. I use to read super quickly through the Isaiah chapters but now I'm eating it up. One thing I loved that Bruce R. McConkie said was that the Fall the Creation and the Atonement are all inseparable and are all necessary for each other. I liked that and think he's such a stud! My mission presidents wife is his niece so she hooks it up with talks and speeches that were never written down. Today on p day we went fishing but didn't catch much. We saw a swan and fed it tortilla chips and then I got the grand idea to feed it one from my mouth.... homeboy bit my nose and chin but I snagged a dope pic of it so that's all that counts! #fortheboys 

Have a good week! 🙌🏽

Eldste McSpadden

Week 70 Drammen Norway

 Good week here in Drammen!

      Bjørn is doing good and he's dropped tobacco!! So that was exciting, he's been doing so good and progressing a ton. Super stoked for his baptism on the 12th of December! I also finally became good buddies with his massive Russian bear hunting dog named Samson. Back in the summer it attacked me and bit my bum but now we're buddy's.  This thing is literally huge, weighs around 200 pounds and looks like a bear. Other than that we've had interviews with President Tew, which was good, and then splits with some of the boys! Good to be around other solid dudes, we have 5 new elders in our zone so we've been doing a ton of language studies and online splits as well to make sure these guys get the language down well. 

    This week, I read about when Nephi had to build a ship. Still amazed at his response, as he said, "Where can I go to find ore to make the tools to build the boat?" He was a smart man and was so willing to do amazing things with the Lords help. I've really been working on how I can let the Lord use me for amazing things in my life. I'm always trying to prepare myself to be ready, worthy and willing to use my Priesthood powers when he needs me to.

 Hope you all have a good week and be willing to let the Lord use you for amazing things!

Eldste Spaddy 

A day of service in Norway but I had to support the man on his BIG day!!!  #4MOREYEARS

       (Eldste Holbrook from the MTC)