What's good everyone,
Hasn't even been a full week since I wrote my last email, but there's been a decent amount that has happened.
So me and 2 other Elders from my district (the rest are reassigned because they don't have their visas) left the MTC Thursday morning with a group of like 30 other Elders and Sisters to the airport. Ended up finally getting to Norway on Friday afternoon with the time change. The travel was actually not as bad as I expected it to be, it was honestly kind of nice to just have some time to just relax on the flight. The mission president and his wife picked us up from the airport with some other missionaries, and then we headed to the mission office and then to the mission home. We had dinner and slept there, which was fine.
The next morning we headed to the mission office and got our assignments. I'm in a super cool city called Stavanger, which is the third or fourth biggest city in Norway. Which I am a fan of big cities so I'm pretty happy about that. It's not quite the same as cities in the US but it is really cool. The cool thing about our area is we have one of the bigger wards in the country. We have a ward that is close to the same size as a Utah ward, which from what I understand is not common here. We also have one of the bigger teaching pools in the country at the moment. My companion is Elder Lyons and he is chill so far. He is committed to USC to play football and was recruited to many schools so that's cool. One thing that is nice about that is that he is recovering from an injury so we are allowed to have a gym membership so he can recover, which is really lucky.
So after we got our assignments, I hopped on a flight about 3 hours later. One thing that's crazy about this mission is how many flights you take. Missionaries normally end their missions having taken somewhere between 50 and 70 flights. So I am already at 3 and am going to be at 5 at the end of this week because we fly back to Oslo for a training conference this week. But once I arrived in Stavanger we were picked up by our new trainers and also the new senior couple that is here, that I had already met in the MTC. Stavanger is on the southwest coast of Norway so we stopped at a beach on the way back from the airport which was really cool. Then we went over to the senior couples house for dinner which was cool to get to know the other missionaries in the area.
Sunday morning was church which was kind of wild. Stavanger has a dialect that is very different than the Norwegian that is spoken in Oslo, which is what we learn in the MTC. So there are a lot of words that are completely different, which is definitely a struggle considering I can barely even understand when people speak the Norwegian that I was taught. Some examples of words that are different are what, who, how, where, something, y'all/you guys. So it is going to be a bit of struggle for me for a while. Some people are easier to understand than others, so like half of the people I could understand the general gist of what they were saying and the other half I was pretty lost. Most people that came up and talked to me I was able to understand though which was good. Besides one super old lady that literally talked so weird 😂😂. Even when she switched to English I barely understood her. The thing about Norway is anytime they can tell you are new they can easily switch to english, which I good if I can't understand anything, but also will probably cause me to take longer to learn. Another funny thing is that no one hear can pronounce my last name lol. It's most commonly pronounced Vinegar, so if even if they say it wrong, if they say it with a W sound I am happy.
Sunday night we were invited over to a members house for dinner which was super awesome. They reminded me like any of my aunts or uncles they were so nice. They have 4 kids, but 2 are grown so were not there. So the 2 that were there this kid named Espen who is around my age, and this kid named Jared who is 14. My companion thinks that Espen looks like me. Which he does but he actually has muscle lol. But we had a traditional Norwegian meal of kjøttkake and potatoes, which is esentially just like meatballs with gravy. It was really good. And for dessert we had authentic Norwegian waffles with brown cheese. Which for those that don't know is like a sweeter carmel colored cheese. It's pretty good. I honestly just think it adds the cheese texture to the waffle without the grossness that would come if you did that with regular cheese. But yeah it was pretty good.
Yesterday we did some service for a lady that we found on facebook. We esentially just helped her with some cleaning. But what was really cool was that she began asking us some questions about our beliefs so we were able to have a decent discussion with her. Because you normally are not supposed to talk religion with people you do service with unless they bring it up.
And then last night we played basketball with a huge group of Philipino dudes. It was fun to play basketball for sure. But those guys really need to earn your trust I guess because I barely touched the ball hahaha. But that is for sure something fun that we do every week that I'm excited about.
Sorry this email is way too long, I will make it way shorter next week. But other than my struggles with the language and adjusting to meeting a bunch of new people, I am overall enjoying it. Hope everyone is well.
Much love,
Eldste Winegar
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