Monday, January 6th, 2014

I got to Alta on Friday. I am really excited to be here. We live with two members, a mother and son. They are really awesome. The son loves music, especially the Beatles, and the mother is very kind and loving. They are so strong in the gospel as well. A lot of people are away on vacation, so I actually have not met any other members yet, but I have heard quite a bit about them. I am very excited. I think we often have twelve or so in church, which is more than I might have thought. We have a lot of people who we are trying to work with, so I am very excited for what is to come. Eldste Hurst is a very kind and caring companion as well as a dedicated missionary. I am grateful to be able to serve with him. It actually is not that cold here yet, but it is colder than Oslo was. One thing that is really cool is that the sun never comes up. There is still variance of light in the day, which is quite noticeable, but nothing has a shadow.

We are the only missionaries in Alta. Our area is technically all of Finnmark County, but we pretty much only work in Alta because it is the biggest city and the others take so much time to get to. One thing that is also really different is that we have a car now. There are not very many areas in the mission that do, but it is definitely useful. The closest other missionary area is Tromsø, which is just barely south and west of us. It is a much bigger city, and they have four missionaries right now. There are only five branches of the church in Northern Norway: Boddø, Mo i Rana, Narvik, Tromsø, and Alta.

It is a tremendous blessing to be where I am. I feel a lot of good things are in store. People seem very kind and open here, so I think we will be able to help a lot of people receive the gospel and the joy that comes from it.

We celebrated New Year's Eve at the Rasmussen's apartment as a district. The fireworks were incredible, and we got an awesome view of downtown Oslo. I know a lot of good things are in store for this new year. We never quite know what the future holds, but it suffices me to know that Heavenly Father is watching over us. It requires patience on our parts, but I know it will be far more than worth it. The word of the week is godt nyt år, which means happy New Year!

Love,
Elder Ankenman