Feb. 9th 2009

Alright!! So now I got Elder Clark as my companion, and we also have another 2 missionaries working in the same area and living in our appartment!! It is really great! We have an extra companionship for this one transfer, becuase we have some extra elders now. So we have alot of work to do!! It is really cool, we got 4 elders now and alot of work to do. We all gave a 5 minute talk in sacrament meeting and it was very good. we basically pleaded with the members to use us for this transfer and lets get some work done!! I'm very excited. Basically being a good missionary (effective) includes -- incredible people skills, incredible planning skills, and obedience and all the other stuff. but you guys probably dont realize how much planning and preparing we actually do. It's crazy. We can spend hours planning and calling people, setting up appointments, rides to church and activites and all sorts of other stuff. it's a pretty stressful job sometimes! but good! We really do plan and plan and plan. its cool. one thing we are going to try to do is set up more religion classes. Ive found those to be very effective and fun. It is a good chance to fairly present our church and believes. We have 20 kids, and force them to listen to the whole message for 1½ hours haha. It's really good. so hopefully we get a few of those set up. THis is the letter I wrote to President Anderson --"This week has been quite good. It feels good to work hard and continue this work that we started. Elder Langston was a really good missionary, he got alot of stuff going in this area. I'm excited I get to work hard and keep my shoulder too the wheel in the same area. It looks like Elder Lewis and Parkin are getting along and getting used to the area and preparing to get alot of work done here and find lots of people. We are preparing Familjen Gustavsson for their sons babtism. The dad and the daughter came to church this week! That was very good. Our concern this whole time was reactivating their whole family and also bringing David to the gospel. It looks like it is going to go thrugh! David didnt come to church because he was sick, but looks like he will come next week. We are trying to meet with them every week 2 times, and then get them to church. It has been pretty good so far. We basically weekly plan the whole week. There are too many variables to take the friday before, so we get the shell done on Friday during weekly planning and keep filling it in the rest of the week. We want to take Alexander Appelqvist to lunch one day, where he can hopefully be a little more open with us about why he is not babtized. I thing he really feels pressure from his family and friends and church members, and this will possibly work. Our Zone set some impressive goals yesterday. I'm very excited! We have an awesome zone. As you know last time our district did like 3x the amount of work, and I feel that everyone in the zone is ready to do it too! Everyone is ready for full speed ahead! "
My new companion is Elder Clark, as i said, he is pretty cool, he has been in sweden 10 months, and was in downtown stockholm before. pretty cool. hopefully we get along and stuff! Haha it kinda was messing with him yesterday, we were waiting for a bus for like 20 minutes and i said "oh we got to develop our fight plan!" and so i pretended like i was serious and like if a swedish gang tried to take us out, basically to see how he would react. it was pretty funny. he took me seriously, and i was pretending to be serious, but wasnt at all. this is the most chill place ever. I heard that sweden has the crime rate of provo haha. it is a very chill place. no one had any reason to do any crime. we ourselves have a pretty demanding presence. people think we are way old and stuff haha. well thanks alot everyone!!! love yall