July 25th 2009

We had one exciting pday!

K let me start.

We woke up and emailed-- Sorry i've been way bad at emailing. Sense we have as much time as we like I usually just waste it all.

anyway this is what we did this pday.

They have these things called "loppis" here in Sweden. They are kinda crazy yardsales but they get masses of them together and hundreds of people. it was quite a white trash fest. It was pretty cool tho. The one thing i wanted was some old coins- got some of those. And I also wanted some old swedish stamps. got those too, actually i got like a whole lifetime collection of swedish stamps and other stamps. It was super cool.

Ok to be honest i think i spent more money on myself that one day then i have the rest of my misison. Ok well I'll start here with the stamps.

I think i bought about 10,000 stamps or something. I havent counted but it was ridiculous. I got all 4 of those books that just had tons of stamps in them for a pretty good deal.

This is the first book - and probably the best one. That is the swedish symbol for "the mail." Yes that is the sign missionaries love.

Here are some examples of the pages. this was just the first page.

Here are some stamps of the "NASA" era. It was way cool to see these. My dad actually collected stamps. I had no idea until i found them one day in our storage area. I dont think he ever said anything about them to me - but it will be cool to add a bunch to his collection.

We also bought a pingpong set! haha. We have a big conference room in our uh, conference room. Well we set it up in there! It was pretty sick. My comp, Elder Edmunds is pretty good at it. As seen above he is also good at multi-tasking. Personal study and pingponging at the same time.

OK so that was our trip to the Loppis. That was fun, and then after that we went shopping at the Täby Centrum pretty close to our house. Well I've been eying this new idea. As you might know i like the rubiks cube alot. Well this is the next generation.

The rubiks cube for the blind kids. And yes I can solve it.

Ok but then I got this rubiks cube and me and Elder Langston, Oh yeah my companion when I was in Kristianstad for the first 4 months is now the new AP, and so we have tons of fun together! I like him alot. He went to Jordan High, but that sometimes can be forgiven. Well anyway he is my favorite ever. Well we were in some store trying on church cloths and i was bored but everyone else was looking at stuff, and then we found these way awesome pants for pretty cheap. I wanted just pants that i could wear out over the summer - but considering it is ½ way gone, well ok i still tried them on. They are pretty tight (like all the swedish cloths) but they fit perfect. And they were only 200 kr. Ok and then I found the jacket to it. So i try them on and I find the perfect fitting one. Elder Langston was ticked off. It was a super good price. And then you cannot just buy a swedish suit and then just wear a old american white shirt. (American and Swedish style is very very different. I could spot out an american from a mile away.) Anyway so we find another super good deal on a way nice white shirt. It was super sick. Elder Langston was way ticked off they didnt have one in his size. Well anyway I left that store 900kr poorer but had a way nice suit. 900kr is a little over 100 dollars. it is about 120 dollars or so. It was about $90 when the exchange rate was higher. Anyway you just dont understand, swedish cloths are like the one thing that is better (oh and the members food) that is better then america. I'll wear it sometime and send some pictures.


K so the next adventure! This is still the same day. Well we go home - eat some food, then go back to the store to get a huge swedish flag, get done with that. Do some more emailing and pday stuff, then we get out of the appt at about 7:00pm to go by this woman that we trackted into a few weeks ago. She answered only wearing a towel - clearly being busy and we said that we would come back in a couple days. I dont know why swedes answer their door in only a towel. That would never happen in america - for one who would hear someone knock on the door? the only way that is possible is cause swedish houses and appartments are so small. Well anyway it just is weird.

Ok so after that we go by another try-again in the area. It was this jewish woman that took the book of mormon and was pretty nice. She had lived all over the world. her dad is a consolate for sweden or something. Well anyway we went back there except her husband answered - and immediately we could tell he had a little alcohol in his system. So we explained that we were just coming back by and that we wanted to come tell them more about the book. It turned to english like it always does- well anyway he was from Ireland and only lived in sweden a little while, but he said we could come in for some tea IF and ONLY IF we didnt talk about religion. He was like I'll let you in as friends, but not as missionaries. So uh... what do you do?? So i was like "well actually... ok... sure... we'll come in!" I had no idea what to say! I was trying to think of what we actually should do, but I think i chose the right thing. If they didnt let us in we were just going to go home - so why not? cannot do too much damage?

So we go in and he sits us down, gave us some water and lemonade. We chatted about life, about sports, about sweden, where we were from and all sorts of nomal stuff. My companion is lined up to play tennis against a champion player from south africa or something. Anyway it was really fun! We left with a good spirit, he said we could come back anytime and have a grill or something, as long as we dont talk about religion. So what the heck are we suppose to do! It was just the most interesting day of my life.

Ok then next on our way home we are headed to the car, and in the middle of all these appartments we hear something moving around in the bushes- we go over and look and low and behold it was a hedgehog!! cool huh?!? He was pretty pokey and way hard to get out of the pokey bushes, but definitely worth it. K check this picture out!
So when i took the above picture of my companion i was like o sick that was the best picture ever, and said that probably too loud- and these 2 guys came over and started freaking out that we were playing with a hedgehog. Well we had had lots of fun with him as it was - it was way cool to see. Anyway we just let him run back into the bushes. The guy was a little.... uh fairy-ish. Probably a leader of an animal rights group and a pro-abortion group too. Well anyway we got what we wanted! He was a way cool hedgehog! they are so funny! they dont go very fast, and arnt mean at all, just chill. He was pretty cool!

Well yeah! that was my day! probably one of the most exciting days of my mission right there!

Take care everyone!

Love you all,

ÄA

Transfers! they are crazy!

have been pretty crazy!!!

Ok so transfer week was coming up. Transfers in Sweden are crazy. Let me explain a little... There are not that many missionaries, everyone knows each other. Sweden is HUGE, roughly the size of California. On average it probably takes 8 hours to get to your new area. Sometimes up to 48. I'm not joking. One Elder was in somewhere down south - came and slept at the office - thats about 8 hrs there. Slept over - the next morning whent to Umeå. then the day after that drove to Luleå. Pretty crazy. So yeah that was atleast 3 days completely messed up. Overall in the mission transfers is pretty crazy - and people get pretty hyped about it. Oh another side is that it is only every 9 freaking weeks. Transfers are super long here, therefore people look forward to them more.

I just laugh when i hear stories of missionaries in Anaheim that are only allowed 2 hours to get to their new area. It is pretty much a whole week ordeal. Well I was in the middle of it all. Being in the office is pretty cool. The assistants knew what was up before us but we only had to wait a few hours before we knew everything.

My companion - Elder Drake didnt like the office very much, and about 1 week before transfers he called President Anderson and told him that he didnt want to stay at the office - so yep now he is in Halmstad - down in the Malmö Zone. Anyway we found out 1 day early. We didnt have our normal interviews with president in zone conference so we just had it on monday thats when he told me that Elder Edmunds would be my new comp! He is way awesome. We've had lots of fun together. We actually knew (or had a strong guess) it was going to be him because President told him in a interview that he "had the office in his future." But that is cool. He is from Orem. I'll attach some pictures.

Ok so we booked all the tickets for everyone in the mission to get to their new places. I didnt really do all the crazy stuff figuring out what times and who and where everyone needed to be. I washed the cars instead. That was fun tho. I dont really stay up late on the mission like i did back home just doing random stuff and work. So that was fun to stay up late washing the cars. I felt like a human again.

So anyway then all the new missionaries that came in- the "greenies" we took care of them and helped them out. We took them to the place where they got their personnummer and all this stuff so they are legal. Then we took them to the temple and around stockholm. they had some pretty serious jetlag. It was kinda funny.

We went contacting with them in stockholm for their first taste of sweden. that was also pretty funny. We met some people who couldnt speak swedish or english, who knows where they were from. We met some atheist, lots actually, and some people who maybe were interested but to shy to admit it and give us their number. But me and the greenie i was with gave out one book of mormon. that was pretty successful!

Well then we had the trainers meeting the next day. So basically they sit the greenies in this room and bore them to tears with all this office stuff and random stuff that they probably dont remember at all cause of the jetlag for a few hours. And then they get to meet their trainers! All the trainers come in, line up, and the greenies get this letter that has their trainers name on it. Oh by the way, I was up until 2 am putting together these stupid letters. So after they meet their trainer we all had an awesome lunch, cleaned up and then everyone was off to T-Centralen, the main trainstation of Stockholm- and then off to their areas, where ever that may be.

Ok and then after i went home and went to sleep. I was way tired.

Then my new comp and I did a bunch of stuff. Oh i forgot to tell you about sörrströmming. That stuff is GROSS!! I still can just feel the discustingness on me. Just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming. We had it with some of the "dying" missionaries. It was unbelievable. Elder Jensen and Elder Jackson just straight up ate them. They taste like death and smell worse. Swedes never eat them by just taking a bite out of them- they mix it with all sorts of potatoes and other taste dulling objects.

Well after everyone amazingly made it to their new areas - we had tons of catchup work to do in the Office. I'm pretty sure we are not proselyting missionaries at all here in the office. We try but seriously we never get out. It drives me crazy. I'm pretty sure our title should be changed to service missionaries, or firefighters. I'm not complaining but this is pretty much all we do: put out fires throughout sweden. All the missionaries who did something stupid or cant figure something out- we fix. And then we help the ward here a ton. We do hometeaching with people all the time, and do service for people all the time and all sorts of stuff. Oh and we go eat at members houses all the time. They think that is a service haha. We love that. But yeah... We dont ever leave the office until atleast 5:00, usually later. And then we go do one of the listed above activities. So we usually get about max 5 hours of proselyting work done a week. it's pretty sad. I'd like to do more. Hopefully everything calms down so we can teach some people!

Oh here is a picture of me and President and Sister Anderson at the Temple.

I'll post more of what i've done sense transfers. It's been alot. And some pretty funny stuff. Last pday was super exciting. I'll write that ASAP.

Love you all,

ÄA

In Remembrance of My Dad

I've made a blog - jcadamson.blogspot.com

I want everyone to go to it that knew my dad and write a story on it. I've found a way for you to post a story onto the blog.

Email a story about Jay Adamson to this website:
rileyjadamson.memoirsofjayadamson@blogger.com

and it will appear on the blog! Lets all share memories about Jay and the great example he was.


Love you all!!


Riley

Sorry I have not written forever!

Hello Everyone!

Ok sorry I haven't written in around a month. We are here in the office all day every day on computers and you would think that i'd be better at emailing- but thats not really so. Thats pretty crazy how long that actually is. I pretty much just write my sister and random other people. My companion doesnt like the office so on pdays we are outta here! so i dont have much time.

Ok so I cannot believe this transfer is almost over. It is absolutely crazy. Transfers are next week- and it is highly highly likely i'll be staying here in the office. We usually serve here for 4-6 months. Office work is the same but i'll start listing off the other stuff i've been up to.

Some stories:

Ikea
ok.... this is a stupid story. We have a member who is from Iran and she is super awesome. She got a packet from ikea and we went to help her put it together. it was pretty fun to do other stuff besides computer crap like putting in records and stuff. Well it was all going good until my companion was too strong and broke one of the boards and so we went the next day to Ikea and got lost in the maze of death and then got to the end customer service and then they wouldnt give us a new piece cause they are mean and then we were mad and so she ended up having to pay 700 crowns for a new thing! it was so stupid. I was really mad. We went back to pick up the one she bought and I thought she didnt buy it yet and i was about to get mad at them and demand service. It was really not cool. It was my first time at ikea and they ruined it.... :(
the icecream was good tho- and way cheap.


middsummer
I dont think I even told you guys about midsummer! it is the longest day of the year and everyone parties and has lots of fun, and its usually pretty clean and traditional. well we went with all the other missionaries and members to this big place and we did all the traditional stuff - like dance around the may pole and stuff like that. it was really fun! I'll include some pictures.

this is me at midsummer - and that is the maypole behind me and all the people dancing. it was pretty cool to see!

Drakes friend
Elder Drake has a danish friend who is not a member but went to BYU. He was up in stockholm so we hung out with him the other day. We changed our pday and had tons of fun! he was way cool. We went and played Frisbee with other missionaries and then we also rode the bikes around all of Stockholm and had lots of fun. Then after that we went to the Institute center and were there for their family night. That was interesting.... haha there was only like 5 other girls that were older and kinda weird. AND then all we did was talk about communication and marriage. It was ridiculous. It was so crazy it became way funny. Some of the comments was so crazy that these girls made. We had lots of fun tho. Then we did this fun thing where we had to drop a egg from 10 feet or so, and make it not crack. We could put it in stuff and drop it with it and it was way cool- we came up with 2 one was way more simple and not very creative (actually didnt work) then the other one was way more tricky and unusual. we put it in a thing of water and just dropped that and it worked!!! it was super awesome!


Tracking
umm... yeah we dont have any investigators.... at all here.... it is really not cool. so we just go tracking and visiting members alot. And swing by less actives. We played tracking football. It was super fun. we would announce it like we were watching the game and say stuff like "Drake does a pitch to Adamson, Adamson goes to the door, He's looking for an open hole... and oh no! no one is home!!!" and then we could get touch downs, and stuff, and even if it felt like we lost we still figured the Lords team can never lose. We might have lost a few battles but not the war.


ticket and fighting
this was the worst thing ever.... Ok so every wednesday we go help some elders do a contacting activity in down-town Stockholm and it is tons of fun! I felt like I did really good. I learn every day that missionary work is ½ hard work/common sense, and ½ being spiritually and physically prepared. All I did was find the best spot to contact people- stuck to it, and did my job. All the other missionaries just wander around and dont really do much.... but i contacted some awesome people. One lady told me that her husband hung himself and then I got to testify of the Plan of Salvation. That was pretty intense. But yeah i contacted some pretty cool people and a few people freaked out at me that was just as funny. One dude told me i was deceived or something like that, and I just said ok, have a great day. It was pretty funny. Then he just kept looking at me and trying to figure out what he could say back.
Ok so for the ticket- stockholm is the worst place to be in with a car. We parked at this place and then we came back and had a ticket! it was 900kr - which is about $120. That sucked- so i found some ticket guy and told him what was up, he didnt care- but did show me how i could complain. So i am. I'm still working on getting the letter together.

Apparently that sign means that you can't park where we parked- and that it costs 900 crowns if you are stupid and don't know what it means - or just don't see it.

searching for my dad - his blog
I've felt like I've really missed my dad lately and wanted to kinda try to remember him. I've been reading letters that he sent to people during his life. It was super interesting. He had a pretty hard life- but a really good one at the same time. He had lots of trials but got over all of them!

Please visit - jcadamson.blogspot.com/
when you go there please look at the instructions on the left hand side. Please email me if any questions.

This is something I set up to help us remember him. I'll send another email with further details about it.


Grandmas picture
My grandma took one of my pictures that me and my companion took and blew it up and had it framed on her wall. It thought that was pretty cool.


My grandpa will like this story-
one day i was making tacos and my comp was washing the dishes- and we have a window right out to our lawn. All of a sudden he freaked out and started to yell at me to come see something- so i did and it was a BADGER!! just chilling in our yard by the flowers and stuff. COOL HUH??? then we went out there and my companion got some pictures. He didn't seem too concerned about being in the middle of a neighborhood and then just kinda walked off! It was really crazy!

LOOK! A BADGER!
he is that little grey thing right in the middle of all that green. Right now he is actually on the other side of the little fence, but when we first saw him he was in the strawberries right in front of him. The cute little guy- I just wanted to give him a hug haha.

we also went to drottningholm again. It was pretty cool.

So when we went there everyone was scared of the guards - cause they act really serious and stuff - but I befriended one of them. Actually I think elder Jackson dared me to get a picture with one - so i went up and asked him if i could, and he said yes.

Here is me at pretty much the same place as I was last August. The king and queen's private residence is the right half of that building. lucky huh. I think it is actually really funny they have a king and a queen here- the most "equal" society and the most politically correct nation i've ever heard of pays the lucky child of some other lucky dude to just chill in a palace. Sounds fair to me.

my mom is engaged
yep she is engaged to Matt Lyons- and that is about all i know. I think it will be really good honestly. I'm not too worried about it- my family likes him so it will be good!

Here is me at a Viking little village we went by. It was pretty cool! they had real people dressed up like vikings and knew all this stuff and did all this homemade stuff. They were super nice and chill.

haha so i was looking over my cousins email who is in Las Vegas and we sure write about different things. haha- I wish i had all the stuff to talk about that he does except the heat. anything above the 80's is too much for me if you cannot go swimming. But yeah it's hard here cause we don't have any investigators - but we are working on it!


Love you all!

ÄA


Äldste Riley Adamson
Box 2087
183 02 Täby
Sweden

elder.riley.j.adamson@gmail.com
rileyadamson.blogspot.com