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