December 28th 2009 - last time in 09!

HEY!!!

Christmas is over, I got to talk to pretty much everyone I know that lives in Utah, Arizona, and the western states, that was crazy.  But it was good!  SO on

Oh my gosh, there are these drunk guys at the library next to us.  One of them just started crying, and then they turned on this song that lyrics say "you got a reason to cry"  pretty ironic...  What a baby.  He is like a 40 year old guy, in a public library, monday morning, who smells like alcohol really strong and needs a pampering song, from some american country singer.  Go home and get a job.  Oh no, now they are talking to us... gosh they want help with the computer.

Note to self- never drink.  And dont go to the library drunk after the age of 40 and ask everyone for help.

OK well on a happy note!  We had a great Christmas!!!  We went Ice Fishing!!!!!
Click on the picture below to see more pictures.

07 Luleå Clarke

And here are some other pictures.

From 07 Luleå Clarke

Anyway!  I was pretty excited to get a fish!  I actually got 2 of them.  It was SO cold!!!  It was -22 Degrees Celsius which is about -8 Degrees Fahrenheit.  It was SUPER cold!!

Christmas Eve is the big day in Sweden.  We had the elders from Skellfteå over, and all 4 of us went over to the Näslunds.  We had a good time, watched "Calle Anke" aka Donald Duck!  It was pretty fun.  We just ate alot of Christmas food, and had a good old time.  None of my packages made it in time for christmas, which was fine with me, i dont really need any more stuff, but just to have something to open, i wrapped up a bunch of the stuff I already had and then when i opened them I was happy to have them!!!  I thought it was a really good idea, and I plan on doing it more in the future.  But yes- tami your package for me is just waiting down in Stockholm.  I'll get it in like 10 days or something.

But we couldn't meet with many of our investigators this week.  We did do some fun stuff like make cookies with some of our english class students.  that was pretty fun!  And then we kept making them for our swedish and english class for older people.  that was fun, and we decorated them, (they were sugar cookies) and super good, and we then gave them to members and other people we have contact with.

Well thats about it!  Thanks for all the conversations, and the gifts and all the great stuff.  Keep serving people!  And family have lots of fun in St. George and I hope bear gets to ride his dirtbike!!!

Have a good one!

ÄA

Dec 21nd 2009

Hey Family!

OK pretty crazy!!  So Matt is home!  It's crazy!!  So in his honor, this whole week I'm wearing nametags that I got that say "Äldste Liljegren"  his swedish name.

So that's pretty cool!  This week was kinda a weird one... some cool things happened-
we saw it -20 degrees Celsius!  Thats like -4 degrees Fahrenheit!!  It was WAY cold!  and we were outside for like 1½ hrs helping Marike chopping wood so she can live.  That was pretty crazy!  It think i would have died if i didnt have handwarmers in i think they would have fallen off.

I've also been studying Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.  They are super cool!  If any of you have any idea what they are, I'm going thru them and studying them.  They are really fun to study.

I like my comp.  We get along pretty well.  we were in Umeå so we never got around to buying food this week, so we were pretty creative.  We'll go buy lots of food so that we are all stocked up.

The Elders in Skellefeå have no where to go for christmas so they are coming up with us!  It'll be lots of fun.  We might to to Jokkmokk (above the artic circle) on the shortest day of the year, therefore it'll be dark at noon.  And that is Joseph Smiths birthday!  We'll close to it.

We'll be at the Näslunds on Christmas Eve.  That's the big day here.  The actual day is just a chill day.  We'll see what we end up doing.

But yep that's our plans for this week, except we are going to make some sugar cookies with our english discussion group!  and then in our swedish and english class we are going to decorate some of them, and then we are going to take some more to members and less actives and investigators the next few days!  So we've got LOTS of cookies to make!  It'll be pretty fun.

Here are some videos of us doing stuff... like our christmas tree.  We went and cut one down, and then we have it hanging in our room haha.  In the video you can pretty much see our whole appartment.  It's slightly bigger then the appartment gma and gpa had in Bermuda.

I'm excited to talk to you guys on christmas!  Expect a call sometime!

ÄA





hopefully i didn't say anything stupid in these videos

Ok! This week! 091205

Sorry I didn't email yesterday!  It wasn't our pday! cause we were in Umeå for zone conference, so now, the day after is our pday.

So this week was a fairly good week.  We had some good things happen.

Ok first, it is dark ALL the time!!!  It is kinda light from like 10:00 to 1:30.  But we almost never actually see the sun, cause it is cloudy usually, and it is way way far down.  The sunrise is the sunset.... and it's miserable.

But i'm doing pretty good.  It is kinda crazy tho with it always being dark.  I can feel it inside me.  Our investigators from Iran have the same thing... I dont think they really like it here to be honest haha.

BUT on the good side, we taught our best investigator, Fred, the guy married to the member this week.  We'll see what happens with him.  And we also taught a man named Altai, he is really a good guy, but we'll see if he needs the gospel, or can muster up enough faith to ask.  We'll see!

And our teenage friends just came to the church and we had a good old time with them.  They are really great kids, I think we've helped them quite a bit.  I didnt know what we were going to talk about (religious wise) and then i looked up and there was a drawing of Lehi's dream!  It was perfect for them!  It was pretty cool, to go over that and talk about what it was symbolic of, and that we are kinda at the tree asking them to come to it.
But we did play a fun word game where we wrote down a funny sentence, kinda like in story form, and then folded over the paper, and the next person writes a sentence of the last one.  (so you only can see 1 sentence above) and then it makes really funny stories!  It was good.

We also had zone conference, and that was really really good.  I was really impressed with our zone leaders actually.  I'm sorry but sometimes i have had a hard time looking up to leaders cause usually they aren't much of a good example of following the rules, or they are kinda prideful about it, but I was really really impressed. They gave some really good talks, that I was blown away with how they worded their sentences and the depth of their talks.  For some reason it really got to me.  they are both really good orators- however you spell that, and they bore a strong testimony.  It was a really good zc.  It made me want to be better!

Anyway I hope you all serve someone this christmas time, and don't think about yourself.  Some of my best christmas memories, were...
1, when i got my rifle.  I was so happy.
2, when we went and gave blankets to kids at the hospital
3, when we helped some families with the sub-for-santa.  I cant think of anything i've pretty much ever got for christmas (ok thats not true, i remember alot) but I remember better those service projects we did.

So SERVE!!!

I was telling Matt Lyons (I first said Matt L. but that could be Lelegren too) that I wish that christmas was a Worldwide Service Day.  That would be the best ever.

Hejdå!

ÄA

Hey! Dec 07 2009

Well i hope everyone is having an awesome time!
This week was pretty good, we kinda had a slow start but it turned out good. We had a goal to get 2 more member teaches this week then we got last week. And we did it! so that was sucessful. We also got our Li our chinese investigator to come to church... I dont know if we basically forced him to come, and if he actually liked it, but it was a good experience for him!

We had a good time with the skellefteå elders making our christmas card! so expect that coming soon.

We taught Fred, the man who is married to a member, but never really came! That was awesome! He is doing good, and hopefully starts taking more steps to being baptized. He is an awesome man. His wife is crippled and he helps her every day. He is a really good guy.

We also found a new investigator Altai from Iran, but he has lived in sweden for 20 years about. He is awesome!

We have the christmas party for the branch this week, we'll see how that turns out. the branch here is kinda un-organized at the moment. anyway we are working hard! Sorry so short!

ÄA