March 29th 2010 GOTLAND!!!

Hello!!

Now I'm out on Gotland with Elder Seegmiller!

A pictures worth a thousand words...

From Visby!

From Visby!

From Visby!

From Visby!

From Visby!

It looks like some of those pictures isn't working... just click on them and hopefully it works.

So the city we are in is really cool.  It has a big wall around it like Jerusalem, and it's right by the ocean!

The branch here is not very big.  We had 11 people in church, and 6 of them were full-time missionaries.

It feels a lot like Bermuda!  We have an awesome senior couple!!! the Herreys, who know everyone on the Island.  They remind me a lot of my grandparents.  Äldste Herrey is super friendly and loves to talk to everyone like grandpa.  And the branch is kinda like it... except smaller.  And the island is alot bigger, the one i'm on.  And we're not very far away from mainland.  It's pretty expensive and about a 3 hr boat ride.

We walked all the way around the wall and took pictures, and then when we got to the ocean i think my companion had a hard time.  he used to live by the ocean.  And then we got talking to some high school kids, and they were pretty chill.  One of them took a book of Mormon and they listened to us a little!  One of them believed in God! that was impressive.

Well I think that's about it for today.  I don't have all that much more to say then i'm VERY excited for the next 2 months.  They are going to be awesome!!

Have a great day!

ÄA

March 22nd 2010

Hello Everyone!

OK!  I got quite a bit of stuff to tell you.  I'm going to get transfered one last time... so this'll be my final area.  I'm going to Visby (Gotland)!!!!  It's a pretty big island in the middle of the Baltic Ocean.  Here's a map.


View Larger Map

Hopefully that worked.  Yeah so that island right in the middle that says "Gotland" is my new area!!!  The branch there is pretty small... but I don't know how small.  And we have a senior couple there - the Herreys.  Their sons are pretty famous.  They won "eurovision" or something like that. It's kinda like the American Idol of Europe, but bigger, and I'd say more organized and better. Them and ABBA are the only people to win from Sweden. I've meet most of them, but It'll be cool to serve with their parents!
here's 2 good links I found for them...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herreys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTFec_mrD-c

My companion will be Elder Seegmiller.  He's actually in my same group.  So we'll be "killing" eachother.  So that'll be interesting.  Usually the elders out there only come back into mainland once a transfer, but it sounds like we'll be coming back quite often which is good.

So yeah.  Stuff about this week...  Yesterday I was "pleading from the porcelain alter."  That's no fun if you get what I'm talking about.  My companion was sick last week, and then it seems I got it from him.  No fun!

We went on splits with the assistants (they were coming to spy on us to see if they wanted to close our area, which they didn't cause we are actually doing really good right now).  But while on splits I was back to Täby, my old area when I was in the office.  That was fun to get to go back and see a bunch of members.  We contacted a woman when we were walking around and then we ended up teaching her.  That was good.

And while I was on splits in Täby the elders that were in our area got a baptismal date!!  So that was awesome!!!  She is a friend to a member and has come to church lots and lots, but her parents wouldn't let her get baptized... but now she is 18 and so we've been working hard to get in contact with her.  So we finally got to talk to her and it sounds like she is doing good and will get baptized sometime soon.

We'll that's about it.  Have a great day!!!

I also gave a talk on sunday and would like to talk about what I talked about.  The topic was "member missionary work" but i took it from probably not a normal angle.  I talked about charity and how because God loves us we have the Attonement, and the chance to be here, and why we do missionary work is cuz we love the people we serve, and god.  and then i talked abotu how awesome my mom is, and that moms are the best missionaries.  And that it's most important that you have a good family- but you should also be a missionary.

ÄA

March 15th 2010

Hey everybody!

This week was an interesting week.  We kinda had a lot of crazy stuff happen, that made it pretty chaotic.  We had sharpening(1 day messed up), then we had splits with the zone leaders (2 days), then we had surprise splits with the elders in Södertälje(3 days) because one of them can speak spanish and we had a teach in spanish that we needed help with, and it just worked out that way.  and then we were gone the next day playing a swedish sport called innebandy(4 days).  So yeah!  that was quite the adventure.  After that I just felt like I needed to get like a missionary reboot.  It's kinda hard living in a 4 man apartment.  There are so many distractions and such.  I think it's alot easier to live in just a 2 man.  and a 1 man would be cool- like i'm looking forward to it.  Having a companion glued to you 24/7 is like the hardest thing about missionary life I think.  I just wanna do something on my own like go hiking or make something or do some art or something.

Anyway enough of "wo is me" stuff.
Our teach that was in spanish was pretty good.  We teach those 2 kids from Equador.  They are awesome.  The older one wants to be baptized, and just needs to come to chruch to get ready.  She gets it all! she just needs to start making steps.

And our new member from Chile is having a hard time.  His parents live right on where the earthquake is, and doesn't know how they are doing.  he heard they were alive, but with all these other earthquakes he's not sure anymore.
And the other day we met a girl who was homeless.  she was selling these magazines, like they all do.  I gave her 20kr cuz i felt bad for her, but didnt want a magazine.  And she seemed like a respecable homeless person.  I've just gained a "sad love" for people who've had a hard time.  Like I just feel really bad for them.  It's just crazy what we go thru in this life.  The next life better be freaking better!!!  sheesh.  I just kinda had a view of us up in the pre-mortal world looking down, and then realizing "oh dang, there's not much time left. Oh no, like i gotta go down in that crazy world soon." Like I know that's a pretty pessimistic view but that's just what I though.  But then look at all the good things we have in this life!  I guess we gotta experience hell before we appreciate heaven.

So we've been playing chess in our apartment lately.  I won my first game pretty easily, and then I lost last night to my companion in the "finals".  I was dominating him and then he got me, pretty quickly.  It didn't help when I made a dumb quick mistake.  I just didn't think it out very far and assumed I'd be fine.  But if I did the smarter move, it would have been a toss-up and a long game.  It was already past bedtime!  And then I couldn't sleep so I stayed up thinking about life and reading stuff about Dad, like some letters he wrote, and some journal entres he did.  Did you know that I'm older then both of my parents when they had me?!  Yep like 8 months older then my mom apx and 2 months older then my dad.  Crazy huh!!  I just wish I could be like my dad.  He was sure awesome.  I still think about him all the time and tell stories all the time.  I think my companions think it's weird- whatever.

Next week we have transfers.  I'll most likely be emailing on Wednesday.... just to give you a heads up.

Anyway I hope all is well back home and that no earthquakes happen in Utah, especially now that our house is right under the "mmall sountain."

Have a great day!

ÄA

March 8th 2010

Ok!  Sorry I didn't write last week.  I'll update us on last week too.

So as you might know we have 2 wards here.  the first ward is just right by the train tracks and is very small in area but has tons of members.  Ok we do very little work with them but one day a member called us and said he has a referral!!  It was awesome!  He is super open and has said several times "I'm going to become a really good mormon" and that he wants to get to know all the people in the book of Mormon because they are our brothers!  It's really cool.  We taught him the first 3 lessons now, and the third lesson is about "the Gospel of Jesus Christ" and part of that is Baptism.  We asked him if he wants to get baptized and he said once he gets to know about the church a little more.  He hasn't been to church yet, so thats our next step.  He said he will work on changing his work schedule so it's easier to go.   HE'S SO AWESOME!!!

Another guy we are teaching is a man named Leroy from Jamaica.  He's super cool.  Did you guys know that Bob Marley is a prophet!  I didn't know that either.  We brought this kinda less-active/new member on the teach with us (he has a really cool story.  His dad was the King of Sierra Leone, and he was to be the next King but all this political uprivial stuff happened, and his dad was murdered, and now our buddy moved to Sweden and is save.  he was Muslim but then found out that Christ is the Son of God, with guidance from the missionaries!)  Anyway we all got together and had one of the coolest teaches I've ever had.  We had quite the spectrum there. It was super awesome.  We taught the Plan of Salvation in a very un-standard manner.

We are still teaching our two spanish kids from Equador.  They are super cool.  We're just trying to help the girl come to church alone (her little brother doesn't want to come cause it's too boring. I agree! idk if I was 12 I would come to church on my own.)

Well that's about it for people we are working with!  Other things... there are some interesting things going on.  some guy is going around giving anti-mormon shows at churches (which blows my mind.  can you ever picture our church supporting an anti-anything activity)  anyway they are having a meeting in our area (which is heavily mormon) so that'll be very interesting...  I've heard some of his stuff and influence when I was in Luleå and it sounds like he doesn't have much to show, besides alot of peoples bias and bigot towards us already.  "onward, ever onward, as the triumph song we sing, God our strength will be, press forward" and the church will just keep rolling.

We met with the bishop and his family.  It was cool one of his daughters was into photography so we had a good chat about that.  pretty fun.

Anyway I hope all is well back home!

ÄA

Oh one other story.  We had a guy who got baptized a while ago, and his family lives in Chile and apparently their house got destroyed in the earthquake and they didn't have any access to water.  So they need help.  he's pretty terrified about it- I guess I would too!

making it short...

i don't have anytime to write today!  It's been stressful.

Everything is going good and we are having some good stuff happen.

Have a great day!!

ÄA