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
