August 8th 2009

Hello Everyone!

This week was pretty cool, we went to zone conference and that was pretty fun- it was a 3 zone conference. Maybe in normal missions that is no big deal- but here it was huge. We had probably 2/3 of all the missionaries - and for some of them it was a 3+ day trip. Honestly it really was. All of Norrland (Skellefteå, Umeå, Luleå, Ö-vik and Sundsvall) they all flew down 1-2 days before. It was actually a two day conference, well the first day all the leaders got together. Anyway they came down, stayed for 3 days, then flew back. so it was a big deal for norrland.Driving to Gubbängen was kinda crazy. I was driving our big huge van - her name is Rida. Anyway our instructions wern't too good, but i knew close to where it was. And we were in charge of packages - and I'm pretty sure we didnt messup! That is always good. Keep those missionaries happy. We get alot of people who do orders really late and try to get in last minute things and that is not good, and i think we forgot 1 thing but they told us way late.

Anyway we had a good conference. It is cool to see them from an administrative point of view - even though i dont know much. But it was cool. I wore my new suit that I told you about last time. I got it for a way good deal and it is a super sick suit. And the tie I'm wearing has a good story about it. I got it at a white elephant gift exchange last christmas - but it was way wide- like 2x as wide. So me and Elder Langston decided to make it a skinny tie. I'm not sure if skinny ties are in in USA but they are here. I guess it is just that swing of the fashion. And my suit and pants were pretty tight. I was kinda worried that they would split the whole time and as you know i'm way freaking skinny haha. Here is the picture.

Anyway so then after zones conference we drove all of the Norrland zone back to the mission home, and then went tracting with them. that was pretty fun. I was with Elder Hanes- he went to my high school and graduated 1 year later. We didnt really know eachother but we knew tons of the same people so that was fun to talk about them and catch up on stuff. There is another missionary here from Alta. His name is Elder Murri.

Elder Hanes, me and Elder Murri

Ok but this is the best part about this week. On saturday, being our pday, we filmed the office intro (for you who are unfamiliar with The Office TV show better watch some - it's halarious.) Well anyway we made our own version of the intro. I'll add the final product later. It's super funny. we got all the scenes pefectly copied and some awesome stuff in it. If you've seen the office you'll love it.

Oh i forgot to tell you! I'm in a 3 comp right now. Elder Reid is my 3rd companion for this week and next week. He is going to go home so he can go to byu next semester and so he is just waiting here at the office with us. it makes things kinda weird sometimes and hard, but it is good. Elder Edmunds is awesome tho- I look up to him alot.

Oh ok one day we were suppose to meet these girls that we met the week before. Anyway they forgot about it but we were by this basketball court in this huge area and there were some teen guys just chillin by it. one guy was shooting hoops and the others were drinking and smoking. Anyway I was like hey we should go talk to them - for several reasons. 1- we have 3 of us, what else are we going to do? tracting or contacting would be way awkward! 2- we should always talk to everyone. 3- I always wanted to play basketball in a suit. So we go over there, and I said in english something like hey do you guys want to play some ball, I'm from the states. So we played a quick game, swedes are pretty wimpy athletes but they were pretty good and it was lots of fun. But then after we just talked with them for 2 hours about everything. life, the states, sweden, and most importantly we talked quite a bit about the gospel. they were all drunk, but hopefully they remember some of it. it was pretty intersting to hear what they said. They asked us if we wanted to drink and smoke and we said no, we dont do that and guess what! They said "oh you guys are smart, I wish i never started." Ok we get answers like that sometime =not too impressive, but this is what really impressed me. They straight up asked what we thought about sex before marriage, and I told them and they were like "wow thats actually really cool." I was pretty shocked. Then they were said stuff about not getting STDs and stuff. Anyway I thought it was pretty cool. We did alot of missionary work by just playing basketball with 10 teens. ok they were between 18-24 or something, but it was really good.

Well thats about it! Oh this week we are only going to listen to christmas music. I'm not really sure why, or how long it is going to last but it will be fun!

Have a great week!

Take care,

ÄA

Ok this is a picture of the remainders of our awesome district. Elder Stocks, Balhorn, Adamson and Langston. Elder Dixon is in Utby and Elder Czuba is home.

August 1st 2009

This week I honestly don't have too much exciting stuff to report- so it'll be quick.

Ok now I'm thinking of more interesting things I've done the past week.

Well we had a very successful day with numbers actually! 3 new investigators!! and 7 total teaches and 2 member teaches! pretty impressive for the office AND we did about 20 hrs of service work this week-- I'll explain that later.

Well we went by this tänkbara undersökare - I honestly cannot think of what that is in english. Well a maybe investigator, oh a potential investigator. Well anyway we went by one of those to see if she was intersted -- she wasnt home. So we went trackting for a little bit - that was super boring - so then we just went contacting and walking around Täby Centrum.
Anyway it was my comps turn and I saw this girl walking up and so I told him to talk to her and so he did and she was like ok cool - well can we sit on a bench or something? uh... yeah! thats cool. So we talked to her for a little bit and then she said her friend is coming so we talked to her too. It was pretty cool. her friend has read the bible 3 times! Quite unbelievable for a swedish girl. Thats definately more times then i've read the whole bible. Well anyway it went good- the believe in something, but are not really sure what (thats how most Swedes are. On the surface they say they are athiest, but if you talk to them they usually admit that somewhere they atleast have a desire to believe.) Well the both committed to read and pray! It was pretty awesome. So yep we are going to meet them tomorrow and we'll see how it goes.

oh we got sucked into a pretty crazy service project. I'm still not sure what i think about it. It was good and all but i feel like we just kinda got owned. this member from Handen called and told us she needed Rida- our big blue van. Ok so... yeah? well in the end we ended up driving all over stockholm moving this girls stuff that sounded like it wasnt too urgent - she just wanted to get it done before her trip to spain. well whatever. It was good tho. it just seriously took 8 hours.

For pday we went to Ikea again. I thought I promised last time to never go there. Haha somehow I ended up in the maze again. Well it was good tho.

Ok i feel like i'm just complaining about all the stupid stuff that happened every week. Haha I guess that happens - but to make up for it I'll share a pretty cool story.

A few weeks ago we were trackting and we meet this woman named Frida- she is way cool but didnt have time right then. Then we went back like 4 times and finally this week when she opened she said ok this time you guys can come in! It was pretty cool. She was awsome - willing to listen but also explained her beliefs. Like alot of people she just believes that God is a energy kinda like love. It was pretty respectable and she was competely cool with what we believed and willing to test it out a little! So we are going back not this week, but the next one.

Ok here is another not so positive story that just happened a few hours ago. So honestly if you want here is a good place to pretend I'm done!

Anyway, we were trackting in nice neigborhoods and this guy was outside of his house and we started talking to him and he was one of the strongest athiest i've ever meet. And he was pretty smart - just wouldnt listen at all to what we said for the most part. He had the standard athiest ideas - such as the religions are to blame for everything bad in the world, and that God is just in our minds. So we tried to explain but it didnt go so good. He had some crazy concepts. It was really sad to see that because he had absolutely no faith in a god (plenty of faith in science) he valued life at almost nothing. It was really sad. It just felt weird. I'm just going to be honest and not glorify my mission and the people here and tell you what he really said. He said that once he gets too old he is just going to commit suicide. Ok if you have absolutely no hope in the existance of a god i guess that kinda makes sense - but this was the saddest part - my companion said that before he kills himself would he just pray and ask god if he exists just to try it. He said he wouldn't, absolutely not, because of the principle of the thing. It blew my mind that we just had that conversation.

BUT he did have some good things to say. He said that out of all of the religions (he was very familiar with ours and many others) he said that ours was "one of the best" he had seen. Budha was the best - but us mormons he thought actually stood up for what we believe and actually followed it. It was kinda intersting.

This wasnt your ordenary man- he could communicate in around 15 languages - completely fluient in english and swedish of course, but said he is still learning languages. He is working on spanish right now.

Yep that is whats going on right now in Sweden! I'm pretty excited about our 3 new investigators - that will be awesome! I've felt lately that we dont teach near enough here in the office, so it will be good to start teaching more.

Anyway love you all!
Hope everyone is doing good

ÄA

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