Kära familj,
Yes. I am now a senior companion and probably will be for the rest of my mission. President Newell doesn't really like the whole senior and junior companion thing, so basically everyone who's not in training is a co-senior companion. In other words, Syster Sjöblom is still here, we're just co-senior companions. It doesn't really make a difference with us because it's not like she ever used "senior companion" to do anything. In other words, nothing's changed. We're both still in Västerhaninge. However there are rumors that the mission has been looking at a couple more apartments in the area so we might move into a 2-man instead of living with all four of us here. That would be a couple weeks away still. It's possible that the transfer was delayed because Syster Sjöblom was sick (she was definitely too sick to move) but now we'll just wait for the new missionaries to come the first week of February. One of us will probably be transferred then, and the other of us will be here for a really long time.
But enough of transfer rumors. (That's the only thing we have to entertain ourselves sometimes). Are the kids as excited to go back to school as mom is? GUESS WHAT! I ate pizza yesterday and it tasted like Cafe Rio. Best pizza ever. They do pizza a little differently here. This one had tomato sauce, cheese, red and yellow peppers, ground korv (it's like...pork I think. Kind of like hot dogs. Think Oscar Meyer truck...), mushrooms, and I think it had onions on it too. It was super good. Especially because it was fast Sunday. I also really miss Cafe Rio.
This weekend was great, especially after the holidays. I feel bad about it, but I am SO GLAD to be done with the holidays. Now we can get stuff done. I think I said on Thursday in my email that we already had two member-present lessons scheduled that night. Obviously that night was great! First Williant came and we taught him. Turns out he's from Bolivia! He's probably around 20 years old, and he's been in Sweden for 6 years so his Swedish is pretty good. Definitely better than my Spanish, so we taught in Swedish. Although I did use Spanish a few times to clarify things. Here's the really embarassing thing-we didn't have a Libro De Mormon to give to him! Luckily we had a member there who pointed out the obvious solution, that he could just download it on his phone. As missionaries we were like "oh yeah, I forgot about phones..." So she helped him get the Gospel Library app in Spanish so he can start reading. We committed him to start reading it on the train on the way home (to Ösmo) and also to come to church on Sunday where we could give him a hard copy also. He's great! Then we went home with the member for dinner. She has a less active daughter who was there with her three friends, so we taught them an introduction to the Book of Mormon. They aren't necessarily interested as of yet, but at least now they can say something about the Mormons if somebody asked. Dinner was good too, we had älg!
On Friday we had an appointment with Bash but he got called in to work. Then we had a meeting with our ward mission leader at one, and we were supposed to teach Aberash at two. Luckily Aberash rescheduled right before because our ward mission leader showed up at two o'clock on the dot. We're working on developing a new ward mission plan. It makes me pretty sad that I'd never even heard of a ward mission plan before my mission. I think it would have really helped me prepare if I'd been more involved in the missionary work at home. A lot of times when we talk to members we realize that they don't even know what their role in missionary work is, or even what missionary work is. But anyway, after we discussed ward mission plans with him, we took the train to Nynäshamn for our usual Friday night in town. We had a great lesson with Juan Carlos-what a great guy! He's still waiting to hear from Äldste Riley. I don't think we were in Nynäshamn for even a whole hour because we just taught the one lesson then hopped back on the train. We came back to Västerhaninge and taught Aberash, a sweet lady from Ethiopia who we met a couple weeks ago when we helped her find the right train. We had a great lesson with her too, and gave her a Book of Mormon in Amharic. She wants to meet again sometime this week and then we'll refer her to the Gubbängen missionaries because she doesn't live in our area.
Saturday was an amazing day. It was one of those days where we were like "Oh yeah, God's in charge of this and He's got it all under control." We were supposed to teach Sebastian that morning but he ended up having to help some friend of his. So we did family history for an hour, which I've missed these last few weeks. It's crazy how many ancestors we have. And then I think about the fact that my children will have twice as many ancestors as I do and I feel bad for them trying to do their own family history. I've been trying to combine duplicates because there are a lot of people in there who are all the same person. This week I worked on the Mowrey family. I think that was their name. I'm not even sure where I found them...I think somewhere in Grandpa Wilson's lines. After family history-ing we went down to our favorite little town of Ösmo! We dropped by Louise-no answer. Knocked on Siv's door-no answer there either. Well, shoot. Then there's always the question: so why are we here? We decided we'd drop by Therese because we haven't heard from her in a while. We knocked, she answered and invited us in. She's doing great and she loved our visit. She agreed with everything we said about prayer and about the Book of Mormon. It's just a question of getting her to actually read it. She invited us over to drop by any time (which we already invited ourselves to do anyway...) but said that she's usually home on Saturdays, so I think we'll do the same thing next week. During the closing prayer her phone started ringing, so she checked it afterward and it was Louise! (They're good friends.) We checked our phone and she'd called us too, so we called her and found out that she was home then, and she invited us over for fika. I love when we get to see Louise. She was baptized last February and she has such a strong testimony. She strengthens us more than we strengthen her. She's the best. We weren't about to leave Ösmo without trying Siv one more time and this time she was home! We had a great lesson with her too where we talked about the Book of Mormon and being patient with receiving knowledge. She gave us yummy chocolates too. And she said she would come to church on Sunday.
Well, she didn't come to church. But we can't blame her this week. There was some sort of power outage with the trains yesterday morning, so they didn't run between Västerhaninge and Nynäshamn. This was a problem because our investigators live between Västerhaninge and Nynäshamn. We called everyone but few of them answered. Louise caught the bus so she still made it, but unfortunately we didn't have any other VIPs in church yesterday. Church was really great though! I'm excited to study the Old Testament in Sunday School. I think I'm going to try and find a nicer Swedish bible, because the one they gave us in the MTC is literally a brick. I don't want to lug it to church on Sundays... In Sweden they don't have quadruple combinations like the English ones, because it's against the law to put other books in the same volume as the Bible or something. So you have to have a separate Swedish bible.
I texted Yahaira earlier to ask when she can meet. She said we can meet this week, so hopefully it all works out and nobody's sick this time... Cie-Cie hasn't been feeling well so we haven't been able to teach her. Same with Dennis. We still haven't met him because the zone leaders couldn't meet him on Friday because he was sick. So we'll see how that works out. Bash and Sebastian both called us to wish us a happy New Year last week, so at least they still like us. We're trying to meet them. Erik doesn't answer the phone but we'll probably see him on the train one of these days. Same with Petra. We haven't seen Marianne for a while either-I miss her hugs. We also have Allie, who said he should be free this week so we're going to give him a call and hopefully teach him tomorrow.
We're going to Stockholm again today so Syster Sjöblom can buy some new boots. The ones she's wearing now are super glued together. I'm not planning on buying anything. But I am excited to get your package with jerky in it! Way back when you said we wouldn't get it until after Christmas, I told Syster Sjöblom too bad we wouldn't get it until after one of us was transferred. But it's beginning to look like we'll still be together to enjoy venison jerky together. Haha. She'll be excited. She really likes venison and she says she makes a mean elk roast.
I'm glad you liked the musical numbers! I liked them too. Say hi to everyone and have a wonderful week!
Yes. I am now a senior companion and probably will be for the rest of my mission. President Newell doesn't really like the whole senior and junior companion thing, so basically everyone who's not in training is a co-senior companion. In other words, Syster Sjöblom is still here, we're just co-senior companions. It doesn't really make a difference with us because it's not like she ever used "senior companion" to do anything. In other words, nothing's changed. We're both still in Västerhaninge. However there are rumors that the mission has been looking at a couple more apartments in the area so we might move into a 2-man instead of living with all four of us here. That would be a couple weeks away still. It's possible that the transfer was delayed because Syster Sjöblom was sick (she was definitely too sick to move) but now we'll just wait for the new missionaries to come the first week of February. One of us will probably be transferred then, and the other of us will be here for a really long time.
But enough of transfer rumors. (That's the only thing we have to entertain ourselves sometimes). Are the kids as excited to go back to school as mom is? GUESS WHAT! I ate pizza yesterday and it tasted like Cafe Rio. Best pizza ever. They do pizza a little differently here. This one had tomato sauce, cheese, red and yellow peppers, ground korv (it's like...pork I think. Kind of like hot dogs. Think Oscar Meyer truck...), mushrooms, and I think it had onions on it too. It was super good. Especially because it was fast Sunday. I also really miss Cafe Rio.
This weekend was great, especially after the holidays. I feel bad about it, but I am SO GLAD to be done with the holidays. Now we can get stuff done. I think I said on Thursday in my email that we already had two member-present lessons scheduled that night. Obviously that night was great! First Williant came and we taught him. Turns out he's from Bolivia! He's probably around 20 years old, and he's been in Sweden for 6 years so his Swedish is pretty good. Definitely better than my Spanish, so we taught in Swedish. Although I did use Spanish a few times to clarify things. Here's the really embarassing thing-we didn't have a Libro De Mormon to give to him! Luckily we had a member there who pointed out the obvious solution, that he could just download it on his phone. As missionaries we were like "oh yeah, I forgot about phones..." So she helped him get the Gospel Library app in Spanish so he can start reading. We committed him to start reading it on the train on the way home (to Ösmo) and also to come to church on Sunday where we could give him a hard copy also. He's great! Then we went home with the member for dinner. She has a less active daughter who was there with her three friends, so we taught them an introduction to the Book of Mormon. They aren't necessarily interested as of yet, but at least now they can say something about the Mormons if somebody asked. Dinner was good too, we had älg!
On Friday we had an appointment with Bash but he got called in to work. Then we had a meeting with our ward mission leader at one, and we were supposed to teach Aberash at two. Luckily Aberash rescheduled right before because our ward mission leader showed up at two o'clock on the dot. We're working on developing a new ward mission plan. It makes me pretty sad that I'd never even heard of a ward mission plan before my mission. I think it would have really helped me prepare if I'd been more involved in the missionary work at home. A lot of times when we talk to members we realize that they don't even know what their role in missionary work is, or even what missionary work is. But anyway, after we discussed ward mission plans with him, we took the train to Nynäshamn for our usual Friday night in town. We had a great lesson with Juan Carlos-what a great guy! He's still waiting to hear from Äldste Riley. I don't think we were in Nynäshamn for even a whole hour because we just taught the one lesson then hopped back on the train. We came back to Västerhaninge and taught Aberash, a sweet lady from Ethiopia who we met a couple weeks ago when we helped her find the right train. We had a great lesson with her too, and gave her a Book of Mormon in Amharic. She wants to meet again sometime this week and then we'll refer her to the Gubbängen missionaries because she doesn't live in our area.
Saturday was an amazing day. It was one of those days where we were like "Oh yeah, God's in charge of this and He's got it all under control." We were supposed to teach Sebastian that morning but he ended up having to help some friend of his. So we did family history for an hour, which I've missed these last few weeks. It's crazy how many ancestors we have. And then I think about the fact that my children will have twice as many ancestors as I do and I feel bad for them trying to do their own family history. I've been trying to combine duplicates because there are a lot of people in there who are all the same person. This week I worked on the Mowrey family. I think that was their name. I'm not even sure where I found them...I think somewhere in Grandpa Wilson's lines. After family history-ing we went down to our favorite little town of Ösmo! We dropped by Louise-no answer. Knocked on Siv's door-no answer there either. Well, shoot. Then there's always the question: so why are we here? We decided we'd drop by Therese because we haven't heard from her in a while. We knocked, she answered and invited us in. She's doing great and she loved our visit. She agreed with everything we said about prayer and about the Book of Mormon. It's just a question of getting her to actually read it. She invited us over to drop by any time (which we already invited ourselves to do anyway...) but said that she's usually home on Saturdays, so I think we'll do the same thing next week. During the closing prayer her phone started ringing, so she checked it afterward and it was Louise! (They're good friends.) We checked our phone and she'd called us too, so we called her and found out that she was home then, and she invited us over for fika. I love when we get to see Louise. She was baptized last February and she has such a strong testimony. She strengthens us more than we strengthen her. She's the best. We weren't about to leave Ösmo without trying Siv one more time and this time she was home! We had a great lesson with her too where we talked about the Book of Mormon and being patient with receiving knowledge. She gave us yummy chocolates too. And she said she would come to church on Sunday.
Well, she didn't come to church. But we can't blame her this week. There was some sort of power outage with the trains yesterday morning, so they didn't run between Västerhaninge and Nynäshamn. This was a problem because our investigators live between Västerhaninge and Nynäshamn. We called everyone but few of them answered. Louise caught the bus so she still made it, but unfortunately we didn't have any other VIPs in church yesterday. Church was really great though! I'm excited to study the Old Testament in Sunday School. I think I'm going to try and find a nicer Swedish bible, because the one they gave us in the MTC is literally a brick. I don't want to lug it to church on Sundays... In Sweden they don't have quadruple combinations like the English ones, because it's against the law to put other books in the same volume as the Bible or something. So you have to have a separate Swedish bible.
I texted Yahaira earlier to ask when she can meet. She said we can meet this week, so hopefully it all works out and nobody's sick this time... Cie-Cie hasn't been feeling well so we haven't been able to teach her. Same with Dennis. We still haven't met him because the zone leaders couldn't meet him on Friday because he was sick. So we'll see how that works out. Bash and Sebastian both called us to wish us a happy New Year last week, so at least they still like us. We're trying to meet them. Erik doesn't answer the phone but we'll probably see him on the train one of these days. Same with Petra. We haven't seen Marianne for a while either-I miss her hugs. We also have Allie, who said he should be free this week so we're going to give him a call and hopefully teach him tomorrow.
We're going to Stockholm again today so Syster Sjöblom can buy some new boots. The ones she's wearing now are super glued together. I'm not planning on buying anything. But I am excited to get your package with jerky in it! Way back when you said we wouldn't get it until after Christmas, I told Syster Sjöblom too bad we wouldn't get it until after one of us was transferred. But it's beginning to look like we'll still be together to enjoy venison jerky together. Haha. She'll be excited. She really likes venison and she says she makes a mean elk roast.
I'm glad you liked the musical numbers! I liked them too. Say hi to everyone and have a wonderful week!
Love, Delaney
