I can't believe it, Matty's married! Well I guess I can believe it because there's pictures. Thanks for sending pictures! It looks like everything turned out beautiful. I'm glad I could be in at least a few pictures. Matty looks really happy. I think Taryn looks happy too but you didn't send any real pictures of her. It also looks like you had fun in Vegas. It looks like a great weekend in general. I can't wait to hear all the details!
Monday turned out to be a great birthday. We ate cake and played with balloons. The weather was beautiful. Until at about 5:00 it started pouring rain. But we were already inside with our groceries and everything so it was fine. I didn't get your package until Tuesday, but I love the necklace and the CTR ring! I wore my new necklace to sisters training on Thursday and a lot of people commented on it. Also when we were folding laundry this morning Syster Byrd picked up one of the wonder tees and said "This must be your new one, it's still white!" Thank you for sending it all!
Monday night we taught Sajjad, that guy that came to church last week. He's pretty Muslim and invited us to read the Koran. But he said he'll give the Book of Mormon a shot. We haven't been able to get in touch with him since then. After that we taught Rida. She had a lot of questions about really little things but she was really mad about something and kept shooting these questions at us and not letting us say anything. It was so frustrating. We're not exactly sure what her actual concern is because we couldn't get past why the Book of Mormon wasn't originally written in Arabic or Hebrew.
Tuesday we gave a woman named Maria a tour of the church. She lives across the street from the church so she saw it go through remodeling and wanted to see how it turned out. It actually turned out really well. (The tour, not the remodel. Well, that turned out well too.) She said maybe she and her boyfriend will come to church sometime. It shouldn't be too much of a hassle to get them there since they live right across the street.
On Wednesday we taught Daniel (who likes to speak English) and he brought a friend with him! He looked so happy and proud the whole time we were talking to his friend. The Spirit works in mysterious ways, but I've definitely seen it influencing him. Slowly but surely. After that we got divine help in making a delicious potato soup in 45 minutes to take to Anna. She's going through tough times so we asked if we could bring her dinner. It made her day and she brightened up so much! And we got to teach her and she's super positive just hard to meet with. It was a miracle.
Thursday we had a sisters training meeting. It's basically like a zone conference only for sisters. They basically talked about how to stay strong the rest of our lives. I don't know if other missions even have sister trainings, but I think Syster Newell has decided that as long as we're here on missions, we're going to get the best life training possible. I love sister trainings. It was all the sisters in the South of Sweden, so I got to see Syster Sjöblom again! For possibly the last time before she goes home in July. (By the way, her farewell will be the Sunday right after she gets home, so July 27th or something. In case you're wondering.) We came home and we'd planned to go by a less active way out in the boonies but we missed our train, so we taught a girl on the street and then we went to some closer boonies to drop by a different less active.
On Friday we tried to get some family history help from Irma. Unfortunately our Danish ancestry got her a little stumped, but she promised she'll find out how to find people in Denmark and get back to me. Then we taught Ulrika an dhad dinner with the Engelbrektssons, a super awesome family in the ward.
We finally got to teach Masoume again on Saturday. It's been almost two weeks since we taught her. We found out that she wouldn't let us come over because of some trouble she'd been having with her boyfriend... She's still drinking coffee and smoking so she won't be baptized this weekend. But she still likes us and she's still reading the Book of Mormon. She's going slowly but surely forward.
Yesterday was Mother's Day here in Sweden. Dad, the primary kids DID sing "I Often Go Walking!" I was so excited when they started singing it. In Swedish it's called something like "I Pick Flowers." It was really cute. The Borås ward actually has a pretty big primary, about 25 kids or so. Masoume didn't come to church, but we did have an investigator there! There's this part member family we've been trying to work with, but the kids have been pretty uninterested every time we've been over there. But yesterday one of them was in church! He got up that morning and told his mom he was coming to church for Mother's Day! The YSAs were really good at talking to him and he even commented in Sunday School a few times. After church we were invited to dinner with a great family. Two of their kids are getting married this summer. They were sad that I missed Matt's wedding. Then they asked if we were going to go by this less active member who lives by them. We didn't know there was one, but they have good contact with her so the mom came with us and we met her and it went super well! I don't know why we haven't heard of her before but it was the perfect first contact to work on getting her back to church.
It's been super hot this week. In the 80's and sunny. And we've had to start using the curtains on our window because it doesn't get dark at night anymore. The curtains are lined with blankets to block out the sun. Summer is going to be so great!
I hope you all have an amazing week! Jag älskar er!
Love, Delaney
Princess Tarta (Traditional Swedish birthday cake)
Like shortcake with jam between the layers and lots of whipped cream and vanilla sauce, topped with green sugar paste [like fondant only better]. She doesn't know why, but it's always green.
Birthday balloons
