September 29, 2014

Käre Familj,

Hello from Norrköping! I couldn't decide what to call it because this week's been cold and rainy, but also a little warm sunny. The only thing that's been consistent is windy.

It's been a good week! We've had a lot to do and been able to meet with a lot of people. Last week for P-Day we went to Ikea in Linköping and got meatballs for lunch. Do they have meatballs at Ikea in America? Then we went back to the Linköping chapel and played Uno with all the elders. I got third place. We came back to Norrköping for dinner with Ann-Sofi.

Pontus came to Institute on Tuesday and liked it. We have a really good institute teacher in our ward, so it's always really good. We're trying to get the rest of the YSA new converts to come on Tuesday nights too. They were doing well during the summer, but now that school started again they're all pretty busy. After institute we were going to visit Rosalia, a Spanish speaking woman we contacted a while ago, but she wasn't home. So after teaching the Restoration to a random guy named Sammi on the street, we stopped by Judy to say hi and encourage her to come to church. (That's kind of been the theme this week...get people to church.)

On Wednesday morning we taught our favorite Norrköping grandmas, Lena and Kirsi. Then that night we met Pontus at the library. He was able to borrow an iPad from the library so he could look up the scriptures with us online and take notes. I think that really helped him.

Thursday we spent the whole day in Linköping. First we had district meeting there, which was really good. We talked about how God gives us everything we have that's exciting, and everything that we love. So instead of thinking God is boring, we need to remember that He gave us all the fun things we do, too! We stuck around Linköping and dropped by some less active women in their branch, because we didn't have enough time to go back to Norrköping before we would have had to turn around and come back, because that evening we had a lesson with Soran and his wife Kobra, who live in a little town quite a ways outside of Linköping. (Thus, we didn't bother coming back only to turn around again.) Soran was baptized here in Norrköping about a year ago, and his wife Kobra came to Sweden a few months later. They were lost for a while but a couple weeks ago we got a call from the member who baptized Soran (he lives in Germany) saying he wants contact with the church again. The bishop and Linköping elders went out there to meet him, and he said he wants sisters to teach his wife since he had such a good experience with sisters the first time. So we got to go out there and meet them on Thursday and they are awesome people! Kobra said that since her husband was baptized, and her two sons became Christian in Iran, she's the only one still searching. I love it when people recognize they're searching, because it makes them willing to actually search! The lesson went really well with them, and we had some awesome Persian translators. The Spirit was very powerful there.

I know I always skip Friday but not a lot happens on Fridays... We did teach Cecilia who actually said yes, she would come to church, instead of her usual maybe. So that was exciting. We talked to a lot of people and got a lot of harsh (and slightly amusing) rejections all in a row. We got back to the apartment for weekly planning before the drunkards came out.

Saturday we spent another good chunk of time tracting. One man wished us good luck and a very nice day. That was probably the most positive door. Nobody was really rude, so it was a successful tracting stund. President Hinckley knew what he was talking about when he said there are better ways to do missionary work, but it's all we have left to do, so we have to do something to try and find people. Saturday afternoon we had an appointment scheduled with a guy named Mishel. I had little faith that he would show up considering how many people we've scheduled here who never showed up, but sure enough, he came to the church right on time. He's from Syria and actually knows Nabil and Judy. We found out quickly that he didn't speak a whole lot of English, but luckily we had the Restoration movie and a Book of Mormon in Arabic. So we watched the movie and before we could ask he told us he'll read the book. On the way out he asked the usual "are you Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant?" question. When we said none of the above he smiled and said "oh, you're better!" In other words, we're not going to have to tackle the whole "What's wrong with the Orthodox church" problem. We're really excited for him.

Yesterday was a really awesome day for church. Our VIPs were: Olivia, Alex (he's back in Norrköping!), Judy, Nabil, Kirsi, and Cecilia! Prossy was in Stockholm and Pontus had to go to an open house for a friend's birthday. I wish I could say it's because we worked so hard to get all those people there, but a big part of why so many came is because Syster Anderson, who I replaced when I came to Norrköping, was back with her parents. It was awesome to see the chapel so full! I gave a talk about how we can strengthen our faith. I talked about the "Primary answers": pray, read the scriptures, and come to church. (I thought it was interesting that's what the bishopric talked about in your ward. Could it be that these things are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT?!?!) I also played the hymns in Sacrament meeting. I got to choose them, but I don't remember which numbers they were so I don't know what they added to.

I can't believe Colton is home from his mission! It's weird that there are starting to be more homecomings than farewells. Sounds like you had a busy Sunday. Those are the best kind!

We will watch General Conference at the church next weekend. I think they'll show it in Swedish and English. We'll probably watch it in English since hopefully we'll have our new converts with us. They show the womens' meeting first, and then we'll watch the Saturday Morning session live at 6:00 PM. On Sunday they show Priesthood from 10-12, Saturday Afternoon from 2-4, and then we watch Sunday Morning live again at 6. We'll have to watch the Sunday Afternoon session on our own time sometime. I never actually got to watch the Sunday Afternoon session last conference. I had to read the talks in the Liahona instead. But now that we live so close to the church, we'll probably be able to watch the last session at the church sometime during the week. I'm really excited for conference! We've been trying to decide if President Uchtdorf will speak in German. And there's always the semi-annual question: how many of the talks will be about MEMBER MISSIONARY WORK? The number gets higher and higher every time!

The Sweden trip is going to be fun! As long as we get to visit all my areas in Sweden, it will be great. I think it would be fun to cruise around the Baltic too. Keep in mind that June 6th is Sweden National Day, so that would be a fun day to be in Sweden, and there's also Midsummer on June 21st. That would also be a really awesome day to be in Sweden. Either of those days we could go to a ward party. 

President called earlier today to ask how Syster Austin's training is going. I bragged like a proud mother. :) Her Swedish is improving really well. Yesterday I was playing prelude in Sacrament and I looked down and she was just chatting away in Swedish with a member. I told President she would be a competent trainer. She kind of got mad at me for that, but it's the truth!

Mayda is basically progressing, because she's been reading and is really trying to find out if it's true. We just can't count her as progressing just yet because she hasn't come to church yet. I think Kobra and Mishel will be progressing soon too. Also Mona is supposed to be out of the hospital this week, so hopefully we can meet her and start teaching her!

Have a great week everyone! Jag älskar er!

Love, Delaney

September 22, 2014

Käre Familj,

Hello from cold, rainy Sweden! Sweden took "first day of autumn" seriously yesterday with lots of rain and wind. Also I started noticing that a lot of leaves have already fallen. Are the leaves changing in Utah yet?

The temple dedication sounds cool. When Elder Bednar was here last week he told us he was going back to Salt Lake in time for that. He toured Germany and all of Scandinavia and I think a few other countries while he was in Europe. It sounded pretty hectic.

Thanks for keeping me updated on mountain biking and scouting and everything else going on at home. It sounds like a fun time! Especially homecoming. I liked the picture mom sent. It sounds like it was a really fun day!

Our week has been good in little old Norrköping. Monday turned out to be a pretty good P-Day. The elders made pretzel bites for Syster Austin. She was really surprised. We played table hockey. It's like foosball only hockey. I scored some goals. But my team still lost. We had fun though.

We taught Mayda again on Tuesday. It's always fun to teach her because she's really open. She read the first four chapters of the Book of Mormon. I think she liked it but she had a lot of questions. Where did the brass plates come from? When did Laban come into the picture? How is he related to Lehi? Why weren't there more copies of the brass plates? We tried to point out the doctrines, like "look at the faith of Nephi as he goes to do this really hard task but puts his trust in the Lord!" We're getting there. Hopefully as she keeps reading she'll feel the Spirit and be able to accept that it's the word of God. It was kind of frustrating because she was like "Well why couldn't God just give the Bible to the people on the American continent?" HE DID, IT'S CALLED THE BOOK OF MORMON. We can't figure out any clearer way to explain it.

Wednesday we had zone training in Södertälje. Our zone is giant now that we went down to only 5 zones. The zone leaders did a good job. We took a "train ride," stopping at obedience and faith until we got to a mountain. Then we talked about the mountains in our lives and how we overcome them. All really spiritual and stuff. Then we hiked up to the top of a mountain (well, the closest thing you can get to a mountain in Sweden) and ate lunch up there. It was a nice view.

Thursday we did an interview with some students who are doing a project on Mormons. They were especially interested in Family Search. And they thought we don't celebrate birthdays. I don't understand why everybody thinks that. It was pretty cool to be able to just sit down and explain our faith and our values. I hope they get a good grade on their project. We invited them to come to church but they didn't. Then on Thursday night we met with Pontus. He's been having a hard time recently so he was glad to meet with us. We had a really spiritual lesson with him addressing his concerns. It was one of those lessons where I can't tell you what I said or why, because it was all the Spirit saying what he needed. There was one point where I was sharing a story about an investigator who ran into anti material and dropped off the face of the planet. In my head I was thinking "why on earth am I sharing this with Pontus right now?" but it felt right, so I continued. After I finished he said "You're right, it is very good that I got baptized. Thank you for sharing that story." I'm still not quite sure how it connects, but he gets it, and that's good enough for me.

The weekend was a little rough and we didn't get many opportunities to teach, try as we might. We spent a solid three hours on Thursday tracting. Nothing. Friday we talked to everyone we could find. Nothing. Saturday we called everyone to get them to church. Nothing. We did visit the Dolmayas on Saturday night and they're doing well. We also visited Lisabeth and she was very worried that I would transfer. (Transfer calls were on Saturday. We didn't get a call.) It's good to know that they want me to stay!

Our VIPs yesterday were Olivia, Nabil, and Pontus. No investigators or less actives came. Neither did Judy or Prossy. That was a bummer. We're going to go Abinadi on them this week and get them to come.

Transfer rumors are that I'll most likely leave Norrköping in the middle of October and go to my dying area. Weird! Syster Byrd is leaving Borås this week and going to Uppsala to be a sister training leader. Syster Miller goes home October 16th. I don't think you'll be able to go to her homecoming because she's from Georgia.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! Jag älskar er!

Love, Delaney

 

The view from "the mountain"

The Smith's and The Miller's

all in the same district

 

September 15, 2014

Käre Familj,

There's a hundred and six days left of my mission

And school comes along just to end it!

So the obvious problem when you're in this position

Is finding a good way to spend it...

Like maybe:

Building up Zion

By strengthening members

And helping testimonies formin'.

Discovering families that want to be sealed,

And giving away Books of Mormon!

Planning baptisms,

Using the gift of tongues,

And knocking on doors in the rain!

Setting up goals and plans,

Contacting Syrians,

And driving the Elders insane!

As you can see there's a whole lot of work to do,

But miracles haven't ceased!

All this and more is gonna be in store

Before I get released!

All this and more is already in store

Before I get released!

I've been waiting months to be at this point in my mission so I could write this song. It's just too bad P-Day isn't on Wednesday when there are 104 days left. While I was coming up with the song Syster Austin said "Whoa...you only have a summer vacation left." That is not long enough!

Things are going well here in little old Norrköping! It's funny because Norrköping is the biggest city I've served in, but it's the smallest area (the area split is totally unequal) and the smallest ward. And it's not even that big of a city, or that small of a ward. I'm just a little city, big ward kind of missionary I guess.

One of the exciting things that happened on Tuesday was, I found a family! Of Swedes! Granted, they lived in the 1800s. Remember how Launa is letting me help her with her Swedish family history work? Well, on Tuesday I found her ancestor's whole family in a church book, so I found his three siblings and his parents. Is that cool or what?! It came with about the same amount of excitement as finding a family to teach. Family History in Sweden is really awesome because they took very detailed records. It's just sometimes hard to read.

Also on Tuesday we taught Mayda again. She's really funny, and I think she's more open than she lets on. She has a bunch of questions, especially how the Bible and Book of Mormon go together, but she seems to accept our answers. At least she accepts that it's something worth thinking about. She might be a tough one, but she's really close to the Spirit, so I have high hopes for her!

Tuesday night we got to attend a broadcast for all the women in Europe. Elder and Sister Bednar talked, as well as Elder and Sister Teixeira and Elder and Sister Kearon from Europe's Area Presidency. They showed it in the Norrköping chapel for us. It was really inspiring, especially to see what they said specifically to women in Europe.

The real highlight of the week was on Thursday when we went up to Stockholm for the conference with Elder Bednar. The Kearons were there too. They were all very inspiring to listen to, and I learned so much. I learned a lot from the way Elder Bednar taught us. He didn't just stand up there and lecture for hours. He led a discussion with all of us missionaries. First we discussed the talks that he asked us to read in advance. Then we discussed what we were noticing about the pattern of discussion he was using. So he taught us how to teach by the way he taught us how to teach. Then he opened it up for questions. It was just awesome. So much inspiration. So many ways I can be a better missionary and teacher.

That night when we were back in Norrköping with contacted a girl and her mom. They were from Serbia and the girl knew Swedish and translated for her mom. We told them who we were and that our church was just down the street and they asked if they could come see it. So we gave them a tour of the church and also happened to have the Restoration film with us in Serbian, so we watched that with them. They seemed pretty interested in it and said they'd come back on Saturday for a Serbian Book of Mormon, but they didn't. It was a cool experience though.

Saturday was Syster Austin's 21st birthday. She's officially old enough to be a real sister missionary! We made pizza on Friday night to celebrate. Then on Saturday we had lunch at Taco Bar (the best tacos I've had in Sweden for sure), and everyone cancelled on us or just didn't show up. So...that was a bummer of a birthday. But we were tracting that night and these two little girls were following us around watching us, so we got them to sing Happy Birthday in Swedish. (Ja må hon leva.) Then we came home and had Princess Tårta that we bought from the grocery store. And I wrapped the packages that her family sent. Later today we're going to have a mini birthday party for her and Äldste Miller, whose birthday was also on Saturday. We made yummy bars for Äldste Miller (they turned out really well, I think!) and the elders are going to bring a surprise treat for Syster Austin too.

Yesterday our VIPs were Olivia and Lisabeth (even though she's active now.) Olivia's doing great. We hadn't seen her since church last week but she said school's going well. We're only going to meet her on Sundays now because her mom wants her to focus on school during the week and help at home on Saturdays. If it was any new convert other than Olivia, I might worry, but Olivia is rock solid.

Pontus is back from Poland and he had a great time there. He went to church there on Sunday and he went to a single adults activity as well. He's also reading Preach My Gospel and he loves it. He wasn't at church yesterday though. Not sure why.

If you extend the kitchen to the east, what are you going to do with the crabapple tree? Can you replant it somewhere else?

I haven't met or heard of the Östheds. You only really meet the senior couples if you serve with them.

Francois didn't come to church yesterday. He said he would but didn't show up. Kind of like all the other lessons we tried to plan with him. I think he might be less busy now that elections are over. Mona called us to let us know she would be in the hospital until the beginning of October. :( But she still wants to meet after that! We passed Lyudmylo off to the elders since she's out in Nyköping which is in their area, and we don't want to go out there. She's willing to meet at the train station so they don't even need to worry about finding someone to come to her house with them.

Ultimate Mountain Biking sounds fun but hard and dangerous. I think we'll skip that idea for a sport this P-Day. I think we're going to play Kubb if we can find the set.

Thanks for the updates, even if you think you had a boring week! Have a wonderful week this week too! Jag älskar er!

Love, Delaney

September 8, 2014

Käre Familj,

Hi! Thanks for the hunting recap. That's cool that Cody got a shot at a deer! How did the deer end up there, did it just walk out in front of him? We got a new missionary in Norrköping this week, Äldste Trotter, and he hunts too. Don't worry, we already talked hunting. He's from Salem (UT) and likes to hunt mule deer behind his house but hasn't hit any. He did get a big elk (320-330) up Spanish Fork canyon.

Good job mountain biking, Peyton! The pictures look really cool. I hope it was fun and not just a lot of hard work. We haven't used the bikes much lately because the spårvagns started going much more often after summer ended, so now we can get places faster.

I'm going to cut to the best part of the week, which was Olivia's baptism on Saturday! The veckoskörden said it would be on Sunday because when we called and told the zone leaders about getting the date, we told them in Swedish what the date was. And I guess their Swedish isn't quite as good? It's said the seventh the whole time, but it was really always meant to be the sixth. The baptism was great. We spent all week planning and preparing for it. First we called every priesthood holder and their dog to find someone to baptize her. It seemed that everyone who knew they could come had some physical limitation that prevented them from performing a baptism (even the elders!) and everyone else couldn't commit to coming. When we did finally find someone, he got sick. She originally asked for Bishop to baptize her, but there was a conference in Denmark this weekend for all the bishops and stake presidents in Scandinavia. So the only Priesthood holder she even knew was out of town. She knows all the young women, but that didn't really help this situation. But we finally found someone who could do it. We had everything ready on Saturday and lots of members were starting to show up, we were just missing Olivia. She had texted us earlier that day to ask when she should come and we told her 5:30. 5:30 came, then 5:45, and around 5:50 we were starting to get really worried. Finally at 5:55 she came hurrying into the church. I should point out that usually Olivia's there sitting in the chapel about 20 minutes before church even starts. So this was uncommon for her. But she did come, and that's the important thing. She was so excited! The service went really well. Prossy gave a talk about baptism, then I gave a talk about the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Then the young women sang a musical number. The baptism itself went great. I was really glad we ended up with Brother Vuorinen to perform the baptism. For some reason this ward always forgets witnesses, but the ward mission leader, Björn, and Äldste Miller remembered just in time to get up to the font and witness it. Then we came back to the chapel, she was welcomed into the ward, and we had a lot of yummy refreshments. The young women made kladdkaka, coocies, and apple cake, and we made oatmeal cookies. The elders brought carrots. Two of Prossy's friends came to the baptism as well, and they really liked it. The elders in Linköping have started working with one of them and she's really positive. The Norrköping elders also had an investigator there. Kirsi came and she was so sweet and nice to Olivia and even brought her a gift. And Maria Kojo was there with her (less active) daughter Amanda. And a lot of other ward members-she had so much support! It was a wonderful baptism. And about time.

Yesterday was her confirmation. It was also a bit of a nail-biter because Olivia didn't come until the second verse of the Sacrament Hymn. But she was there, and Äldste Lindquist confirmed her and she was feeling great! The young women are going to have their New Beginnings thing in a few weeks to welcome Olivia as their one and only Laurel. We're going to try to get her mom to come, but she'll probably be either working or tired as usual. But we're trying!

Our other VIP in church yesterday was this investigator named Francois. We've been trying to meet with him for a while now but he always cancels on us. But on Saturday when he canceled on us we invited him to come to church, and he showed up! We taught him the Restoration in Sunday School and when we were talking about prophets he asked "So who's the prophet now?" He seems pretty open and ready to act, it's just a question of meeting with him... But it was nice to have an investigator in church still. We were worried that now that Olivia's baptized, we'll never have investigators in sacrament meeting again!

We also taught a woman named Lyudmylo this week. She's from Ukraine and she lives out in Nyköping, which is quite a ways outside of Norrköping. She was actually a member referral from a member who lives out on Gotland. They've never actually met in person, but they play those online word games together and started talking about families and then about the church. There are missionary opportunities in the most random places! They're everywhere!

We haven't met with Mona again yet. She's supposed to be in the hospital until tomorrow. But she told us to make sure and give her a call tomorrow because she still wants to keep meeting! So we're excited and hoping she feels better soon. 

Pontus is supposed to be back from Poland but we haven't heard anything from him yet. He wasn't in church yesterday but I can imagine he wanted to take a little rest after his trip. He's not from Poland, he's Swedish, but he likes Poland. He's been there once before and said it was a really good experience, so he wanted to go back. He's a daredevil in his own way because he wanted to travel by himself to Poland for a week basically just to see how well he could handle everything. We're really hoping everything went okay, and we're glad he's got the gift of the Holy Ghost now to help him on his way. I'm sure we'll see him again soon.

We haven't seen Mayda again since we last taught her a week ago Sunday. We were supposed to meet her tonight but she texted us this morning and rescheduled to tomorrow. I think it will go well, though. I studied really hard this morning to be able to address her question about how Joseph Smith could see God. Good thing the Bible has so many other examples of people seeing God. I finally understand now why Acts 7:55-56 is scripture mastery. I'm starting to understand about all the Scripture Mastery scriptures now. They are SO helpful in missionary work!

The sun will go down at 7:35 tonight. It's weird that it gets dark now. We came out of a lesson last night around 8:45 and I was like "Oh no, we must be so late!" But we got in the door right at 9:00. The dark just makes it seem later than it is. I've also forgotten how different it is contacting people in the dark. You feel much more creepy...but also I think people listen more often after dark. Don't ask me why-maybe they don't see our name tags. Or they can tell this really is something important and worth stopping for. We had quite a few positive contacts last night on our way home. It does get a little chilly when the sun goes down though, but everyone's telling us it's uncharacteristically warm for September. Also it's apple season, so those delicious Swedish apples are everywhere again! (I'm actually eating one right now!)

On Thursday we have a special zone conference where Elder Bednar will be speaking. We're all a little scared he's going to cry repentance...but I'm sure it will be really good!

Syster Austin and I are wiped out after the baptism, so we're taking it easy this P-Day. I have to get a new pencil, and we need to get reflectors since it gets dark now, but that's about the only thing on our agenda for the day.

Thanks for all the updates. Have a wonderful week everyone! Jag älskar er!

Love, Delaney

 

Delaney, Olivia, Syster Austin

Olivia's baptism

 

Delaney golfed only 8 over par which was 2nd place.

  She says she's apparently a better golfer than bowler :)

 

Fun mini golfing on p-day with the district.

 

September 1, 2014

Käre familj,

Hello! Happy Labor Day! Sounds like you're having a fun Labor Day weekend at the cabin! Is it really that cold? I'm glad you love me enough to sit in the cold four wheeler on top of the mountain just to send me an email. :) And I can't believe you took down the tree in the porch! Is anything going to be the same when I get back?

So, the good news is, WE GOT THE SIGNATURE! In other words, the baptism is a GO! Olivia is so excited for it, and the ward is pretty excited as well. Especially the Young Women. They've been great at fellowshipping Olivia and being her friends. They're going to sing a musical number at the baptism.

Even though P-Day last week was on Tuesday so it's been a kind of shorter week, it's still felt long. Syster Austin and I are exhausted. She sure is a hard worker! I'm glad, because it makes life more fun when you're working hard. And we've been busy with stuff to do all week! So busy that sometimes we look at our planners and there's so many lessons scheduled we hardly even have time to eat. (Don't worry, we still eat.) It would be nice if some of these people we had all these appointments with were investigators, but the members need strength too.

Tuesday evening we had our YSA activity where we made and ate a Syrian dish called "idge". I'm sure that's not how it's spelled but that's what it sounds like. It's the Arabic letter "j". It was really yummy food but I'm not sure how to describe it because we don't have Couscous in America...at least that I was aware of. It's like a cross between rice and pasta. The closest I can think of to compare it to is those little frog-eye noodles. It was that with tomato sauce and onion, cilantro, and lemon. Judy taught us how to make it. Jasmine and Pontus also came. While we were at the church we also helped Pontus check in to his flight online. He went to Poland for the week. One of the most important items on his agenda was to go to church on Sunday! I hope it worked out and he made it!

I had written in my planner on Wednesday "Today we will get permission from Olivia's mom for her to be baptized or so help me..." Good thing I didn't finish it because we actually didn't on Wednesday. Her mom called us and said she'd had to work and she was tired. I was starting to panic because we couldn't keep postponing it, but she said we could come on Thursday instead. We were on our way to the train station to see Pontus off for his trip. The longer I'm on a mission, the more I'm thankful to have a family so that when I go on a trip it's not just the missionaries from the ward there to see me off. He got safely onto his train and was on his way. Then we had some extra time since we weren't going to Olivia's anymore, and we decided it was time to find Mona. Remember Mona? She was a really positive investigator that Syster Austin and I taught her first week here. She was excited to come to church and everything, but she suddenly just disappeared and stopped answering the phone. So we took matters into our own hands. We knew she lived somewhere in Ljura close to Olivia, so we started tracting until we found her! She was happy to see us, if not a little surprised, but it turns out she's still interested in meeting! She'd just gotten really sick and she'd been in the hospital. We set up a meeting with her for tonight but she called yesterday and said she was going to the hospital again and she'll be there for the next week. But she also said "I'll call as soon as I'm out of the hospital because I really want to continue studying with you!" Before we even asked her about it. I still feel really good about her. On Wednesday night we had dinner with the Erikssons. Sister Eriksson is the Relief Society president. They have five boys and she's pregnant with twins. We had a fun lesson where we divided into two teams and each team got an object that they had to relate to the gospel. The boys had fun, even though they first wanted to relate the apple to the shape of some of the people in church... Boys will be boys.

Thursday was one of those busy pack-a-lunch kind of days, and we got a lot done. The most important part was meeting with Olivia's mom. Finally. She wanted to go over all the commandments that Olivia was committing to follow, so we explained everything to her. At first we were afraid she'd have a problem with the word of wisdom, but she thought it was fine as long as Olivia was ready to follow it. Olivia, Syster Austin and I were all ready to shout when her mom finally signed the form and it was a done deal.

Friday we met with Lisabeth, and she invited her non-member daughter and grandson along. It was really fun to meet them. Her daughter lives in Spain so they were excited to hear that I knew a little Spanish. Lisabeth was an awesome member missionary. We'd been just talking and getting to know them when she just goes "Look what I learned from the Book of Mormon this week!" and pulls out her Book of Mormon to show them. Eva, her daughter, knows all about the church. The grandson, Kristoffer, had only read one chapter of the Book of Mormon before. He said he read a chapter about llamas. We were all really confused until we figured out he'd read the story about Ammon defending the kings flocks. I guess he thought they were llamas. We started telling the story from the beginning, with Lehi and Nephi in Jerusalem, and he seemed pretty interested, especially when I said "And that's all just in the first four chapters!" They all came to church yesterday and Kristoffer got a Libro De Mormon there.

Our other VIPs in church were Olivia and Maria Kojo. She hasn't been in church recently because she's been really sick, but she's feeling a little better now. After church we had dinner with the Ståhlbergs, who just got back from a 3 week vacation in the states. They loved the whole thing but they said Zions was too hot so they didn't do any hiking there. We'd had dinner there the week before their vacation as well and I told them they had to go to Cabellas. They loved it. It was so fun to hear about everywhere they went and what they thought was weird about America. They said they went cereal shopping and everyone got to pick their own cereal, and they went to Ross in every city they came to. They even saw all three members of the First Presidency during their stay in Salt Lake!

After dinner, we went to visit a woman named Mayda. She was a mormon.org referral, and she's learned a little about the church online and asked for a missionary visit to learn more. She's a really sweet girl from Syria. It was a little hard to teach her because she really knows her Bible, but she seems really sincere and said she'll start reading the Book of Mormon. So we FINALLY got a new investigator!

We also got a referral this week from a member on Gotland (the big island off the East coast of Sweden) for a lady who lives in Nyköping. It's quite a ways out there so we couldn't make it there this week, but we have an appointment to meet her tomorrow. She sounds pretty positive as well.

Cody's schedule sounds hard. But stats is always fun. I'm glad Peyton has Miss Caughey for health! She is really nice. (She's the one in parent teacher conference who said that I "radiate goodness" or something. I'm sure she'll say the same about Peyton!) And San Francisco for orchestra tour sounds awesome as well!

Keep saving up for Sweden! Just to put in perspective how expensive things are here: a dollar menu McDouble costs about three dollars here, and instead of a five dollar footlong at Subway you can get a five dollar six-inch. So, yeah...save save save!

Thanks for all the updates! Have a wonderful week! Jag älskar er!

Love, Delaney

 

YSA activity - eating idge

 

 A door we saw while we were finding Mona. It says "Best Doorbell. If your errand includes God, fire extinguishers, coconut balls, or TVs, I propose that we save everybody's time by you skipping this door."