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
