Käre Familj,
I have also had a great week. Especially because of benefiting from Daylight Savings this weekend. That was a very good extra hour of sleep yesterday morning! Except I'm not sure whether we really benefited from it because today the sunset is at 3:56 PM. When you're a missionary, the extra hour of sunlight in the morning is during study time, and we have an extra hour in the dark of proselyting. But it's okay, because missionary work in the dark works just as well as in the light! I actually think it's better in the dark because people realize that this is something so important we're willing to stop and talk about it in the cold and dark. The trick is getting them to stop and talk about it too!
Good work in your mountain biking race Peyton! I've loved hearing about all the races and adventures with mountain biking. I'm proud of you!
How was the Meet the Mormons movie? Did they do a good job on it? I heard there was a preview for the upcoming Reign of the Judges movie about the Book of Mormon. Did you see that too? Did it look good?
So I realized this week that the things that stand out to me, like falling in holes and running around after spårvagns probably aren't the same things that would stand out to you about my areas. So I hope all the things I include in my emails home are things you want to know. And I hope I remember to answer all/any of your questions too. :)
Last week after we finished emailing we went secondhand shopping and got lots of steals! Syster Jacobs is all set for winter with a coat, boots, and the works. Unfortunately Matilda didn't show up for her Skype lesson, and we still haven't met her. She's in Austria right now but we talked to her yesterday on the phone and she still really wants to meet us! Which is good, we were worried she'd been avoiding us.
On Tuesday the Tolleys (the senior couple in charge of apartments) came by and tried to fix the heaters in our apartment. They're still not heating very well. Don't worry, we're not freezing yet. Then they gave us a ride to Timrå, a little town about 15 minutes north of Sundsvall. There we visited Lisa Svedin, a really nice less active member. She has more National Geographic magazines than anyone I've ever met, including my previous science teachers. She's really cool and has the temple in mind, so we're excited to work with her on coming back to activity. Then after that we taught Noe Noe at the library. It was a really great lesson. We just missed the bus back into Sundsvall (I've gotten lazy with the iPhone so when it couldn't connect to the internet, I was helpless!) so we were a little late coming back to the church, but we caught the tail end of a really great correlation meeting and then we had branch council, which was also really great.This is a wonderful branch and the people have a lot of energy!
Wednesday we had a full day set up, but a couple of our appointments never showed up. So we got to work on calling everybody in our phone to keep figuring out what we have to work with. While we were in the library calling people, two different people came up and started talking to us. Turns out both of them were already the elders' investigators. But we learned that there's a weird trend of people just coming up to the missionaries in the library and asking them to teach them. So we'll be hanging around the library a lot. One of our appointments who DID show up on Wednesday was an investigator named Charles. He started by asking our names, age, and marital status... so we'll see how long we keep teaching him. A couple of his friends came and sat down with us and they were super positive though! One of them is from Uganda and he used to go the the LDS church in Uganda. He left his Book of Mormon there. So we gave him a new one. Have I ever mentioned how much I love people from Uganda? After that we visited another less active woman named Ingegerd. She loves to read and she wasn't wearing pants. It was definitely the most spiritual lesson I've had with someone not wearing pants. (No, I haven't had many of those lessons.) She said we were the first missionaries to visit her in over a year, which is weird because we just called and she said we could come. I'm really excited to get to know her better because she seems like a really sweet lady.
Thursday we had District Meeting and we went to get Syster Jacobs her Personnummer. Nobody we tried to meet with was home, but we did talk to lots of people! It was the same on Friday. The Friday night activity was good. Angela came again, and this time we played a game called the Spy Game. I'll teach it to you when I come home, because it was really fun!
Saturday we got a new investigator! A really nice guy named Mohammed. He was in the phone so I called him and we met at the library. He's from Syria and he's Muslim, but he wants to know more about Christianity. He seems pretty sincere. We also got to talk to a new convert named Oscar over the phone. He was actually found and taught by Syster Dawson and her trainer almost a year ago, and now he lives in Östersund. So we talked to him and he was really excited to hear that I knew Syster Dawson.
Yesterday was a great Sunday! Angela was in church again. Our other VIPs were Mashid and Sassan, who are both recent converts. (Sassan was one of those people who came up to the missionaries in the library and asked them to teach him.) They're both really cool but really busy so we've only ever really met them at church. After church we had choir practice. You know you have a good branch when it's got a choir. They sound pretty good too. In a couple weeks they're going to sing the EFY medley (As Sisters in Zion/Army of Helaman) and I'll play the piano for it. It's really funny to hear the Swedes singing in English. They say "sisters" like "seestERS". That's probably what they think when we try to sing in Swedish. After choir practice we had dinner at the church with a member family. They live a long way away, which is why they just brought the food to the church. We're two for two on dinners with vegetarians. But the food was still really good!
Today we're going to a dinner with the Ekekes. The dad is from Africa but I'm not sure where, and he's married to a Swede. We're going to plan our act for the talent show coming up. Then tomorrow we have zone conference in Stockholm, which means we'll be taking a train from Sundsvall at 5 AM. We'll get back to Sundsvall at 10 PM. The sister training leaders (Sisters Byrd and Eborn!) will be coming back with us for exchanges. They'll do what we call workovers, which means we'll be on exchanges but we'll all be in Sundsvall. So we're trying to double book Wednesday with teaching appointments so we can get a lot done!
Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that it snowed already! It snowed on Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, and again on Thursday night. It was great! Nothing sticking yet, and it's a lot warmer today, but winter is coming!
Please keep Noe Noe, Matilda, and Angela in your prayers! They're all really wonderful!
I hope you have a great week this week that isn't even arguable bad! Jag älskar er!
Love, Delaney
Dragon in Sundsvall
Delaney with the Familjen Dolmaya
