Training with my Trainer

Hey everyone!

  Glad to hear things are going well with you all. Things are going pretty good here. This week has been fairly ordinary, but we've had a few interesting happenings. 

  Probably the most notable thing this week has been exchanges with our Zone Leaders earlier in the week. Elder Miller went to Södertälje with Elder Moe, and I stayed here in Eskilstuna and worked with Elder Tomlinson (my "dad"!). They came in the morning for district meeting, and it was really pretty cool being able to meet up and talk with them for a while and then catch up with him over the course of the day. He's had some contact with some of the people we worked with up in Luleå, so it was interesting being able to hear how they're doing and what's going on up there, too. It was fun.

  While on splits with Tomlinson, we went to visit L again, and ended up having another really good lesson with her. We just watched the Restoration and ended up discussing it, the Book of Mormon, and some other miscellaneous questions she had. She really seemed to love it, though, and she even said that she thinks she found her church. She also came to our meeting on Sunday and seemed to really enjoy it. She seems to really enjoy the gospel, and we're looking forward to being able to continue to meet with her. 

  In other (quite unrelated) news, we've been meeting weekly with a branch member, Anna, and helping her with various renovations and whatnot around her house. This week, she had two projects in mind (for the two companionships): one was sanding off some excess putty stuff (I don't remember what it's called, the stuff painters use to even out surfaces) in the bathroom, and the other was tearing down a wall. Needless to say, Elder Miller and I had a good time tearing a wall down. I'll attach some before and after pictures.

  Other than that, things have been going pretty well here. Hope you all have a great week!

 

 

                                                        Reindeer in the grocery store!!

                                                             First snow of the season

                                                 Service in Sweden-tearing down a wall!

 

                                               The deck we finished building last week

Stavskonfr​ensen

Hey Everyone!

  Things are going pretty good here in Eskilstuna! This week we've had a few kind of interesting things going on, mostly a number of conferences that we've had in Västerhaninge and Stockholm. 

  Earlier in the week (on Tuesday), we went over to Västerhaninge for our Zone Conference. All in all, the conference was pretty good; it focused a lot on family history work, which is kind of interesting for a bunch of missionaries, but they gave a few points on how to use it in finding or teaching people, and they told us that we can now spend an hour per week doing family history work on FamilySearch, which I guess is pretty exciting. Should change things up a bit. 

  Then, on Saturday and Sunday we had Stake Conference, with one session in Västerhaninge and another in a town pretty close to Stockholm. They were pretty good meetings, I enjoyed what was shared at them. It was kind of interesting because they both seemed to focus on missionary work a lot, the Saturday session more so than the Sunday session, but they both talked quite a bit about it. I enjoyed the meetings, and there were some good insights and there was a good spirit there. It was good.

  Aside from those, things have largely been missionary work as usual (trying to visit old investigators and inactive members, tracting, etc.). On Wednesday, we actually did tract into someone who was not only willing to meet but kind of interested in our message (which doesn't happen too often here). She was an elderly lady named L (I think) from Finland. From what I understood (she was speaking kind of fast with a Finnish accent, which doesn't help), she used to be a member of the PingsKyrka (Pentecostal, I think?), though she didn't think it felt right, so she left. However, when she was listening to our explanation about the Restoration, she said that it felt good, warm. So she seemed pretty interested in learning more, and we're looking forward to teaching her later this week. 

  Either way, things are all in all going well here! I would attach some pictures, but I accidently left my card reader back home... But next week! 

 

      Eli

Eskilstuna week two

Hey Everyone!
  

  This week has been pretty good. All in all, it's been a fairly normal week: We've visited investigators, members, less actives, etc., had church, district meeting (which is still pretty neat), and so on. Though there have been a few things that have been kind of interesting.

  Last Tuesday, we were invited over to P's, a less active member, and her friend M's apartment to help them with Swedish (which, I'm still not really sure how much we're able to help; they've both been in Sweden a lot longer than we have. But they invited us back, so I guess it helped some). At first it was kind of interesting because they gave us some dinner, which was really very spicy but also tasted quite good, though it was also a little bit awkward because they just gave us food and more or less waited for us to eat. It tasted good, though.

  Then we helped teach them Swedish (or, rather, tried to figure out what we can do to help them), which all in all went pretty well for a good while. 

  On Friday we visited a pretty cool less active family who came later that evening to a Volleyball branch activity, though they weren't able to come to church on Sunday, which is too bad. But we had a good visit with them.

   On Saturday we did some service in the morning (again for the lady who's doing renovations, I think I mentioned her last week), and then in the evening S (a member of our branch) invited us over for a birthday party for his daughter. I think that he actually invited pretty much all of the branch, so there were a bunch of 10 year old girls and then a whole bunch of people from church squeezed into their apartment. But it was fun, we ate a lot of hamburgers and a pretty good sized cake, and it was nice being able to talk with all of the people from the branch. I like the branch here quite a bit. 

 

Anyways, things have been pretty good here.

Eli

                                            Various Kinds of Graffiti in Eskilstuna Sweden

Hey Everyone!

Hey Everyone!

  Things have been going fairly well here in Sweden. This week has been kind of interesting, largely on account of the transfer earlier in the week. I'm now in the city of Eskilstuna, which is sort of over by Stockholm (a few miles to the west of it). I'm now with Elder Miller, which is pretty good.  I think that working with him over the next few weeks/months should be good. Eskilstuna itself seems like a pretty cool city; it's a bit bigger than Växjö and has a lot of really beautiful buildings and rivers. It seems quite cool so far.

  I suppose that my last day in Växjö was fairly interesting. We were able to spend some time helping a new family move into the branch. They seemed like a young, vibrant family, and I think that they'll greatly help the branch there.

  Transfers happened on Wednesday. Fortunately everything went well with that, it was about a 5 hour train ride (though there was an hours delay). That evening we were able swing by and visit a few of the investigators here.

  And the last several days have been pretty good. A lot of the time we've been doing swing bys and the like, but there's been a few more interesting things happening. On Thursday we had a district meeting, which was kind of nice for a change because I'm now actually in a district with other missionaries, so we actually met, had a lesson, go lunch, etc. It was kind of nice. On Friday evening we were able to meet some of the branch members and play volleyball with them. That was really quite fun, and the branch members (at least those that I've met so far) seem really cool. One of them, D, invited us over for General Conference yesterday, and we had a pretty good time talking with him and his wife after the meeting. On Saturday we were able to go to another member's house, H, I think, and do some service for her (she's renovating her house fairly extensively). I largely helped build a patio, which was kind of cool. We didn't quite finish it, but we made some good progress.

  And then on Saturday evening and Sunday we were able to watch conference. And, per tradition amongst missionaries here in Sweden, we went and bought Konferens Godis (or Conference Candy) before the meeting, and over the course of the meeting, we probably ate at least half a kilogram of candy each (which is kind of a lot of candy). It was fun. Oh, and the talks were good too :) I remember especially liking Uchdorf's talks (I usually like his talks), as well as Eyring's talk from the Sunday morning session and Brother Causeé's talk. And a lot of the other talks, there were a lot of really good speakers and ideas and everything. It was good.
 Hope everything is going well for you!

 

                                                   FALL COLORS IN ESKILSTUNA