Feeding the Sheep (literally)

This week has been pretty good! I think there's been a variety of happenings and such since last Monday; it's been interesting.

  On Tuesday (and Friday) we went and helped the L family on their farm again. That all went fairly well. One Tuesday we helped with their sheep, which was a lot of fun. They have a lot of sheep and they're really friendly. It's kind of funny how, when entering their barn, they all just run up to you and honestly make it kind of hard to walk without tripping over them. We helped hold the sheep while C, one of the family members, clipped their hooves. And then on Friday we helped move hay again (I actually stacked it up in the rafters, which was kind of fun, though really tiring. It's like playing with giant twenty to forty pound Legos). And, of course. we had dinner and a spiritual thought with them both times. They're really a great family, I enjoy meeting with them. So this week that we fed sheep this week both metaphorically and literally. But it is kind of interesting how the sheep really do follow the farmer or herder just as we are supposed to follow our "Shepard" Jesus.

  Wednesday morning was fairly ordinary, though something fairly interesting happened later in the day. We had received a few referrals from Mormon.org a few weeks ago, though we hadn't been able to have solid contact with many of them. We had tried visiting one of them a few times, but she was never home. Either way, on Tuesday we tried swinging by one more time before calling it a night and heading back for dinner, when M, the referral, answered the door! We ended up having a pretty good discussion with her; she seems really interested in learning about the church and already has researched it quite a bit. It should be good getting to know her better over the coming weeks.

We are also working with another less active named C M (who is American! He's really cool, but doesn't really know that much about the church, he was just baptized when he was eight).

  And then on Thursday we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I worked with Elder C, which ended up being pretty fun. We mainly just used the ZL's car and visited a lot of people who live near the city but are just a little bit out, and we found a lot of potential investigators that we'll have to try to follow up with this week or the next.

  And, in other news, we recently received word that there's going to be a transfer soon! As it turns out, this Wednesday, we'll be getting Elder B here in Karlstad, and, also as it turn out, neither Elder C or I will be leaving. We'll be working in a three-way companionship for the next month or so. Should be interesting! The more the merrier!

 

                                                          Gazing intently at each other

                                              Cheesy selfie smile with the ZL Aldste C

                                            At the famous Old Stone Bridge in Karlstad

Valentines and Olympics

Hey everyone!
  I hope everything is going well with you all back in the States and such! Things have been going okay here. This week we've been doing a lot of finding work and such (again), so it hasn't really been all that exciting, but there have been a few interesting happenings.
   One was, I guess, while we were tracting some building on the other side of town. We knocked one door and this Somalian guy opened the door. We introduced ourselves, and he asked us if we could read the name on the front of the door (as most residencies have people's name's written on the door. In this case it was "Mohammad"). We replied affirmatively, and he said he was Muslim and then just sort of looked at us. We said something to the effect of "yeah.." and he invited us in and started asking questions about the church. He ended up going on a rant about imperialism and colonialization in Africa (he was pretty drunk), but he said that we could try to come back when he was sober. All in all, it was an interesting experience.

  In other news, we had a zone training this week in Göteborg (Gothenburg?). It was good, though it just focused on finding people and contacting, which is a lot of what we've been hearing about recently.

Valentines day is not very big here; it might just be an American holiday. Honestly, if we didn't recieve valentines from the mission president (which was nice of him), I wouldn't have even noticed that it had come and gone. On the other hand, The Olympics are very big here, most people are watching them a lot of the time. One of the members said that a lot of people would take sick leave so that they can stay home and watch the Olympics, which I think is pretty funny, just because that sounds really boring. I'm glad to hear Sweden is doing well, though.

  Also, we've been able to see a few kind of cool sights recently while in some of the cities near Karlstad. Cool sculptures and towers and stuff.

One of the sculptures is by Pablo Picasso.

 

                                                          It's a Picasso-Can you tell?

                                                                   Nearby Church

                                                                     Salvation Army

 

                                                                     Water Tower

Family History Fun

Hey everyone!

  So this week has been good. We've spent a lot of our time trying to finish up the last people we wanted to visit on our swing-by list (sort of a large list of all of the potential investigators and former investigators in Karlstad). All in all, that's gone okay; we've found a few people who are willing to meet and we now know more concretely where a lot of the people we could visit stand. So that's all good. Whenever we  contact people on the street we usually bear testimony. Or at least talk about some church-principle that we think would engage their interest.

  Aside from that, we visited the L family earlier in the week, but I mentioned that in my previous letter (on account of a late p day). So you're already up to speed on that. 

  On Saturday, we went to work in the Family History library at the church, and two pretty cool things happened. The first is that one of the members who usually comes to work on family history came and did some family history work (which I guess was fairly ordinary). However, a little bit later, another person came who actually wasn't a member! I guess that he saw a sign that other missionaries had put up in the city library, and he decided to check it out. He largely just looked at what kinds of records we have and what kind of programs we have, etc., but it was pretty cool. And he seemed like a fairly friendly guy. Hopefully we'll be able to see him around again.

  In other news, Presiedent Newell came through town again on Sunday. He came to church and helped with primary, which was pretty cool. We helped translate during the lesson (largely for the younger kids who don't speak English), but it was a pretty fun change from the usual Sunday routine. The lesson was on missionary work (surprise!) and giving thanks. I learned how to say thank you in Japanese (domo arrigato, I think? I could be completely wrong.)! Good fun.

Celebrated my companions birthday with a cake (3 candles!).

  Either way, I hope that all is well with you guys!

 

Birthday Celebration!

 

Elder Holland Quote

"You only get one chance to serve a mission; it is your responsibility, your duty, to use it to the fullest; to give every last ounce of energy until you collapse in exhaustion at the end of it. All the hardships, all the tears, all the hard work will be looked back upon as the best thing you've ever done, not because you enjoyed it, not because you baptized everyone, but because you gave everything you had, even when you didn't think you could, and especially when you didn't... want to. Live your mission to your fullest, work harder than you've ever worked before. Let people know that this is the most important thing in the world to you... If you do not run until you have nothing left to give, and then keep going anyway; cry and pray and work and sweat and plead until you are so drained that all you can do is turn to the Lord; if you don't do this, then these people will not come to this joy because of you - their failure to come to Christ will be partially upon your head. Come out of your mission proud of what you've done, and this experience will bless the rest of your life."
I like this quote. I'm sure that we're doing a good thing out here, and I hope that something happens with the work I've done. But if not, I feel like I'm doing my best, so that's what counts.

Hay Bales and Furniture

Hey Everyone!

  This week has been okay. We've been focusing a lot on finding work (again) this week, so we've been out doing a lot of contacting and swing by's and such. It's kind of tiring, but it's been good, we've been able to have contact with a few former investigators and such who said that we could come by sometime. So that's all good. And we actually were able to meet with and have an okay lesson with one of them. He was a little bit tipsy, but he was happy to meet and talk with us and he still seemed mostly together, which was nice.

  On Saturday, we did help our branch mission leader move one of his neighbors from one apartment to another across town. It was pretty neat, because they had nothing really prepared for the move; they had just rented the truck, and they had a lot of stuff. It was kind of okay, because we mostly just moved furniture, but a move that we thought take about 3 hours ended up taking the vast majority of our day. Good fun. Afterwards, though, we went to O N's, the first councilor's, house for dinner, which was fun. He's a really nice guy. It was kind of a stark difference between their house, which you could tell was meant to have some sort of modern minimalism to it and was clean and tidy, and the other house, which was very dusty with lots of junk everywhere. It makes me think that it really is best to avoid keeping unneeded or unwanted things and just keep things simple. 

  Either way, the other interesting thing this week probably happened yesterday, when we went to the less active L family (which is actually why I didn't write yesterday). We left in the morning and drove out to some random village in the middle of nowhere, where we helped B L get a truck load of hay. That was pretty cool, he threw the hay down onto an elevator (I think that's what they're called?), which dropped the hay into a giant truck, which we then organized into stacks. Then the truck drove off and we followed it (the truck actually had a really cool hydraulic mechanism for lifting the bin that we loaded. It was really cool). We then helped unload the truck and stack all the hay in the rafters of the barn. Good fun, I'd say that my arms are kind of tired after the last few days. But then we got to visit with the L's. They're a super awesome family, and the mom told us about how she came in contact with the church and so on. It sounds like they've had an interesting, rather hard life, but they're always really happy and positive. They're really cool. 

  I hope all is well with you guys! 

Eli