1st Week

27 January 2010

Heysan, min familj!
So, it's been a week. This computer keyboard is no good. I'll do my best to type like a maniac. I'm in the laundry room. Turns out the guys always wrote from down here because they tell you to stay with your laundry.

It's been an interesting week. I don't actually feel like a missionary yet and have called myself Amy out loud twice this week. It's also strange to be surrounded by Elders when talking to them very much has always been taboo. My district is great. There are 7 elders and 4 sisters (including myself) going to sweden in this group. The group before us had only 3 elders. They were studs apparently. Everytime anyone sees us, they say, "Wow! 4 Sisters! You guys are so lucky!" I suppose we are. Except that we do a lot of things as a possey, and it's hard to convince 3 instead of just 1. We also hear all the time about how talented the sisters that are already in Sweden are. The branch president asked me if I could play hymns in church on Sunday and then proceeded to tell me how good one of the elders that had just left had been. He could play anything! Imagine my chagrin when I messed up throughout all three hymns on Sunday.

The Elders in my district are a lot of fun, love to laugh, and are all so sincere. They seem to really want to be here and improve in their Swedish. Their testimonies are a great strength to mine and they make class time fun. The sisters in my district are all so funny! I'm like the old, crochety one compared to them :) It's been a challenge because I get really into my studying when it's important to me or I feel like I'm falling behind, and it takes 10 minutes to get everyone quiet. My companion and I have different learning methods, so we are still working that out. I struggle speaking languages, so I'm the worst in my group. Give me a grammar test, and I'd be just fine, but that's not the method emphasized for learning here. So I go on struggling. We learned how to pray and bear testimony in Swedish this week. The first time we went to the Teaching Resource Center was on Monday and I forgot everything I had practiced! All I could think of was a weird mix of Swedish, Spanish and K'iche'. Surprisingly, I think of a k'iche' word instead of the Swedish all the time. My teacher encouraged me to keep up with my Spanish while I'm here because there are so many immigrants that need to be taught in Spanish in Sweden, which I knew, but it made me feel justified and hopeful.

The food here is killer. I'm still adjusting to it. Everything for lunch and dinner is so heavy unless you just get a salad. It's going to get old. I also need to learn to slow down when eating again because I keep eating when the Elders are eating. it reminds me of being 12 again when I'd take multiple portions of spaghetti, but I don't have Ted here to tell me to stop because I'm getting fat :) Having gym every day is helpful, and they have a half hour class at 6 am for the sisters every day but sunday. Sadly, I need the sleep. I fell asleep in devotional yesterday.

I'm surprisingly pleased with being a missionary. The regime here takes some adjusting to, but I feel like I was able to step back into being perfectly obedient easier than I expected. I've already learned (or relearned, rather) so much about my own faith and testimony. It's been refreshing to get back to basics.

I've only cried twice; which is good. Turns out I'm the weepy sister in the group, dang it! Not surprising to the Boys, I'm sure :) I'm not homesick though, and am very happy.

Thanks everybody for all your letters. Turns out that dear elder sends a letter for each page, so when you sent all those missionary letters, mom, I got like 5 letters! It made everybody so jealous. Thanks everybody for the support. It's nice to know my friends haven't forgotten me :) I'll write to whom I can. I love you all! The Church really is true, turns out.

Love,
Syster Maxwell

P.S. Excuse the spelling. No time to proofread.