Week 5

Hello all,
I'm going to go ahead and express my thanks at the beginning of the letter since I never get to at the end since I'm usually out of time. Thank you Mike and Shelley and fam for the valentine's package. It was really fun! My comp, Sis Page was happy to get the other treat. Also, thanks to the Utah gang for sending me letters. It made my day so wonderful! Tell Kirsten I'll write her when I get a chance. Promise :) And thanks for everyone else supporting me and being wonderful. I wrote a letter to Katy Lang, but I got a letter from Cris Castellon that would suggest that she didn't get it, but you never know... just throwing that out there. Thanks to the Lee's too! I shared what Bro. Lee wrote with all the sisters in my room. We all appreciated it because we respect the elders we are with very much. We always try to encourage them to be their best and it often ends up that they have to put us in our place or tell us to stop giggling or singing :) Oh, there is an Elder Winters here who is in our zone, going to Norway who is from Pocatello that says that Bro. Lee taught his mission prep class there. Cool! He says it was awesome :) Which reminds me, the Norwegian elders came in this week. There are two of them. Also, all the sisters left from our branch to go to the field (Oregon). We are getting five new sisters today who are going all over the place (English speaking). We are going to break into their room later and make their beds for them and write them a welcome note. Turns out sisters are still girls here and do that kind of thing. The coordinating sisters meetings are interesting. Lots of complaining about other sisters being too loud or airing grievances. Not sure if I wrote about that last time.

So we hit our month mark this last week. On the 20th we had Karleksfest which means love party in Swedish. It's a joke because we sang "Come ye Disconsolate" one day at my prodding and one of the lines says roughly "come to the love party" or karleksfest. Everyone started laughing included Bro. Killian, our teacher. I felt bad about it until it became a joke and now we have karleksfest everyday! Karlek is also the word for charity in the scriptures, so it's all appropriate loving :) So, the language. We love the fun phrases and the elders love making things like, "You are so nice" to sound like insults. They will shout at each other, "You are so nice right now!" and storm out of the room. We try to get them not to shout in the cafeteria since we get in trouble for that, but one of these days I'm afraid there will be a whole scene. We also love the phrase, mumsfilibaba which means roughly, scrumdiddlyumptious. We also were teaching one day going around in a circle each saying one line of a lesson and sister Gotberg, instead of continuing on about Joseph Smith say, "Hur smackar det?" or how does that taste? We cracked up! She was on the wrong page :) Also, when we don't know the Swedish word, we will say them in a Swedish accent so at least we pretend we are still speaking it. Sis Page said something in English the other day when we were out in the hall and then said, "I had to say it in an accent so they wouldn't know what I was saying" (meaning the other Scandinavians). It was funny. Maybe you had to be there.

Also, I got a letter from Karina that said when she was in the mtc the rumor was to stay abour (that’s what she wrote – away?) from the orange juice. I'm pleased to report that is still the rumor today and we heard that on our first day here. She was year a few years ago. I wonder how long people have been passing that down :) Ted, Jeff, Scott? Comments? Oh, and yes, no more "tree of life" in the showers I suppose I should let you all know the miracles that I've been seeing since coming here. I just want to bear testimony that the gift of tongues is real. I feel the blessings of the Lord pouring down upon me every day. I don't feel sad. Ever. Miracle.

Love,

Amy