Week 4

Hej hej!


So, I ate my words last email. That afternoon was lovely and there were little leaf buds on our trees outside. We also saw our first flowers. Yay! No trees yet, but I'm sure they'll be creeping out soon. We went on a bike ride on Monday to test out our bikes. It was a gorgeous day and all you needed was a light jacket. I was supposedly the bike expert as I think I said last time since I had some bike experience recently. So, I took the lead. We were going along nicely for about 10 minutes until the sidewalk suddenly ended and I tried to stop and turn around. Bad idea with 1/2 an inch of loose gravel still on the sidewalk from the winter. My bike skidded sideways and I took a dive head first off the side of my bike. I really wasn't going very fast, so I just scraped up my left palm and dirtied my right knee. All-in-all not so bad, but still maddening. Luckily there wasn't anyone on the street so only Sis Wood saw my spill. So much for my expertise. We had to buy Sis Wood a new seat since hers is rather uncomfortable. We found some great seats at the store that I may need to invest in as well. We biked to church on Sunday. It was only 3 km or so, but we'll have to work up to the 10 km rides we had planned on. It's been awhile since Sis Wood rode a bike. I'm surprisingly in ok shape still I think.

So, Dad, my area is specifically from Ekerö to Äkalla and Bro to Spånga. We are taking in another area that's closing too which is past Äkalla, starting at Sollentuna and going somewhere to the North and East. Clear up to Märsta, but we probably won't be doing too much work up there.

We've been getting a lot of referrals from other missionaries and our investigators this week. It's been great! Hopefully we can get a good group of Africans coming to the ward, so they all feel more inclined to keep coming. We had 5 total at church on Sunday. We also had a big lunch afterwards for the Bishop's dad's birthday. They had two huge smörgås tortas (sandwich cake) and princess torta. Both really good! Smörgås torta has layers of meat or other sandwichy spreads on flat bread and is covered with creamy cheesy stuff and vegetables. It's pretty!

Another interesting thing this week has to do with the complications of being a Sister missionary. I have a hard time talking to men on the street because I don't know what they think my intentions are especially with the cultural mix that we have in our area. Not everyone would view us the same way. On Friday we went to visit one of our investigators at the library. The lesson took an interesting turn when he started talking about marriage and expressed his opinion that we were all just trying to find a place to put our hearts. Then he asked about if we could go out with people while we were on our missions and are we on our missions forever. We told him no, no dating and no, we are normal people that do this for a short time. He insisted that we should take opportunities that arise on our missions since we are building our homes while we are here. We quickly ended the now-awkward lesson and left. We had our suspicions that he liked Sis Wood after that and sure enough he sent a text message expressing that. So, now we don't know what to do. He came to church on Sunday and left after Sacrament Meeting. We aren't sure if he's been coming to church and taking lessons because of Sis. Wood or because of the gospel. I guess this happens to missionaries a bit on the mission.

Anyway, I'm out of time. We are teaching a lot (for here). Our goal is 18 lessons a week. Well, we found a flute for me to play at our music fireside next week. Yay! And thanks Grandma Win for all your letters! They are so great! Love you all. Be good. Play nice.

Love,
Sis. Maxwell