Week 19

Subject: The Garden State
Hello Beloved Family,

Well, I'm in Örebro. Transfers went nice and smoothly. I was packed and ready to go by 3:00 the day before and we could just take it easy the rest of the time. The day of transfers we had our studies, finished tidying up and decorated our planners with the flowers we'd been collecting and drying the whole transfer. I put lavender on mine, so now it smells delicious! I'll just try not to smell it in public. We took both of my overloaded suitcases on the bus to Vällingby first to meet IA. That was great! He still wants to get baptized and come to church, so we gave him the number of a Spanish speaking ward missionary and my number in Örebro. The only question is, why did he avoid us for 2 weeks if he's still excited about everything? I don't know.

So then it was off to the ring to meet all the other missionaries. Sis Wood got tranferred down to Lund for her last transfer which is an answer to prayer. She really wanted to get out and see something different since she's basically been in Stockholm her entire mission. Only trouble is that they speak a different dialect of Swedish down there which is hard to understand. I'm sure she'll have fun with it though. Elders Gardner, Bush, Wood, and Dean were at the ring too. They were in my MTC district and are basically switching places too. Elder Bush didn't think too highly of us sisters in the MTC and now sister Page is in his district. Hope he's gotten over that since she was the rowdiest of the group... The sisters all went out to eat at a café we would eat at for district meetings. It was pouring rain on the way back, so our shoes got slightly soaked. Quick goodbyes and off to catch my train. My first real train in Sweden! None of this commuter train stuff. I said goodbye as we passed by all my old haunts and then off to the west. We're still in the Stockholm stake, but we are two hours out, so there will be no more Stockholm trips which I'll miss, but I already like Örebro, so I'll think I'll stick around.

It's been raining basically since I got here. Hard to take after our rainless, hot July. So getting transferred out of my first area felt like moving away from home. I keep feeling like I'll be going back sometime. I even find myself thinking, "back home our shower..." and then I remember how ridiculous that is and it's not my home. The whole mission slang with 'being born', 'dying', having a 'mom' or 'sisters' or a 'grandma' is making a little more sense to me now. Also it's so much easier to say you are going to 'kill' someone than saying 'I'm going to be their last companion before they going home' or even 'they are going home thing transfer'. Rather, 'she's dying' or 'I'm going to kill her.' So much simpler... or maybe it's still just ridiculous.

Anyway, they had a baptism here last week and he was confirmed in church on Sunday, so as happens after a baptism, there is a void in the people for us to teach (because not so much energy is focused on teaching the baptismal candidate even though we still teach him once a week), so we'll be doing a lot of finding work. My favorite! Örebro is like an actual city and the castle is right in the middle of it, so we pass by it to go contacting. We bike everywhere which is awesome, but we need to buy baskets. I just can't live without a basket for my bike. I was being silly, but they are nice, and it's so Swedish!

So, Sis Robinson tells me I've come to Zion. Örebro is an actually functioning ward with the sacrament actually being passed by youth, about 20 young single adults, and 100 active members. Crazy! Our ward mission leader is AWESOME. He is starting a program to have members of the ward bring people into their homes to be taught. Not people we find, people they invite. When people get baptized, the members take care of them. They've had five baptisms within the last year and 4 our of 5 of those is still coming to church (5 if you count the man baptized last week). It's so wonderful. I hope we can really do some good work here.

The best thing about this week is (maybe not the best...most ironic) that when sister Robinson told me we were on the bottom floor, I got excited and asked her if we had a little yard, then. (Most of the bottom floor apartments here have little yards that people like to dress up and actually put money into even though they are just renting. It's a different mentality). It was a "yard" she said, but there was no way we could go out in it since it was covered in very tall weeds. When I saw it, I got excited about cutting everything down and making it look nice. She was not so enthused, so I figured I'd just do it on my own for therapeutic reasons. So on Friday, we get a knock on the door and the community people tell us we have to clear our weeds within a week else, they will come in and do it for us and then send us the bill. Sis Robinson said, "well, I guess you get to have your garden after all" Yay!! It's raining today, but we are going to clip as much as possible. Our mission leader brought us some small clippers from the church, but after he got a look at it he went and got us bigger clippers and said, "You're gonna need these." Fun times! So Sis Robinson is also into transfer themes, so we decided to make the theme "The Garden" and relate it all back to Jesus Christ. We will be studying different aspects of garden symbolism as relating to the plan of salvation and atonement each week as a companionship. Her favorite CD is also "the Garden", that musical production that came out a while ago. Didn't they do that in Apex or somewhere? So, it all ties nicely together and would make for a nice seminary video.

Well, I'm really excited about this transfer. Sis Robinson is really sweet. She is from Palmdale, CA, studying to be an English teacher at BYU, and is more soft spoken upon first meeting people than I am. Weird. She's fun and open to new things, so that's nice. We also have a dryer now, so I don't have to have a stinky towel anymore!!!

Well, that's all for this week. I hope everyone is doing fantastically well and enjoying August. I love this work. It is the Lord's. I know we will see miracles this transfer as long as we truly desire it and stick with it. I discovered Helaman 3:24-30 this week. Love it!

Love,
Syster Maxwell