Week 23

Subject: A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Hey you guys!

So last week, I thought the fall weather would go away and it would be summer for just a little bit more. Nope. It's been raining all week and getting colder and colder. The sun penetrates the forest in the mornings less and less. Normally I wouldn't be so obsessed with the position of the sun and the temperature in the mornings, but the fact that EVERYONE who isn't Swedish automatically goes on what Sis Robinson terms 'a winter rant' as soon as one mentions snow or winter makes me nervous for the coming 6 months. Oh well. They say I'll make it through. It's still light when we get up and just getting dark at 9, so I still have some time, but all the geese are flying south. It's weird seeing them so early, but they have a long way to go. It's understandable. There are also huge flocks of black birds that come and hang out in the winter, and they are already starting to trickle in. No good.

The irony is the only beautiful day we had was Monday, and we decided to make it a nap day. It was much needed. As a result, Sis Robinson can now run twice as fast in the morning. Tell me how that works. Still sad about missing the sun, though.

We taught the two Spanish speakers we met last week on Tuesday. One of them had a 14 month old baby who was hilarious! He kept slipping around on his little socks and rolling all over the floor. Nice for laughing, not nice for teaching. They also think I'm a ditz.

The rest of the week we put up flyers for a Swedish class we want to start here. We realized after we'd put them all up that we can be there the first time, but the next two times, we will be in Stockholm. Oops! This weekend is our big meeting with Elder Nelson and then we have sharpening which is zone conference pt II the next time we have class. After that there are only like 3 weeks until the transfer ends.

One of our investigators moved back to Uganda this week. He finished school and went back home. That was sad. We liked him.

Also, we've been teaching our baptismal date a little more. He lives way out in the middle of nowhere and the train rides there are beautiful! We got off at Storå on Friday to meet him and there was nothing there when we got off! Just a little shelter, time table, and cement. We went down the hill a ways and found a small little town on the edge of a lake. We took lots of pictures. Oh, and I saw my first Swedish moose! It was a girl moose. I missed the boy moose because I was sleeping. Too bad!

We also played in the first game in the stake soccer tournament on Saturday. Rather, I played until someone better came. It was fun, but one of those, "people care about you because you’re the missionaries, but don't really want to spend too much time with you because they have real friends" thing. They appreciated that we played, though and I'm starting to be able to tell the difference between all the tall, blond young men.

We made lunch for the district on Thursday. We made this delicious Hungarian soup called Lesco I think. Meat, peppers, tomatoes, onions. Served with lots of bread! We made the bread and baked it during the meeting. It was all so good! Our District Leader has been sick recently and keeps going to Stockholm to figure out what’s wrong with him. He had a weird rash thing and then just felt horrible. They told him he must have ulcers, so we thought having him eat lots of bread would be a good thing. Turns out it wasn't. We got a text on Saturday that said, "Was there basil in the food on Thursday?" (He's also allergic to basil) Nope! He said that he thinks he has a gluten allergy, then. It runs in the family, he says. Celiac's strikes again! We were very sorry for him, but even more sorry that we were the ones that helped him realize that :( In other food adventures, we made a beet, mango, tomato, hot dog pizza on Saturday. We liked it much better than the cucumber, zuccini, tomato, onion, banana pizza we made a couple of weeks ago. The beets were good, I think. It was Sis R's first time not eating beets pickled. She thought they were ok.

Anyway, I think that's it.

Love you all,

Syster Maxwell