Week 27

Subject: Raindrops on Roses

Hej på er,

So, it's been a long week, but not so gut wrenching as other transfer weeks have been. It's really nice to have a dying companion because I was fairly positive I would be staying and she would be going. The week was spent loaded with appointments and trying to make the transition to next transfer. Sister Robinson was finally breaking the news to everyone that she was leaving this week. We had more than one teach that ended with, "Well, I'm leaving this week..." followed by shock from those we were teaching. Some of the outbursts of emotion surprised both of us, but it's nice to know people care. President had to go pick up the new missionaries from the airport, so he didn't call us until almost 1. We were one of the last ones to know, but I'm staying as expected, and sister Porkka, a Finnish sister who I did splits with once and also loves This American Life is coming to be my companion. I hope we have a lot of fun together and get along well.

I'm keeping this short because we have A LOT to do this afternoon and we are going to be taking the 5:55 train to Stockholm tomorrow so we can go to the temple, so it would be nice to go to bed early. I guess we'll just hit the highlights of this week. First, the Word of Wisdom lesson with A who is addicted to snus, a popular kind of chewing tobacco here. His family kept coming in and out and he would go off on tangents on how important it is to take care of our bodies and how he knows all about the body and how the woman's body is especially a temple of God because she carries children, etc. Then his dear, sweet sister came in who is very sick and takes lots of medicines which affect how clearly she thinks. Her Swedish is only ok, so she often misunderstood what we were talking about. It was almost funny, our attempts to keep the lesson going so we could get home on time, but being sidetracked by her random comments about us and what we were teaching and then A replying and commenting on them too. For example, we went to the teach fasting, and she just couldn't understand why we didn't want anything to drink, so she kept asking over and over if she could get us something and then insisting that we needed to eat. I wish I could better describe it, but the long and short of it is that we got home really late, but they invited us back to eat food :)

On Sunday we took our recent new convert (R) to meet a lawyer who is an inactive member of the church and, frankly, isn't living the commandments. R needs help with his application to stay in Sweden and specifically needs a lawyer, and this man was the only way we could think of to be of assistance. He was willing to see him and gave him some good advice, helped him to understand the situation better, but we had to do some serious damage control afterwards. Basically, honesty. Always honesty. Something else that is very common here is for people to find a sambo, or live-in girlfriend, so they can stay. It's like getting married to get a green card in the US. We had to discourage that one too.

We had a really sad teach with a guy who is a member but has lost his faith and isn't really willing to take the steps to get it back again. He's willing to keep meeting, but isn't really planning on doing anything on his own until the desire hits him again.

Well, I'm off. Thanks for all your letters and prayers. Love you all!

Syster M