Week 28

Subject: The Moose are Everywhere!

Hello everyone,

So, we finally got Sis Robinson settled, packed, and saying her goodbyes. We are supposed to make a transition report every transfer with appointments for the next 10 days all lined up, but it was hard to make appointments with people and give them commitments to follow up with next time when Sis Robinson was lining up appointments for when her and her family came through. We had general conference this weekend, though, so we were able to make it over the hump.

Going back to Wednesday afternoon, we started cleaning and planted tulips in the back yard. We really hope we planted them not too deep and not too shallow so that they actually come up next spring. We thought it was a nice touch to finish off our garden-themed transfer which ended up consisting of getting stung by a lot of stinging nettle, making a lot of raspberry pies, adventures in composting, and then buying a house plant. We finished off P-Day by going into downtown and going to a lot of different shops to try to find scrapbooking things for Sis Robinson. We visited a couple more people that evening and then finished up the night cleaning. We got in bed at 11:15 and got up at 4:45. Yuck. We took the 6 am train to Stockholm because Sis Robinson wanted to go to the temple one last time without her family there. We missed the 9am session we were aiming for, so we had to wait until the 10am, but a couple of the elders who were also going home joined it, so that was fun. We spent a couple hours at the ring afterwards. It really seems like someone official would tell us we needed to disperse. There are a lot of missionaries there and we were right in the way of a huge Levi's display/advertisement. Sorry travelers of Stockholm! How will you get your jeans now? There were a lot of new missionaries and my MTC companion, Sis Page, is training one of the new sisters. Elders Gardner and Bloomfield who were also in the MTC with me will be training as well. That's weird.

Anyway, it's me and Sis Porkka now. She's a lot of fun and quite different from Sis Robinson, and more like me in certain ways. We think the same about a number of things particularly household things and cultural (and pop culture) references. It's lovely. I think the transfer is going to be grand. I hope we continue to see the miracles we saw last transfer.

On Friday we met with D, our next baptismal candidate and taught him chess in our extra time before we had to catch the bus. Then we met A, who has the tobacco addiction and got him to make a plan for quitting. He was excited about it, but basically refused to live the rest of the Word of Wisdom in the process despite our promises that he would have extra strength as he tried to live a commandment of the Lord. I had actually wanted to stop teaching him if he hadn't wanted to do the program, but he set up his own program which will last for 6 weeks. Oh dear! We decided that maybe helping him stop snusing will be our community service for the month, if anything. He came to General Conference though, but just doesn't seem to be soaking anything in. He often buys us yummy nectar-y stuff made with goijy or something, (some super fruit), so that's a plus.

We had a cool thing happen on Friday before that teach. We were walking down the street, and this guy stopped us and asked us in English if we knew the place he was going to buy good boots. Uh....no idea. Turns out he's a trucker from everywhere and nowhere and drives from Denmark to Sweden all the time. He had hit a moose the day before and was getting his truck repaired. He described in great detail the demise of the poor creature. It was really sad. But...he's also a former member of the church. Got kicked out, he said. We told him that general conference was this weekend and he said he'd come if he could. Turned out he could! After the Relief Society session, we biked to a nearby store to meet him. He came rolling up in his head tractor and we showed him the way to the church on our bikes. That was the first time I've had to outbike a big rig. It was so funny, seeing him pull his cab into the church parking lot. It was great! He really liked the conference and seems to want to make steps back.

Anyway, conference was fantastic. I think I got the most out of it than any other one I've seen before because I actually wrote down my questions and studied my notes after. Imagine that! Well, I hope you all enjoyed it too. We are going to watch the last session now. Also, we bought horse and moose sandwich meat today at the store. It's hunting season! Funny thing about the horse meat is that it's labeled 'hamburger meat', but if you look at the label, it's definitely horse. Sad! It was good though. And the moose was terrifically tender. Mmmm! Well, I love you all! Have a good week!

Sys Max