Week 42

10 January 2011
Subject: The Lord giveth…and the Lord taketh away.

Hejsan allihopa!

Don't worry, no one was injured. But, we'll get back to that later. First, the weather. It's been absolutely wonderful this week with temperatures hovering right below 0. But, that means we've gotten tons of wet snow. The only up-side is being able to throw snowballs at Sister Kiser. And that I can go hatless again without feeling like my ears are being frost bitten. Down south I hear they've been getting rain and slushy snow, like Utah, right grandma?

We almost had the first normal week of the transfer without a holiday or something bad happening. We did a lot of tracting this week. And contacting. Everyone's trying to get pumped up during the post holiday let down, so we are having a zone Book of Mormon contest to see how many Book of Mormons we can give out. We are leading right now with 8.6. The .6 is one of those mini Book of Mormons that one of our investigators wanted for her baby. We'll only count it if it means not losing :) The prize is being able to eat at zone conference if we beat the zone leaders. The also said they'd be the winners' slaves for the day. I don't know what good that would do anyone. We've talked to some really nice people who I hope the missionaries contact again or that they meet a member at some point. We also got chewed out yesterday by a lady who thinks us going around trying to change everyone's religion is absolutely despicable. There's a lot I could say about that, but I won't. I told her we just offer what we have to people because it makes us happy and it's up to them to choose to accept it or not. Sigh.

We got some sad news on Thursday. One of the elders in our district has to go home for medical reasons. He has a really big infection and is only not in pain when he's laying down. He is on the plane home today. We were very sad as was he.

On Friday I was told by a member that the lady I contacted who was really positive and I could tell felt something as we talked to her was just being nice and nothing would ever come of it. (she didn't give us her number or want to meet). Thank you for you positive support. I am aware she probably won't just show up to church next week, but you never know what might happen down the road. The lesson taken from this is please don't pop missionaries' bubbles. We take what we can get and have faith the Lord will take care of the rest. Thank you.

On Sunday we had 8 investigators in church! Two in Hudiksvall with me and 6 up in Sundsvall with Sis Kiser. She didn't know what to do with herself. It sounds like everything went really well.

I guess the big news of the week was that we wrecked the car on Saturday. I guess technically it's my fault since I was driving, but if you go by the missionary driving safety video it was both of our faults. We were driving to Hudiksvall and about 5 km outside of it we both fell asleep. I had registered that I still had my hat and scarf on and that the music was turned off and that Sis Kiser was already starting to doze off, but by the time I thought to myself, "I'm getting drowsy, I should drink some water," I was already past the point of logical thought to do anything about it. We were very lucky though. There were no cars passing on the other side and none right behind. A metal divider started right after we hit the side, so we swerved to miss it and hit the back right tire on the sign that marks where it starts. Then we pinballed back and forth between the dividers a few times until we regained control. This was all accompanied by the sound of shattering glass which was actually the bottles of frozen water in the back of the car, so the damage wasn't as bad as it sounded. The car drove straight when the wheel was pointed to about 2 o'clock and it was difficult to get it to respond. It drove well enough that we were able to take the next exit which was where we wanted to get off anyway. There was a bit of body damage, but it seemed like most of the damage was with the axels and alignment. We called the mission office and then went to our teaching appointment. The irony is we were on our way to meet a man who won't let us come visit him when it's snowing outside because his first wife died in a car accident on a snowy day. The weather on Saturday was perfectly clear. Even more ironic. We left the car at the train station and took the train back to Sundsvall. The next day we came down of course for sacrament meeting and Pres. Stegeby from the District Presidency took one look at it and decided he'd drive it back (it's an hour and a half away). When he called later that night he'd said it's been really hard to drive. Anyway, that's the sad news. I'm still trying to figure out what the lesson really is from all this. I really don't know why it happened. Oh well. I know we were protected at least. I feel really bad about it still.

So, we are back to taking the bus for awhile. Well, it's been an interesting week. Maybe next week will be normal again. Or maybe this is the new normal? I love you all and I know the Lord is taking care of us.

Syster Maxwell