Week 60

Subject: Donations gratefully accepted

So, this has been a good week. The weather turned chilly and rainy, but the sun is shining today. Well, it was. It looks gray outside again. Elder Olsen wants me and Sis Brown to wrestle today. I'm feeling very passive today, so I don't think it's going to fly. She'd probably kill me on any day. So, if I don't write next week, that's why.

Otherwise, life is wonderful. We had some really good teaches this week and people kept giving us stuff. Food, jewelry, small children, etc. It's been fun.

On Tuesday we started out meeting a guy I talked to on the spårvagn over the weekend. He told us how lonely he is and that he wants to hang out with us all the time. We finished teaching him which basically entailed giving him pamphlets and a Book of Mormon to read at home since his Swedish was worse than I'd initially thought. As we were leaving he pulled out a little package for me. I thought it was food, so I was going to open it later, and then later I realized it was a bracelet. It's actually pretty nice, so I was grateful. He brought one for sister brown the next time we met. That meeting was especially fun because we brought, F along, the new member who hardly speaks English. We really just wanted them to get to know each other (they both speak Arabic), so M would talk and talk and talk and then F would turn to us and say, 'it's good!' or 'I don't know... sorry,' and give us a big grin. It all cracked us up, and most importantly we found out M was mostly after money. Oh well.

On Wednesday we had another language adventure and a fun little success story. There is a girl who we've been helping with editing her master's thesis who is interested in the church once she's not busy anymore, so we've been waiting and helping her feel comfortable at the Institute. We had a stroke of inspiration which all worked out beautifully. I contacted another guy a few weeks ago who doesn't speak much English or Swedish, but he speaks Farsi. The first time we met him he brought his own translator, but we realized that M (the girl) would be a great help to us (she's from Iran), and it would be a way to start teaching her. We had Swedish class, so we got help from the zone leaders who's investigator the guy really should be. It all worked wonderfully! The rest of the story is that M and K (the guy) when to church on Sunday and really liked it! M is willing to translate any time for the elders and said that one day she will eventually be a part of this church. It was wonderful! There's again the whole being Muslim issue, so we'll see what happens in the future, but for now, I'm really happy. She's my social science buddy.

Otherwise, Z is making progress and has been responding really well to the men we've been bringing along (cultural thing?). He also really liked the whole women in the home value we've got. Sigh. He's really great, and once his driver's ed course is over should be able to come to church again...

We also met another lady who wanted to be our friend. She's really sweet and 81 and our 'teach' with her consisted in us listening to her for an hour and being able to teach her about the Book of Mormon. She's from Romania originally and is an interesting lady.

Ack! My time is up. I got a bit carried away, but to wrap up, my birthday was really fun. We had Thai food for lunch, the elders made me a cake, and they all sang to me at the restaurant. It was humiliating for me and the Finnish elder in the other district :) Well, hope you all are well. Have a great week!