This one'll be short

So this was a great week and I loved it, but nothing out of the usual happened that I can write about except for branch council! That was actually super good though, it was super cool to be with President Youngberg for a long time. We talked about joy for Sunday school, and dissected 2 Nephi 5 to figure out what we need to do to be happy in our lives, it was really good! President Youngberg has such a strong testimony and understands the scriptures very well, I loved listening to his lesson. It was exactly what the branch needed.

Here's the recipe for joy though:

2 Nephi 5:1 -- prayer

5:6 -- Listen to God and His servants

5:10 -- Keep the commandments!

5:11 -- Work!

5:12 -- Read the scriptures and follow the spirits guidance

5:15 -- once again, WORK!

5:16 -- Participate in the Temple

5:17 -- WORK!!! WORK!!! WORK!!!

5:24 -- what not to do

5:26 -- The establishment of church

Put that all together, and 2 Nephi 5:27 will be said of you as well.

But wait, what about all the people that do those things and cannot afford to live in a nice home, drive a car, eat food that tastes good, or eat at all, or that are lacking the things that are needed to be happy? Well that's the problem, no "thing" is needed to be happy, just God! (Mosiah 24:13-15) I've seen plenty of people here in Sweden that witness their families get slaughtered in the middle east, abandon everything they have to flee to a country with nothing more than the cloths on their backs, no friends, and not able to speak Swedish. Surely if there is anyone who lacks the "things" needed to be happy, it's these people. But they are happy, because they have God.

I to have God in my life, and that blessing is the greatest I've been given. However, what I don't have in my life is pictures of this week, so hopefully you will all be able to be happy with out those :,^(

Mycket kärlek,

Äldste Wilson

Pictures are worth a thousand words, right?

This week we got transfer calls, and my entire district is staying the same! However, this transfer is an important one because the Sisters that entered the MTC with me are going home this Tuesday! So sad! All six of them have done great work in Sweden, they are great examples to me of dedicated service and sacrificing for the Lord.

But up here in Örnsköldsvik the work goes forwards! We've been working hard, the Lord is blessing us. This Sunday was the first time an investigator came to church in at least 4.5 months, probably closer to 9 months. But my man Alf came and participated in class more than the other 7 members who came that week :)

​Left to right: Sister Heaps, Botchway, Cappuccio, Gow, Elder Wilson, Malone, Harrell

It's also semlor season in Sweden, and those are my favorite desserts ever! I'll attach a picture of the district eating them after district meeting, then the one I just ate. A semla is a sweet bun with almond cream and whipped cream sandwiched in the middle, and the traditional way to eat them is in a deep plate drowned in warm milk. Yummm, I could eat 3 more if I had the money for it!

3373- Disection of a Semla

3330- The district and our Semlor

3328- Elder Prososki making his favorite, Haluushka (?) a traditional Polish dish. Fried cabbage, noodles, and more Paprika then you'd think acceptable. 

Well this week was crazy

There are three parts to the crazyness of this week, all of which were awesome! To start off, we went to Stockholm for a mission tour by President Johnson, President over the Europe area. But it was super fun, because I got to fly to Stockholm and sleep on Handens, my previous areas, couch. We then had this big meeting with three zones, so around 80 missionaries, which also included almost every missionary I've served around except for a few. The meeting was super good, very spiritual, and lunch was a party as I got to play the part of social butterfly and walk around and talk to lots of people. It's super weird though, I'm one of the "oldest" missionaries left in the mission! The Sister missionaries that came into the MTC with me are going home in two weeks, so this was also my chance to say goodbye to most of them. After the meeting was a little leadership meeting I went to and that meeting went a little overtime, which leads to the next exiting event this week!

We almost missed our plain! Because the meeting went over, first off I didn't get any pictures with the other missionaries (very sad day) but second off we missed the intended train and had to get a ride to the train station to catch the next train. We then got to the airport 30 minutes before the plain left, and we got to the baggage station 28 minutes before the plain left, so they wouldn't let us check my suitcase. Luckily for us though, the Umeå Elders were also at the airport and Elder Stapley offered to take my suitcase with him, so I sent that to Umeå with him and we begged the lady to print off our boarding passes. We then ran though security and got onto our plain just as they were closing boarding. It was close, but we made it! Then we landed at Ö-vik in time for crazy event three!

We land, in the middle of a massive snowstorm! It's crazy, we must have gotten around a meter of snow, I'll send pictures but they don't do it justice. There was so much snow, that they couldn't plow it! Our parking spot is out of commission, there is a pile about 3.5 meters tall just behind it, and the stall itself has a meter of snow on it. It's also super cold! Like, this morning was -24 C. Like, it's insane how much snow appeared over the 24 hours we were in Stockholm. 

Now, crazy event related to event 2, the trip up to Umeå! Because my suitcase had everything needed to be a missionary (scriptures, phone charger, toiletries, PJs, ext.) in it, we stayed the night in Ö-vik then the next day drove up to Umeå to get our stuff, then since we were in Umeå we decided to do work-overs with the Umeå ZL's, so that was a party! I love those two, Elder Stapley and Bringhurst. Great missionaries, the both. We also had a member meal with a family from Colombia and that was tasty :)

Also, crazy event related to event 1. We show up at the airport an hour early to fly down to Stockholm, and the airport parking machine won't take our cards! We try both our mission credit cards, then we both try our personal cards, and we try the other parking machine, and it also doesn't work. So we go in and try talking to people there but no one knows how to help us, and at this point in time the plain was about to board, so we call the mission financial person and he says to call the parking company, so we call the number on the parking machine, and no one answers! What kind of help line doesn't answer? The one to the parking meters in Ö-Vik airport.

Well that was long. I'll now attach some pictures and sign out. Thanks for reading and have a great week!

Äldste Wilson

 The time we did P90X with one of the Cambodian families on p-day

IMG_3305 is a sign that says "Eat, Drink, Enjoy (in a "be merry" manner)", sounds familiar, right?

Well this week was sure something

Remember how I mentioned quickly last week that I'd been a little sick? I was a little sick for all of this week to :( It's fine though, a little sickness never killed nobody. A lot of sickness has, but I didn't have that. And besides, I'm better now, I just sound like I've chain smoked every day of my life.

But unfortunatly, that does mean that I don't really have a lot of stories to tell this week. Just this one:

It was a Tuesday night. We had had to replan the day multiple times already, because when you're a missionary nothing ever goes to plan. Ever. Anyways, we had just driven back to the apartment after a lesson, and the clock was 20:28, meaning we had 32 minutes left in the day. I was pretty sick at this time of the week, and my body was completely dead. We pull into our parking stall as Elder Prososki looks at me and asks "What do you want to do?" We had origionally planned to study the language at this time, but ended up having to do that earlier in the day, so we had nothing planned. I responded with "Well, I'm pretty tired now, to be honest I just want to go to bed. What do you want to do?" Elder Prososki then looked at me and said, "Do you think Paul ever went to bed early on his mission?" I then realized that I had three options:

1- Be lame and use sickness and a tool to do nothing

2- Work, but also use sickness as an excuse to not work hard, but also keep saying how hard I want to work, I'm just sick and cannot speak anyways so there was no point in me working hard

3- Actually be a man and work

Up to this point in the day, I'd been working at option 2, so I decided then to "gird up my loins like a man" and do what Paul, Stephen, Peter, John, Ammon, Moroni, Mormon, Moroni, Nephi x3, Jacob, Joseph, Helaman, Dan Jones, Parly P. Pratt, and Samuel Smith would do and get to work. So we went out and contacted in the city and found 4 people who are willing to meet up again and give us their telephone numbers. Moral of this story, don't be lame and don't pretend to work but actually be lame at the same time, just work and even though you may feel like someone is sandpapering your esophogous whenever you breath in cold air as you're walking around in freezing Örnsköldsvik you're going to be happy anyways.

Sorry for the terrible spelling, the wifi at the church went out so I'm emailing from the library and the computers here are stuck in Swedish so I lost my spell-checking abilities. Sad day.

Elder Wilson

And the work goes on!

This one'll have to be short, mostly because this week contained lots of work, with the remainding time being filled with work and a fever of 103.8! Just kidding, there was no fever of 103.8, it was only 100.8 (so not even a real fever, pop an ibeprofen in the morning and you're set for the day).

But yes, up here in Ö-vik the work is going forwards, faster and faster! We have many investigators, but one in particular could use some prayers. His name is Youssef (Joseph in Arabic, it's a soft "J") and will be having a surgery this week because he has throat cancer. He's a great friend, and loves meet us and reading from the BOM, he just smokes all day. Makes great Bulgar though, he was a navy cook for a very long time and has been all over the world.

Other than that, I have been asked the following questions which I will now answer:

What is in your apartment?

We have a fairly standard missionary apartment, but it's a little bigger. We have a big bathroom, a closet room, a study/living room, a kitchen with a table, and a bed room. My bed is small and hard, but I've been sleeping great in it. We also have two couches and two chairs that match the couches. It's pretty nice.

What kind of transportation you use?

An Opel car.

When you look out the window what do you see?

Popcorn popping on the apricot tree. Just kidding, when I dare to look out the Window, a nice Swedish city covered by a blanket of fresh and growing snow (it's snowed every day this week). However, we must be very careful looking out our widows as our across-the-way neighbor is a young woman who could be a model but (as per Swedish custom) doesn't wear clothes or close the blinds when home alone.

How are your language skills now you have been there a while?

Great! I still cannot do my "R's" right, but it's definitely not a problem. And having a slight American accent is a bonus most of the time, Swede's wish they could be Americans.

Dreaming in what language?

People speak their native language in my dreams, except for Claire who speaks fluent Swedish. Don't know why, but her Swedish is phenomenal.

How large is your district?´

My district has two branches in it, Örnsköldsvik and Umeå. There are two missionaries in Umeå, the ZL's (Äldste Bringhust from my group and Äldste Stapley) and a set of Sisters (Syster Edwards who's been in Sweden 4 months and Syster Adams who's been in Sweden 1 month), and just Äldste Prososki and I in Ö-vik. It would take about 3 hours to drive from the districts top to bottom on the freeway, and it extends all the way to Norway from the coast. But the district members are so solid! If anyone were to be missionaries in a district roughly the size of Utah from Bear Lake to Provo, it'd be these ones! The zone itself is about the height of Nevada and is covered by a meager 9 companionships and 5 branches.

What do you do on P-days? 

Not much. Buy groceries, play chess, email home, check out shops in Ö-vik central, the such.

Well, unfortunately the only picture I have to send home is this video from when we were tracting and this massive snow drift made my companion want to jump off of the second story of a apartment complex. Don't worry, he only fell like a meter and a half and the snow was up to my waist (and deeper if I were to have tried to tunnel deeper) when I also jumped off, so it was super safe :) And fun :)

Have a great week!

Äldste Wilson

Yay for winter!

I'm finally experiencing a good Swedish winter! It's amazing! I love how cold it get up here, and the humidity is only helping! This week was the coldest I've seen in Sweden, (only -21 C, so around -5 F?) but because of the humidity everything was frozen. It was a little unfortunate when the car doors were frozen shut in the morning, but I took a super cool video when we were driving up to Umeå for district meeting. Literally everything was white. The video doesn't show it that well, because as soon as I took out the phone we got to a spot with green trees every now and again, but literally everything was completely white. I love it though!

The work in Ö-vik is also going amazing! We have the perfect set up to get stuff done: a small branch that loves the missionaries, a city square (type of thing, in Swedish it's called stan but they don't really exist in the US) with plenty of nice people to contact, and tracting for days! We're getting stuff happening, and the beastly qualities of Elder Prososki sure help! He's a great companion, very social and willing to get out and talk to people.

This week though, we did so much! I love it all. The work in Sweden is the best, nothing tastes better than the sweet dessert of new investigators for the branch after the cold bitterness of rejection. And we're getting lots of desserts.

We also had splits with the ZLs, and I was with Elder Bringhurst! He's from my MTC group, and he's the best. Totally Idahos best actor, he's already written a musical and it'll make Broadway some day.

That's all I got time for now! Have a great week, allihoppa!

Äldste Wilson

2806: splits pics!

2796: Could be in a Hyundai commercial

3277: Gotta love these Congo-men! And no, he had no idea what Salt Lake City is.

3272: Elder Prososki and Sovann trying the glasses look

3274: Elder Prososki and Sovann still trying to look cool, but not understanding that you need to be like me to accomplish that.

3245: Gotta love a good Swedish sunset. This picture was taken at 14:57, the sun's staying up later and later! Yay!

3249: The view outside my window. The picture's not that good though, you can't really see the bay in it.

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