Week 31 Örebro! 4/17/16

So I got transferred! I am currently emailing from the beautiful Örebro chapel! 

 

THE Örebro castle

Oh gosh where do I start. I lot has happened since last week. Well, I love my new companion! His name is Äldste Swenson and he's from Sandy Utah. He's only one transfer older than me in the mission which makes us a very young companionship and it's the greatest thing ever. I thought it would have some downsides but nah, we can speak Swedish just fine and we have so much energy! I've worked probably harder these last few days than I have my entire mission and it feels GREAT. 

So we've been working our butts off. To update you on the work, we've got 1 pretty solid baptismal date with a man named Osman for the 14th of May, he's from Eritrea. Where? It's in East Africa North of Somalia. The pretty universal thing about immigrants is that they travel in packs. Lots of them from the same country will end up in the same city together. In Helsingborg there were lots of Asians, Syriens (that's actually Syriens everywhere) and Bosniens. Here in Örebro there's a lot more Africans! Which is awesome! We actually have 2 really solid recent converts in the ward who are Africans, I'll talk more about them later. But just know for now that Äldste Swenson and I are going to baptize everyone here. Pray for Osman and for new Investigators! 

Örebro is a weird town. Really. There's a LOT of weirdos here. On Thursday, we met with Osman at the library and while we were there this old Swedish lady was walking through following this line on the floor, which I was standing on. And she had to ask me to move so she could continue walking on this line. Weird. 

There's a statue of a rubber duck in the middle of town made of tires. I told you Örebro was weird. 

 The ward is amazing! It's super big actually. Like about 100ish active members. One of the bigger ones in Sweden. And they speak real Swedish here, none of that Skånish. The people here honestly are like afraid almost when I tell them I just came from Helsingborg, to these people the Helsingborg församling speaks Danish, not Swedish. But they're pretty impressed with my Swedish so it's all good. 

Me on a children's playground boat.

Okay one miracle that happened this week, we were out trackting these apartment building right by ours (the best thing about Örebro is that none of the apartment buildings are port-coded, those things suck) and we knocked on a Syrien families door, they spoke impressive Swedish and didn't seem to be Muslim. They were very respectful and listened to almost the entire Restoration story right there on the doorstep, they asked if we had the BoM in Arabic and we realized we didn't have any on us but said we could run back and grab one. Well we did, and when we came back, they took the book and GAVE US CAKE! Yeah! They had sugar cake which they just gave too us right there and then! We'll swing by later (probably tomorrow) to see if we can't have a sit down lesson with them. But a solid potential investigator family? And cake? Nothing is better!!!

This is a picture of a Jehovah's Witness and a Swedish Priest we met on the street. Probably the greatest selfie anyone has ever taken. 

Can't wait to continue to update you on how the work is going, but for now, I love you all and just know that things are going super well here in Örebro!!

Want to know something really nice about Elder Swenson? He takes pictures of everything so I'll have quite a few in this email. 

This is my ghetto piano set up. I found an ancient super dusty keyboard and set it on the ironing board. Send me sheet music!   

That's me in front of the 'Gnar wall'.

A little note to Mom. Yes! I can print from this computer. Go ahead and send me whatever. Maybe some piano or organ solos. Or fun stuff. It's whatever :) It is a bit colder here but the weather is warming up quite nicely so It's not too bad. The only annoying this is the dust. There's a ton of construction here right now and it's given me some bloody nooses and a dry throat. But it's getting better. 

Bye mom Love you thanks! Tell the puppies I miss them!