Skip to main content

Julbord ×2

 Tjena! 


Happy holidays, everyone!
It's weird to think that everyone is on Christmas vacation right now. I suppose, in a way, I'm on vacation too! Just an extra long extended one where I am also in the work of the Lord. (So, the best kind.)

This week, we had a lot of lessons planned, and most of them fell through. It's tough for people to keep commitments so close to the holidays. But everything is still good here in Lund. And things will pick up again after the new year. I have faith.

Some events from this past week: 
-We figured if there was ever a time to do missionary work in the form of delivering cookies, it was probably this past week. We tried to make Swedish-style pepperkaka and they did not turn out well at all...so we had to make different, edible cookies to use. You can't win them all! 
- One of the houses that our cookies got us into was a woman who we had delivered a Book of Mormon to many weeks ago, and then could never get in touch with again. We didn't know how we would be received, but she was very happy to see us! 
However, in the middle of teaching her more about the Book of Mormon, something immediately changed...she started yelling at us and telling us that we don't have the right to judge her and tell her how to live her life. (Which we had said nothing about!) I tried to explain that we do not judge anyone, and that one of God's greatest commandments is just to love one another! But she somehow interpreted what I said as that we need to love people before we sleep with them (?) and proceeded again to yell before kicking us out of her house and asking us to never come back. 
But then as we were quickly putting our shoes on, she said that she really likes us and didn't know why we were leaving.
We're about 96% sure that there were some pretty serious mental issues at play here. But what's important is that we survived, she still has a Book of Mormon if she ever becomes interested again, and that "all these things shall give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good" ! (Shout-out D&C 122)
- We had a great lesson with our friend Andy* about the Restoration of the gospel, and he's very interested and willing to read the Book of Mormon! 
- We started teaching a free English class every Thursday evening, and we've met some super nice people from it! 
- We had not one but TWO Swedish Julbords this past weekend. One on Saturday afternoon, and one after church on Sunday. Believe it or not, the sill (pickled herring) grows on me every time I eat it. And Julmust has grown a little on me, too.
- There's a tradition where at 3 PM on the 24th of December, every Swede tunes in to watch Donald Duck (Kalle anka). The missionaries got permission from President to watch it this year, and we did! The Swedish dubbing was pretty hilarious, I must say. 

All in all, Sweden is a good place, with silly traditions, ridiculous food, and people who celebrate Christmas without thinking of Christ. Good thing we're here to spread the word, haha! 

Love you all. And Happy New Year! I'll be back before the next one😳
Syster Naatjes

This Lund sign is new, and we obviously needed a photo by it. Also, why is there no snow? In Sweden? In December? 

The train ride to our first Julbord of the weekend! 

The aforementioned Julbord. Peep the absurd amount of julmust. 

 Little stop in Jakriborg for p-day! 

Syster Kearns' first time in Domkyrkan. Legendary.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Everything Cancelled

  Tjena!  Everything cancelled this week. Oops. That's alright. Literally everyone is sick it feels like! Whatcha gonna do. We spent quite a bit of time on the street, and... - gave out two Book of Mormons in a Arabic! - gave out a Book of Mormon in Ukrainian! - accidentally met a homeless man with no teeth that had recently thrown up and was gnawing on a rotisserie chicken wing. It was a little traumatizing to be honest💀 - met a man who tried to recruit us into joining his pyramid scheme - took a selfie with a woman from Cambodia who wanted a picture with Americans  We also: - spent an hour trying to match up three huge bags of socks #service - had a game night, and failed to teach some Sri Lankan men how to play UNO  - found a disgusting bug in our butter - read 3 Nephi 11 with our friend and it was awesome  - went on Splits with the Örebro sisters! Quick scripture: 1 Peter 5:6-7 "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you...

One week left?!?

 Tjena! What a crazy time. I love our ward, I love our friends, and I love the snow that we're getting.  This past week we didn't have as many lessons, but the lessons we DID have were golden. 1) We're teaching a Swedish girl about our age and invited a member along. Turns out they work at the same place! It was awesome, they got along great.  2) We had a lesson with our friend *Mont, and talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He said that he would love to be baptized, but just needs to grow his faith a little more. His biggest problem is that our doctrine sounds "too perfect to be true." We love him!  3) We had a lesson with our friend *Mitch, and taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ as well!! At the end we asked him if he'd be interested in baptism, and he said absolutely. He then picked January 14th!! #miracle  PLUS-- *Mont and his wife even came to our ward Christmas party, and the ward loved them. It was awesome.  I'll be coming home next Mon...

Vill du bli döpt?

  Hej everybody! Sorry I didn't get the chance to email last week, but on the bright side, SO MUCH has happened since you last heard from me that this email is about to be loaded.  First things first, MY SWEDISH DISTRICT CAME LAST WEDNESDAY! I had been doing classes with them online: --And it was super fun, but being with them in person is FAR better... (Shout out to  Äldste Vander Linden, who brought us all sun tanning glasses so that our mission photos, going forward, can be that much more epic).  We started learning Swedish, too, which has definitely been a challenge. BUT, we are very determined to get it down, and we have already done not one, but TWO english fasts (we went without speaking english for 8 hours). We did our first one on Saturday, which went horribly--but then did another one yesterday, and we could already see SO MUCH improvement in our Swedish. It's hard to believe that one day, maybe, hopefully, possibly, I will be completely fluent.  ...