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| SWEDEN (on our run) |
May 11, 2015
Happy Birthday Dad!!
Hej hej!
This week was pretty
standard, nothing crazy. Tuesday we were able to go to the temple for Sister
Poulson's 6 months (or more) in Sweden. It was awesome, we actually did it all
in Swedish! It was Featherstone's birthday and Poulson and I gave him a signed
and laminated picture of us haha Those last minute birthday gifts though.
We tried tracting a
few doors this week, and one guy randomly let us in! He was Muslim and we
taught the first lesson. It was feeling pretty good and then he got super off
topic and started talking about Isis and some conspiracy theory about how
Michael Jackson was murdered by Lady Gaga or something like that..
Tried a new contacting method this week - when you seee a runner, start running
with them and teach them as much as you can haha. I knew these runs in the
morning would pay off haha. We had district meeting in the woods Thursday haha
it looked so sketchy haha but it was so nice out that none of us really cared.
I went on exchanges with Syster Bolton which was way fun! We ate some nasty
dinner at a members house - gröt, raisans, and raspberry soft. Took everything
I had to hold it down, let's just say it didn't agree super well with my tummy.
We met with a sweet
lady we are teaching and taught her the Plan of Salvation. She was super
receptive to it and was basically teaching us about repentance haha it was
awesome. She asked what our view on equality between men and women was and
before we could answer she was talking about how she thinks we are all equal
but have divine qualities and gifts that complement each other...like wut.
#familyproclamation. It was awesome. We invited her to pray about baptism, and
she text us yesterday morning to say she didn't think it was right. We asked to
meet with her one more time and kinda tell her how it is, so we will see. We
passed out cookies and cards together this week haha that was a new idea that
kinda worked I guess. We did some yard work for an inactive and I used a blow
torch and a weed whacker for the first time in my life. He's also very healthy
and natural so I was able to try dandelion straight off the lawn and egg shell
right off the egg. He's an interesting gem. A guy we play soccer with swung by to give sister Poulson
and I some cool ugandan shoes that his mom made for us. Super sweet and they
are actually really cute!
The worst part of the
week was when we found out that Syster Poulson is leaving :( She will be going
to Sundsvall and I will be staying here and getting a sister named Syster
Irene. We will see how it goes! Featherstone is also leaving and going to a
branch of 6 members in Skellefteå! The greenies (me and Burton) will be taking
over VH!!
We gave a few spiritual thoughts this week on a talk by
President Eyring on Continuing Revelation. There is one quote that I really
liked, "Revelation continues in the Church: the prophet receiving it for
the Church; the president for his stake, his mission, or his quorum; the bishop
for his ward; the father for his family; the individual for himself".
Always keep your heart ready and open to receive inspiration - you never know
when or how it will come, but it will ALWAYS benefit you in your life and help you
prepare to return to God's presence.
LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!! It was so fun to skype yesterday. So
special. Have a wonderful week!!
Kärlek,
Sister Jordan Lund
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| The Football Crew |
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| The two elders I beat in tennis (kneeling) |
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| Last night in VH |
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| Fam |
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| Syster Irene and I |
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| Rope Structure |
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| Airing out umbrellas at the church |
May 18, 2015
Haaaaaaalllååååå.
This Pday was much needed, we have laid so much
groundwork for this transfer the past few days and I am just exhausted.
And my comp is sick, so today we will be taking it super easy.
Last Monday
was the best Pday yet though! We played tennis, football, and went into
Gamla stan one last time before Poulson left. I even got a little
sunburned. What a great feeling. Tuesday
was beyond packed because we were saying bye to all sorts of members,
investigators, less actives etc. We met a guy that follows the Mosaic
Law completely wearing tassles, linen on his head, and carries a staff.
Interesting to talk to but kind of frustrating because he kept throwing
everything we said to him right back in our faces. Long story short, the
elders are meeting with him now haha.
We had a great last
evening in VH together with the elders playing in the rain and getting
soaking wet and laughing about all the good times we had. It was super
hard to say goodbye to Sister Poulson the next day, I will seriously be
forever grateful for everything she taught me in our 3 months together. I
picked up Sister Irene and she is cool too! She is from Wyoming and is
just 1 transfer ahead of me in the mission. But she went on an exchange
to Sweden sooooo she is basically fluent. It's super nice to be able to
ask her any questions about swedish and have them answered simply. She
has been sick with a head cold since she got here, so we aren't going to
hard right now and getting lots of sleep to make sure she gets better
ASAP.
We met a tonnnnn of youth that stayed at the Gästhem by
the temple that were there for a few days to do baptisms and whatnot.
There was a kid that looks just like TAY. No joke, I had to do a double
take...and don't worry, I took stalker pics to show you.
We
had dinner at a members house that had 7 dogs! They were climbing all
over our feet and begging at the dinner table..dad would have hated it.
We met with John to talk about the baptismal questions and turns out he
isn't ready for his baptismal date, so we will have to push that back.
We made a bet/challenge with the elders to see who can get the most
contacts this week. The reward you ask? if we win, we get to put makeup
on them and take a pic. If they win, we have to buy them cheap ties.
Sister Irene and I climbed to the top of this large rope jungle gym
(like 30 ft up) and it was cool. This young girl started shaking it at
the bottom and laughing at us struggle to keep our balance..#satanic.
This
has been an exhausting week of preparing ourselves for the next 5
weeks. I am so tired but it feels so good! Doing everything we can over
here haha.
Have a wonderful week!! Love you all!!
Syster Jordan Lund
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| The pizza champs (trying to choke down the last few) |
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| The Elders at the Lundborgs house soaking up the sun |
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| Field behind the temple |
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| Pouyeh! |
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| Irene and I |
May 25, 2015
Hallå allihoppa!
it's been a bomb week!
Sister Irene has
been super helpful in språk study and she has been helping me out lots.
She writes out sentences in English and then I just translate them to
Swedish.
The Hagmans was hilarious this week. Andreas
kept saying that Syster Poulson and I were Navy seal missionaries. Like
when nothing else is working they send us to him. "You probably get on
your little bikes, turn the corner, and WHOOSH! You are zapped back into
the heavens" hahah he's the greatest.
We had zone training
this week!! It was awesome!! Our Zone leaders are way cool (Archibald
and Barnes). We went to pizza hut after and Archibald and Burton battled
it out in who could eat more pizza. They tied at 25 pieces of
pizza....disgusting. It was hilarious to watch.
We had a man
on the street spit on us and tell us to leave our church so we can have
eternal life. I had to have SOOOOO much patience to not go off...Jesus
wouldn't do that.
I've gotten in this habit of calling out to
people to say hi from WAY far away. Sometimes it's successful and
sometimes people think that you are completely nuts. This week was
successful! I said hi to an old lady on her balcony about a football
field away haha we walked over and we talked a little about our church
and she said I had really white teeth haha, looks like the brushing is
paying off!
We went to lunch at the Lundborgs today!! SOOOO
SWEET. They live way over in Sorunda so we got picked up at the station
and then drove over there. it was sooo pretty! With all the flowers
blooming, it really is lovely.
We walked all over Nynäshamn
swinging by less active members. We probably walked around at least 3
miles. But we met some cool people and tried to teach as much as we
could!
We had a ward party Saturday! We had a little tiny ward talent show and ate hamburgers. Some random less active kid tried to stab me with a staff.
We
had a nice chat with Pouyeh!! Shes a new convert and just amazing! Shes
from Iran and can speak persian, english, and swedish. SOOOOO AWESOME.
Bozedar came to church Sunday
again! He even wore a baby pink outfit haha he's the greatest. We
tracted in the area and got some follow up appointments! We talked and
taught two people in just their tight boxer briefs....we taught the
Restoration but had a HORRENDOUS laugh attack in the beginning. I
thought we weren't going to be able to make it through but Irene stepped
back a bit to control herself and I tried to persist on. TOO FUNNY. We
met a guy named Broeric who is SOOO prepared!! He asked all sorts of
good questions so we hope to meet with him soon! I love Sister Irene! We
are having a blast together and laughing lots :)
Have a great week! love and miss you all!
Syster Jordan Lund
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| Ring (viking metal) |
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| Taking a break in the flowers |
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| Glad Morsdag to us! |
June 1, 2015
Hejsan! Hoppas allt är bra med er!
This week was great, we have been
super busy getting lots done and teaching people! Last pday (the 25th)
we didnt have time to email at all but we went into Stockholm to get
some stuff that we needed. I ended up playing an elder (Elder Archibald)
in ping pong and he started off by saying, "so I've never been beat on
my mission" hahah it was fun. I also got a ring from Gotland! I had
coordinated with an elder to have him get it for me because that is the
only place you can get them. It is a ring with a design on it and it is
actually made out of VIKING METAL. It's super cool and a lot of people
in Sweden wear them. We played 4 games, I won all of them and he was
slightly devastated haha. Thanks for all the training dad. We were all
sorts of busy in Stockholm beside that and my bike had broken on our way
to the church to email in the morning (which we didnt do). We asked to
borrow one of the temple couples bike because when we were getting back
we had lots to do that evening as well. They happily lent us their bike
and offered to fix mine. Super sweet of them! Long story short, lots
went wrong in Stockholm, we got on the wrong train back to VH and were
30 mins late to our dinner appt and got lost on the way, and we got
blåsted by our other lesson. It was just somewhat stressful and tense
and had been a little bit of a rough day. We got back to the church to
give their bike back (8:30
ish) and there was my bike, parked in the rack, with a simple note on
the seat saying "It runs GREAT now!" I almost cried, after all that
seemed to go wrong, this genuine temple missionary had fixed my
incredibly broken bike and even bought 2 new spokes for it. He said it
was even fun to tinker with President Malm of the 70. So that is cool
that they fixed my bike haha. and it was really a tender mercy of the
Lord.
We have been practicing our lessons with members this
week as to work better together and in better unity as a companionship.
It's tough with a new companion because you had gotten in the habit with
teaching, but it's been going well!
We got locked out again
of our apartment. Oh man...we felt stupid. But we had swing bys to do so
we did those, and then some dark clouds started rolling in...and we
didnt have jackets. Thank goodness it never rained, but we were locked
out of our apartment for about 6 hours haha. We did practice lessons and
whatnot, and the members must have known we were starving because they
gave us melons and bananas...another tender mercy of the Lord.
We
gave service at the temple this week! We worked picking weeds and dead
flowers for a couple hours..it was super fun! We baked a ton of cookies
for less actives that we visited later that evening on splits in
Nynäshamn. It was me and Mathilda (RM), Irene and Pouyeh (New convert),
Burton and Henrik (1st counselor in Bishopric) and Hansen and Lars
(WML). It was awesome! We were able to go visit lots of people.
We
tried a new thing this week called "toilet tracting". I had to use the
bathroom so bad...so I knocked on a random door and when they answered I
said, sorry we are from america and I really need to go to the bathroom
may I please use yours? and the guy was like preferably not hahaha
aaaaaannnnddd that was the end of that.
We met with Jenny Saturday
and she said that she would sing with us in church! YES! We are so
excited. We will most likely sing O Store Gud or Närmare Gud Till Dig.
I'll keep you posted on that.
We stopped by Pontus as well and had a nice time talking with him and Jessica (the ones we play Boules with). Saturday evening we ended up talking to a lot of drunk people, but one guy contacted us and said come teach me tomorrow! We tried to stop by the next day and he wasnt home, but we will for sure be back :)
The
Young Women had a program yesterday in church and it was amazing! Any
of those girls would just be amazing missioanries! it was swedens
mothers day yesterday so they passed out roses and chocolate for the
girls over 18...that was us :) We had a Persian lunch with Pouyeh and I
tried eggplant and dates for the first time. We had 3 lessons after that
that all fell through. We had dinner with a family in the ward who
really needed us. We were at there house for a while talking and giving
them support and the elders gave a few blessings as well. It was really
cool that we could be there for them in their time of need.
SORRY
THIS IS SO LONG. This week has just made me realize how much the Lord
really loves all of his children and has His hand in our lives guiding
our ever step. I love missionary work!
Love you all and I hope you have a wonderful week!
Syster Jordan Lund
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| Abba Museum |
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| Bozedar |
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| Moroni |
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| Bunnies at Kristina's house |
June 8, 2015
Hejsan!! Hoppas allt är bra med er!
This
week has been super great! Last Pday we went with a bunch of other
missionaries to the ABBA museum in Stockholm. I even got to see Syster
Poulson and Elder Featherstone! Reunionnnn!! It was cool. We ate
vegetarian chili with Thomas that evening and talked about how he likes
to blow things up, it was a great convo haha We went to visit Bozedar at
his work and we met some of his coworkers. He even gave us little
stuffed fluffy things. We also had an awesome lesson with a new
investigator named Michelle...she is so awesome! And we just answered
some questions for her and the Spirit was so strong!
We had
two girls from Örebro stay with us in our teeny apartment. It was super
fun to have a little sleepover. We had ZONE CONFERENCE
on Wednesday!
Oh man it was so good. The main topic was Disciples in the Digital Age
(apparently we are getting ipads sometime) but the assistants talked
about magnifying our calling and how even when we get rejected, blåsted,
spit on etc, it is a GIFT and a BLESSING that we can be here on
missions.
We went and visited a sweet new convert from Denmark
that just moved into the Handen ward. She lives on this reallllly
pretty property right next to the lake. We talked and ate popsicles and
played with their bunnies. It was super fun and she is so nice!
We
had dinner with Jenny this week at a members house (Tove) and Pouyeh.
It was super good! We talked about the Book of Mormon and how it relates
and links to everything else in our religion. The temple is closed for 2
weeks to clean and whatnot, but it was cool because we got to help
clean inside!! It's so weird seeing it in the cleaning process compared
to normally. I finally got to meet KARMEN. She is so sweet! She gave me
the package (thank you mom and dad) and we talked for a little bit about
Santa Barbara and how she misses it...haha it made me miss it as well.
We did our weekly planning outside and got 1 slightly shade darker! It
was awesome and felt so good. We went to Mary (a member in the Handen
ward) house for dinner and karaoke! It was super funn!! We got to spend
time with her and her son who has Autism (I think) and it was just fun
to be with them and feel their spirit. We had lunch with a lady who has a
son who has some crazy disease that only 3 other kids have in Sweden.
She is so sweet and so is her son. And daughter. We did the tea bag
lesson with them and they loved it!
We started a big district
wide health challenge!! We are seeing who can lose the most weight in
the next 2 and a half weeks! We'll see how it goes. We got a call from a
lady
Saturday
evening who asked to come to church! That does not happen!!! It was
awesome. She came to church yesterday but it was a little bit of a
different meeting. Elder Holland addressed us about the Book of Mormon
and the importance of it. The lady, Cecilia, really liked it! She said
she wants to come back and she had already read in the Book of Mormon!
Oh man she is so so so golden. It was awesome. ANd we got a referral
yesterday which rarely happens too! It was great. We went to Lindas for
lunch and had a good discussion about life and being better people and
reaching our full potential. We also had dinner with Tibor and Barbro
and sang some songs with them. They are just the sweetest people.
My
testimony has grown a lot this week about the Lord's hand in this work.
I know that he is always looking out for his missionaries. And I love
being a missionary!! Love it so much!!! I am so grateful for the
opportunity I have to be here and the experiences that I have had in my
life to be in this place right now.
LOVE YOU ALL!!
Kärlek,
Syster Jordan
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| Persian Dessert |
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| Sister Haynes (MTC teacher) |
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| Me and Sister Irene |
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| Kladdkaka we made for an elders birthday |
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Cute little girls dressed up the day after the Prince of Sweden got married
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June 15, 2015
Where did June go?!?! The month is half over!
This week has been
super good and full of great experiences. Our district is on this health
kick to try to lose weight before the transfer is over and it is super
funny to see them all out trying to run in the morning haha.
We
had a great lesson with Andreas this week. We played an outside Swedish
game with him and his daughters. We then talked about the importance of
the Book of Mormon in relation to other gospel principles. We drew out a
nice map for him that said "if the Book of Mormon is true then..." and
led to every part of our gospel. We testified and went pretty hard on
him, but he needed it. The Spirit was sooo strong and guided our words.
There were a couple times I could tell that both me and Sister Irene
were just waiting for the next prompting from the Holy Ghost.
We've
worked in the temple a lot this week because they have needed all sorts
of help. It has been super cool to be able to do that.
We
have done a lot of tracting this week as well which is awesome! I love
tracting! Somehow we always tend to end up teaching people in their
underwear...#eyecontact. Soccer was nuts this week haha. One member that
plays with us passed out and thankfully Irene and I knew what to do to
keep him together and all that jazz. Thank you Girls Camp. Another kid
was throwing up because he ate too much ice cream before haha. And
Burton thought that he broke some of his ribs (turns out he is fine) and
he couldn't really breath for about a day or two. We had exchanges this
week and I was able to be with Sister DeMille! We taught Carolina and
Sofie (new investigators) about the Restoration and holy moly it was
just such a great lesson!! In the beginning they were pretty timid and
shy but in the end they were so open and they asked all sorts of good
questions. The daughter (Sofie 14 years old) was really into it too. Oh
man it was great. I testified specifically about the blessings that come
from this church and the truth found in the Book or Mormon. At the end,
Sofie said the prayer and said "Please help me to receive the same
blessings as...Syster Lund" It was so sweet! They said that when they
come to know that these things are true they will be baptized.
We went to Muskö Saturday
to give some service and mow a lawn and pull some weeds...but man we
had no idea what we were getting into. We barely made a dent in the lawn
and the weeds around it..The house had an interested smell and when we
were eating some (older) fruit there were flies crawling all over my
plate. We are going to go back this next week to finish because there is
SO MUCH to do.
Cecilia came to church again! And she stayed
all 3 hours!! We were able to teach her the second hour about the Plan
of Salvation and focus it lots on families. It went super well and she
is continuing to read in the Book of Mormon. We had lunch with Pouyeh
and had eggplant, eggs, and tomato (kinda looked like mush) and it was
delicious!
Transfer calls are this Friday/Saturday,
I hope I can stay here one more transfer with Sister Irene! We have
seen a lot of success this past week! Life is good as a missionary! I
love it so much!!
Have a woonderful week, love and miss you all!
Kärlek,
Syster Jordan Lund
