This week has been great! It went by a lot faster than last week, it seemed. But we have been busy. Part of why it seems fast I think is because we are starting to get the hang of the schedule, which is very similar every day.
This week we implemented a district fashion schedule, haha. We had casual Friday (we rolled up our sleeves), Sweater Saturday, Suit-up Sunday, Tacky Monday, and Eurofresh Tuesday (we actually all looked the same as normal, but everyone pretended they looked more European, haha). So that was fun. Aldste Heiner and I have a ton of the same clothes, since we both have CTR clothing, so we usually match our clothes almost exactly. We even have one pair of the same shoes. Aldste Heiner is also mostly color blind, so he has me pick out his ties most days, haha. He's like, "which tie matches this?" and I just say any of them, haha. So most days we try to match our ties as best as we can too.
Aldste Bouton almost broke his foot during gym time this week. He was playing soccer, and tried to kick the ball really hard but hit another elder's shin. The elder was fine, but Aldste Bouton had to get X-rays and crutches. Luckily it is just a lot of soft tissue damage, so he can walk again soon with just an ankle brace I think, and he will still be able to come to Sweden as scheduled. All our classes and stuff are on the second/third floors, so a lot of times Aldste Bradley would carry him up and down and give him piggy back rides, haha. When we walked to the temple grounds on Sunday he gave him a piggy back ride the whole way, and everyone we passed was impressed, haha. Aldste Bouton said he felt like Tiny Tim from that Christmas story with Scrooge, haha.
Our investigator, Lennart, became one of our teachers this week. When he first came in and spoke a little English, we were all freaked out a little. But he is super nice and is a good teacher. So from now on all our teachers will be mock investigators, and we teach them until they are baptized, then they give us a new investigator to teach. So that will be fun. I am getting pretty good at the first lesson now that I have taught it a bunch. Sometimes in lessons it is funny because we are in a triple companionship in class, so all three of us have kind of different views of where to take the lesson so we have to kind of figure it out as we go, haha. It can probably be helped a lot by a little better planning, but it is hard.
On Sunday President Worthlin, the BYU president, spoke for devotional. I was super sleepy during it though, so I didn't take great notes. But right after that we watched a talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, and it was great. He talked about how blessed we are to live in the latter days, and how we can probably not even comprehend how blessed we are for that. He also talked about how in all the other dispensations the prophets knew that the people would eventually all fall away, and had to carry that burden, but we know that we will "win" this time. And that is awesome. He also talked about how we really only ever had the one temple in Jerusalem before Joseph Smith, and even that was only fully built for a few decades before it was destroyed each time. So we are so blessed to have HUNDREDS of temples now, and there are so many people who can have their temple work done now.
Today we get 13 new Dutch missionaries in our zone. Six just left on Monday, so it is weird to have them gone. We are almost some of the longest here in the zone now, haha. They are going to try and squish all thirteen "Dutchies" into one classroom, which is pretty crowded for us with nine missionaries. So that will be interesting for them.
Last night we had an emiritus general authority, Elder Hafen, speak to us. He talked about why we go to the temple before missions, and how it is because the promises we make in the temple bless us with power and protection, which are very nice, especially when we go away from home for 18 months or two years. Also, he shared a letter from one of his grandsons who was in the MTC back when the flood of new sister missionaries just started. He said, referring to the sisters: "If you don't look once, you're not a man. If you look twice, you're not a missionary." So that was really funny, haha.
Swedish is going alright. I am trying to start learning the grammar, but it is kind of tough because the only way to know which conjugation type applies to a word is to use it. There are four groups of conjugations for verbs, but you can't tell which one applies to a word unless you just use it, since it's kind of random. But it's not too bad.
I am getting a haircut in about an hour and a half, so wish me luck! I've been told they like to just shave off a bunch of hair on the elders, so hopefully it will be able to look normal, haha.
I hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Aldste Smith
p.s. Here are the picture of Aldste Heiner and I, and of first Nephi 1
p.p.s. (is that the right way?) Thank you so much to everyone who has sent me letters and/or dear elders! They have all been really nice and I really appreciate them!
Also here is Aldste Bradley carrying Aldste Bouton, with Aldste Van Alfen photobombing, haha.
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