Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Burn baby burn!! Six months down!

Hejsan!  (Hello)

6 months down! :D
A year and a half to go!
Six months down everybody!  Crazy how fast time fly's by.  I hit my six month mark this last Friday and it's a missionary tradition to burn a tie at six months so we went up to our roof and burned that sucker!  Next up is a year and I get to burn a shirt then!  I'm feeling a lot more comfortable with Swedish now and can understand a lot.  I speak more fluently and have even picked up an accent so people can’t tell I’m an American any more! :)  My grammar still needs work and still working on widening my vocabulary.  I remember when I was getting trained in my first area and it felt like i just wasn't cut out for missionary work and that I would never get it or feel comfortable doing it (speaking the language).  I'm feeling a lot more comfortable now.  I just have to keep working for it and pushing it.  This last week was awesome!  The temperature dropped a lot and it already feels like it’s dark almost all day.  It’s going to snow this next week too!  We also had some fun activities at church this week! 

Started off with Äldste Bailey I going to play basketball with a bunch of Jehovah Witnesses on Tuesday night .  Quote Äldste Bailey "On Tuesday, we were invited to play basketball with a guy and some of his friends at this old school (it's hard to find a place to play ball in Sweden). So we decided to go. When we got there we found out that like everyone there were Jehovah's Witnesses (J dubs). These guys are usually never willing to listen to our message but we tried anyways.  It was really fun to be able to play ball again.  It was hard to shoot the ball unless you shot a frozen rope because there was some gymnastic equipment hanging from the ceiling that the ball would hit almost every time, but I was able to dribble.  I know I'm not supposed to think about this, but in my head I was thinking "Jehovah's Witnesses vs. The Mormons" and that I would show them who the true church is hahaha but don't worry I didn't say any of this stuff and I kept my cool and was nice :) One guy was actually pretty interested that we talked to afterwords.  He said he would like to talk more about our beliefs. We are going to go tomorrow as well and feel out the situation. If we don't find anyone interested, we probably won't go back but it was still super fun."  My companion is a crazy baller.  (amazing basketball player) I'm not even super good but it was fun playing against Europeans that have never really played in their lives haha. 

Rockin out with members on
Music night at church!
Syster Irene and I touching
 people spiritually. 
This last Saturday was Music Night. They do it once a year and several people from the ward perform somthing. I ended up singing a song with all the missionaries (4 Aldstes, 2 Systers) that we wrote about teaching in Swedish.  It was actually pretty funny haha.  Then I performed Nämare Gud Till Dig (Nearer My God to Thee) with Syster Irene playing for me. Then Syster Irene and I sang Min Själ Dig Gläd (Be Still My Soul).  After that we were asked to perform that Nämare Gud Till Dig the next day at Ward Conference so we did and it was awesome.   Super fun!  I always love singing. 

The hunters in the forrest on the prowl
We got a lot of referrals this week!  (meaning other cities in Sweden refer investigators that live in our city that are interested in meeting) There is one really positive guy that came to the Music night and we will see were that goes.  He came from East Africa.  We are also continuing to move forward with our baptisimal date with Klara!  She’s doing great and just sent us a message about how she was having some problems and then prayed and how she felt so much better.  This is a Swede that has had no relationship or knowledge about God her whole life!  We had the opportunity to teach her how to pray when we first met her and to hear her first prayer.  It’s always special hearings someones first prayer…. It’s so sincere.  Some of these people really are wanting to know and we are just here to help them come to that knowledge and to invite them to act.

Love you all! Happy November!
Äldste Blackburn
On splits with Äldste Peterson!
Syster Kamauoha teaching Hula Dance
on the ward music night!


Quick pic while out contacting
Syster Irene and I stepping into the
"Rökzone" (smoke zone) as rebels. 
Our Uppsala missionaries saying goodbye to our
dear friend Barbra going back to Cananda!

Burning that 6 months away with a tie
from the thrift store and lighter fluid 
:)









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