Gott nytt år!!!

Hope everyone had a good New Years. My companion and I spent it with the coolest Colombian family. We ate some good enchiladas and even got to see some sweet fire works! To top the night off.. we were driving home and looked out the window to find the sky filled with the Northern lights dancing in the sky with colors of green, red and white. We pulled off the road and watched for a few minutes. The Northern lights are truly stunning and I feel so lucky to have this in my backyard up here! 

The darkest day of the year was this last week, and the sun set at about 1:50pm and rose around 10:00am. It’s a good three and half hours of sun! It doesn’t even rise all the way so it will be dark most of the day haha, but the sky is always filled with intense color. Most beautiful sky I have ever seen. Even the dark is beautiful! The darkness hasn’t really had an big effect on me this year. Just gotta keep taking those Vitamin D´s!

We were asked to take a picture like we were teaching someone by the mission office.. so this is totally fake so you all know haha. This is the Colombian family, the Inguarons.

This week in general was a killer week for Elder Baquedano and I. We have a lot of awesome people to teach and 5 of them are preparing for Baptism within these next two months. Two of them are Swedish. The other three come from Iran and Somalia. This last week I also had the opportunity to travel down to Örnsköldsvik to go on splits with my old companion from Jakobsberg, Elder Hatch. We had a good time together. I got a little sick but we still went hard and taught some good lessons together. Even got some free pizza from their investigator! He invited us to go sauna with him (**sauna use in Sweden is a cultural thing.  A lot of people have them in their homes and are used almost daily by many) but we had to refuse the offer no matter how tempting that was haha. But It was a good splits. 

The sisters missionaries were creeping around
and took this pic of us while we were teaching
a lesson to a girl on the street haha.

This last Sunday we had an awesome sacrament meeting!  The four missionaries here in Umeå were asked to speak. It was really good actually. Elder Baquedano and I sang Nearer my God to Thee but did a clever little thing with it. The first verse was in French which he sang while I "oo"ed along.. and the the second verse I sang in English while he did the "oo"ing. Then the last verse we sang together in Swedish with the melody and harmony. We had a young man play the piano for us and it sounded cool!

New Years eve!

I talked about Gods plan for us and how we can start the new year out right. I talked about trusting in the Lord when things get hard or when you don’t feel ready to do something. I compared it to a Pole Vault analogy.. We have to get a bigger pole if we want to jump higher but to get a bigger pole we have to be strong and fast enough.. with good technique. It can be scary to get a bigger pole and sometimes you don’t feel ready.. But your coach knows you and he won’t push you too far. He knows your limits just like the Lord does! A little cheesy but it works.

That same Sunday we got a text from a guy we talked to just days before on the street. A 26 year old Swede who is so cool! We had been staying in contact with him, and he texted us asking if church was still going. We said it ended but we were still at the church doing some work. He rode 45 minutes to church in the cold and ice on his bike! We showed him the church and he is probably one of the most prepared people I have met in my life. He was saying how after he talked with us he has been thinking a lot about church and wants to be a part of it. He said he felt good when he talked to us about the gospel and that he wants to come to church every Sunday and even help out! How cool?? So he said he wants to work towards baptism in February. I think its amazing how God prepares people and puts us in peoples path when the time is right for them. 

Well! I’m am flying down to Stockholm in a few hours for a training with my companion, so gotta rap things up now. Hope you all have a awesome first week of the new year! 

Äldste Blackburn