Week 49 WEIRD THINGS ABOUT NORRLAND Service and Mission Leadership Council

Hallå!!!

This week has been a week of changes that is for sure!! Leaving Jakobsberg was very bittersweet and I am going to miss it but it will be awesome to serve up here in Umeå as well. I came in on Wednesday early to catch a flight to come up to Norrland. Honestly most of it is a blur and saying goodbyes are always the worst part but thats ok it went well and I got up there in one piece and my bags were not overweight!!! (Harder than it sounds). I am now companions with Elder Krebs who is going home in August so it is quite likely that I will send him home because he only has two transfers left which also means that I am going to have to take the initiative and keep the area moving during that time!! So far it is going really well between us though we are trying to figure out how we work and teach and how we are going to do trainings and help the zone. It has definitely been a weird couple of days.

On Thursday we were sent back down to Stockholm for MLC (mission leadership council) where the assistants and President and Syster Beckstrand instruct us on where they have felt the missionary work has been lacking and where we need to improve. It is then our responsibility to make sure that the information goes down and gets to everyone. The training was amazing and I could really feel the mission shifting into something that it hasn't been before. The mission here in Sweden has a lot of areas for improvement and it seems like we are getting the missionaries we need to step up to the plate and make it better for the people investigating the church and for members. We are going to see a lot of changes coming up in the next several months in terms of service and I am just blessed and happy to be a part of it.

On Saturday we went around doing a lot of Service which was a huge change of pace for me because I haven't had the opportunity to do service for a long time. We helped this lady named Kaarina, she is Finnish and a super nice lady that has started coming back to church. But she fed us and we got a lot of work done in her yard in preparation for the summer. We were also blessed to move a piano which is always my favorite thing to do and my back felt it afterwards which actually felt really good (it was a good hurt, I lifted with my legs mom don't worry).

There are a lot of areas for improvement here in Umeå but I am excited to get to work and see what I can do to help. This branch is super good at feeding missionaries we have about 5 meal appointments a week which is undoubtedly the highest in Sweden so I am not going to complain. But lets see if we cant get them to do a little missionary work as well :). What I have realized the past couple of days is that I have a Looooooong way to go before I am a perfect missionary but that all I have to do is what I c an and thats what the Lord expects and what He is expecting to work with. He doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called. I am grateful for that.

WEIRD THINGS ABOUT NORRLAND:
1. The dialect is weird, they use han instead of honom all of the time and that is basically the difference between he and him.... so I am just always confused because that grammar is awful.
2. the Sun goes down for a couple of hours at best. I haven't seen it dark up here yet.
3. we eat reindeer a lot apparently...
4. It is beautiful

Love you all!! Thanks for everything you do
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