Week 7- First Assignment Vasteras, Sweden

Flying to Sweden (time to nap)

Vasteras, Sweden (70 miles from Stockholm) Population 150k

Arrived in Stockholm Sweden

Official LDS missionary walking the streets of Vasteras

Hej hej!!

I left the MTC Monday morning and landed in Sweden on Tuesday morning. Flying in, it is a super flat country with lots of trees, reminds me of home!

Tuesday, we had some orientation, and went street contacting in Stockholm. My first Book of Mormon handed out was to a drunk guy on a park bench, couldn’t understand a word he said but hopefully when he sobers up he reads it! 😊 I also contacted a guy in Stockholm named Kadiir. He said he lives in Västerås so we were going to refer him to the missionaries there but I ended up being sent here! So we met up with him on Thursday and gave him a Book of Mormon and hopefully we can meet him again.

Wednesday, I was assigned my trainer, Äldste Carter from Layton Utah. Super nice guy, I'm stoked to be with him for the next 3 months.

 I like Västerås a lot. It's a cool city, not much of a sky-scraper kind of city but the original H and M is here, kind of cool. It is about 2 hours from Stockholm. We took a train and a bus or two to get here. It's What's different here is that they mainly live in apartments. There are definitely places where people have houses but it's a bit further from the main “stan” (pronounced stawn, meaning “downtown”. We knocked doors in a suburb and people were way less receptive.

Swedish is good, it gets better each day. I feel confident with my speaking, a lot more than my comprehension. I can barely understand what people say here. So I can carry on a one-sided conversation. I can talk to people and sound okay but the problem is I can't understand, so once I can understand than I can be a lot more effective. But if you can't understand, you don't know what to say so I don't get to talk a whole lot. ha-ha I spoke in church and the branch told me how impressed they were, said I have a talent, asked if I was a linguist, ha, ha, but I could hardly understand what they said. It’s getting better each day.  

No interesting foods yet. We went to a recent convert's house yesterday after church and she made us good Swedish pancakes. Her name is Signild, she's a 60 ‘ish year old lady who was baptized about a month ago and loves attending church. She is a very nice lady.  

I love the being here in the mission and only concentrating on spiritual things, i.e., studying the Bible and Book of Mormon, praying for others and for guidance from the Holy Spirit. I have no distractions and I can focus on serving the people of Sweden and teaching them about their elder brother, Jesus Christ. What a great thing!

Aldste Gordon