Elder Heiner's Mission to Sweden: August 6, 2014

So life has kind of hit a stride here at the MTC. We have just about done everything there is to do here, so the days start blending together. Don't get me wrong, the days are still super long and I love every minute of it, but I just don't really know what happened on each day. Last week seems like ages ago, but right after I sent my last note, I was able to go to the temple with the rest of my zone, so that was really cool. I've pretty much decided that if I could somehow get a calling or job to live in the temple, I would love it. I would just stay in the temple all day, every day. It's the best place in the world. So that was the end of last p-day...

On that Thursday, Äldste Smith and I wore our sweaters because it was "Sweater Weather." Which means five degrees cooler, but it was fun. I don't know if I've said this before, but Smith and I coordinate our outfits, so that makes life a little more interesting.

On Friday... you know what? I don't remember if anything happened on Friday... That's weird. We had casual Friday though, so that was fun. Casual Friday means we loosed our ties, wow.

On Saturday, during soccer, Elder Sakurada shinned Äldste Bouton in the foot, so that left a bruise on his shin. Bouton's foot is a little messed up though... We originally thought it was broken, but they did an xray, and all that happened was the incident destroyed all of his soft tissue. Fun stuff.

On Sunday, we don't have any class, but we still hung out in our classroom. It's where we spend ALL of our time, that little classroom. It's alright, we like it in there, and we keep it clean. Or to be more honest, Syster Allred makes us keep it clean. But since it was fast Sunday, we had mission conference instead of priesthood meeting. All of the MTC mission presidency and their wives talked to us. They had some really cool things to say. One of them quoted a poem Elder Packer once read that I really liked:

All the water in the world could not sink the smallest ship, even if it tried,

Unless first, it had got inside.

Likewise, the world’s worst temptations, even the blackest sin,

Cannot dream to harm you, unless you let it in.

Or something like that. I really liked it. So then we went to sacrament meeting, and then to our room some more... Then in the evening President Worthen of BYU spoke to us. It was really good. That evening, Äldste Smith and I went to a film of an Elder Holland MTC talk. It was... Amazing. It was the kind of thing my father would have done pretty much anything to see. You can only see it in the MTC, so I guess I'll just send him the notes.

On Monday, we had Tacky Monday! I wore black suit pants with a blue suit coat with a brown belt (with black shoes!) and an orange tie. It was amazing. But seriously. Don't ever do that. It was funny once. Only once.

Yesterday, we had Tuesday Devotional. Bruce C. Hafen. He was really cool. He talked about how important it is to go to the temple. He also had a pretty funny line in the beginning. He was talking about how there are a ton of girls at the MTC nowadays with the new age change. He told the elders, "If you don't look once, you're not a man. If you look twice, you're not a missionary." It was hilarious. I think that pretty much sums up the week.

Wait! I need to talk about our investigator Lennart! We were teaching him and everything was going great. We got him to read Mormons Bok (that's The Book of Mormon in Swedish) and pray about it, and he started believing in God and we were going to have a great lesson with him that next day... but then he stopped being Lennart and started being Brother Sagers, our teacher. I'm not sure I quite trust this Sagers guy... I'm just kidding. Brother Sagers is really cool. He got off of his mission in March, so he's fresh off of the potato wagon. He teaches us in the afternoon, while Brothers Marchant and Bush teach us in the morning. Now I teach two new investigators, Jonathan (pronounced yanaughtan) and Johannes. Brother Bush is Jonathan, who is a guy from Sweden who is really cool. He has no religious beliefs, but is willing to learn, it seems. Brother Marchant is Johannes. He is from Ghana, but lives in Sweden. He is in Utah for his job training for a year. For McDonald's... We thought that was funny. He seems to just want to know about the church because his wife told him to look into it while he was in Utah. Anyway. All this is in Swedish, so it's a little harder than you might think. And people pretending to be other people.

I think that's all I got for this week. If you want me to talk about something, let me know. If you want to send me a letter, Dear Elder is a website that will get me a letter that day, so that would be cool. I hope everyone is doing well,

Äldste Heiner