Elder Heiner's Mission to Sweden: January 1, 2015

Would you look at that? I've been in Sweden for four months already. What is life? I'm not even sure how that happened. I'm telling you folks, when you go on a mission, don't sit around. You'll miss the entire thing before you even start working. I'm just going to start telling you all about things from Monday on. I would be way too jobbigt to find out what you don't know about. So if you would please, fasten your seat belts, the emergency exits will be different for all of you, so figure them out, keep your arms and left foot inside of the vehicle if the whales are out, and here we go!

On Monday, we got up all normal like and got ready to do studies but we walked over to the train station instead. Syster Lindsay was transferring to Norrköping and we were going to lend a bit of a hand. She had three 50 pound bags to carry (Systers... they accumulate so much STUFF), and she had a short train switch in Nässjö. We just happen to have a little card that gets us there for free, so we just took our language study on the train and helped out with the luggage so she could calm down a bit. Then we came back just in time to catch another train to Nässjö with Huba, who found out that his job in Nässjö has been playing him, so he was going out there to quit. We found out that if we waited an hour out there, we could catch the tåg back with him, so we ate lunch out there. Then got on the train back with him. Worked pretty well, actually. He was a lot happier coming back. Anyway, by the time we were done with all this travel stuff, it was about 1:30. Elder Jones needed to renew his visa, so we went to the migrationsverket to do that. Actually we didn't. The migrationsverket is where you would go for visa stuff. It's a big deal. Usually they are out in the open. In Jönköping, it's hidden. Quite well. We asked people, we went to other government buildings to ask them, we went to the church to look it up, we looked everywhere... and we found it. Ten minutes after it closed after three hours of looking. Turns out, it's a block away from our apartment in the corner of a huge department store. Whatever. Found it. Then we went to the church to play basketball with the Elders Quorum. It was a lot of fun. Had a visit with Tommy afterwards.

On Tuesday, we got up and had a lesson with Alex right before church watch. Went up to Öxnehaga and knocked some doors before it got dark. We would have kept going, but we had the realization that it was almost New Years. In an immigrant rich area. With lots of explosives. I would have loved to stay and watch, but it just wasn't safe. So we worked somewhere else. Had a lesson with the Schelin's. It was good. They have family in town who were really great in contributing to the lesson. It was fantastic.

Wednesday held a very boring day. We were going to meet with people, but they realized it was New Years Eve, and didn't want to do that. We decided to do area book work. Stuff that needed to be done eventually, when we weren't going to have a good proselyting day, and there we go! President said that we were not to proselyte after five, so we hung around the apartment. Lasse invited us over so we could go watch the fireworks at midnight. Curfew was 12:30, so we went for it. It was a ton of fun. Everyone had fireworks, all through the town. We went up to the top of the town to watch as everyone blew stuff off through the town. It was really great to watch. I had a good time.

That was the last few days. They were good. I enjoyed them. This will be the last weird pday in the holiday schedule, thank goodness. We have no idea what we are going to do today. Nothing is open. Everyone is inside recovering from all the drinking last night. We'll figure something out, I'm sure. But today is pday, and I need to catch up a little bit on some thank you notes, so I hope you don't mind if I go ahead and do those now...

Thank you Swedes, for being so worried about the dogs that you don't start fireworks until 11:55 at night to minimize dogs being injured. Thank you Arabs for not being so full of it, and starting your fireworks at 7 in the morning. A week before.

Thank you Migrationsverket, for being that very important office that every foreigner needs to visit. Hidden away from where any foreigner would look.

That's it from me! I hope you all have a great week and a wonderful New Year!

Äldste Heiner