April 25, 2016

   Hello all the people that happen to be reading this little bit of text on this fine day.
   Busy day, short letter!
   There is so much work to do here, it's absolutely crazy. We have four people that should be getting in the water by the time I go home.
   Miracle story time. Stake conference day, April, 2016, Utby, Göteborg. Church starts at eleven, but usually starts at ten. We wake up, do our studies, and I have this feeling like, "be at the church at ten". And I'm like, that's weird. So then at ten we get a call from a lady telling us to get to the church, and we're like, "fine, here we come." So we go the church and right as we walk in, a guy walks in with his new convert sister, and she's like, "this is my brother whose been in Sweden for twenty days, I've been telling him about the church, he wants to be baptized." "Okej, we can do that," Says we. So now we're teaching this guy, super cool guy, about Jesus and the church! It's super awesome! God makes sure we're in the right place even if we're too dumb to catch the first hint.
   Here's one for you! We were out contacting, and there was this lady, and she must of not seen us because she just about had a heart attack when we stopped her! three feet in the air, stumbled and almost fell over, I thought her poor heart was gonna stop beating. But then she just starts walking away, breathing really heavily and glaring us down with the most intense death stare you ever did see. Hilarious.
   But yes. Life is good. Elder Halterman and I are having a great time, we're working hard, and we are seeing success.
It snowed the other day. We got another inch of snow the morning before stake conference on Sunday. Just thought some of you thought that would be an interesting fact.
   Have a great week everyone!
Äldste Heiner

This is us and Lennart!

Driving in Europe.
 Driving is absolutely insane, they're all horrible drivers,
 and I've driven in Utah.

Swedes think googly eyes are super funny to put
on statues.  They are right.

More statues and the imitation thereof.

The companionship.

A member sent us this, very true and funny.

People have cool dalahäst collections!

Hedgehog!

True things found in stan.

April 18, 2016

Hello to the people. I'm doing well.
Things in Utby are super good! It's a giant ward here, so that's new. Haven't had something so big since Jönköping, and I think this is bigger. It should be pretty fun! My companion is super awesome, so that's always a plus. His name is Samuel Halterman. He is from Minnesota, we've really enjoyed the last few days... it'll be good.  We do fun things together. Like really random things, for example talking in a weird voice as we roll play to each other.  We also have the tendency to spontaneously turn hymns into beat box hip hop songs. And mash up other songs into those. It's fun.

Our apartment is really small, we live with a member family, but we don't really ever see them. The apartment is not really a part of the house even though it's connected to it. And I have a car now.

We were teaching a guy named Jeff this week and we taught him the word of wisdom. Right now, he smokes about 5 cigarettes a day. (used to be a pack a day). I challenged him to let that pack in his hand be the last one he ever buys. Then asked for two of the cigarettes. They are currently in our car.

Here is a fun story about Swedish history:
Once upon a time, King Gustolf Adolf of Sweden wanted the mightiest war ship in the world. So they commenced building it. Gustolf oversaw the construction, but half way through decided he wanted it longer, so they changed the width without changing the height. Then he decided he wanted another gun deck up on top. And then he decided he wanted those guns to be the heaviest guns.
All of the engineers knew that it would be way too top heavy, but no one dared tell the king. So they did it. The day came for the bouyancy test (they put it in water and run back and forth from one side of the deck to the other to see how much the boat rocks). It failed the test, but no one dared tell the king.
Then they decided to put it to sea. The Vasa lasted total of 4200ft before it sank.
So don't be afraid to tell people that changes need to be made. Be bold sometimes.

When boldness is coupled with love, and a sincere desire to bless the life of the one being taught. It will be received and can ultimately change the life of the learner. God answers those people that search for him.

But yeah! I hope you all have a great week!
Elder Heiner

PS  Thank you to Elder Halterman for half of the words I typed. I have no time.

Sad to say that all the picture attachments came through blank today...

April 11, 2016

   Hello all of the people! How is it going with the all of you? Fun fact of the week, if you were to go three months in the future of Thursday, I would be standing in the Eugene Oregon airport. Isn't that funny? Freaks me out, actually. Like a lot. I have less than three months before I take off the badge.
   Anyway. No time to think about that.
   This week was super good! We were able to get out and work hard and make sure that our baptism this week went smoothly, and it did! That was easily the highlight of the week. The actual baptism was a breeze to make sure happened, we just went out and picked up Maryam and brought her to the church where everything was ready to go! We had a sweet program and she was baptized by the member that brought her to church. It was super good! Her confirmation the Sunday after is a completely different story. We give her a call like ten minutes before sacrament meeting starts and and we're all like, "So where are you?" "I'll be there in thirty minutes," says she. Well that just wasn't going to fly thinks we, and we grab the closest member with a car and we whip out to her home and pick her up to get her back to her confirmation. It was pretty fun, a little stressful, but everything that needed to happen did, so I'm not worried about it at all.
   Another thing that happened this week was a transfer call from president. I'll be heading up to Göteborg, the second biggest city, from here, Malmö,  the third biggest city. Keeping the proximity of the end of my mission in mind, we can assume that this will be the area of my death. I would not be surprised at all. In fact, if I moved again, I would be quite shocked.
   So yeah, those are my two big news blips for the day. Another fun thing that happened this week were the two eight year old baptisms that were on Saturday. We were asked to attend both of them, so that was fun.
   Ever had a member drive you around in a rickshaw? Well let me tell you about the time we did. We show up to a member meal and the member is all like, "Oh we ain't going inside bros... Hop in." So I do and Elder DeMordaunt is all, "Naw man, I'll be on this skateboard and you can just drag me." So and hour and a half later, after doing rickshaw contacting with this member, it's time to go home, so we do. Hilarious evening. That'll probably be one of those mission stories that I tell my grand kids.
   Well, that's it for me! Have a great week!
Äldste Heiner

Baptism Pic.

What does this tell you about the difference between
elders and sisters?

Me and the African three Nephites of Malmö.

This is the member we rickshawed with.
 Super fun guy.

Did you know weeds in Swedish looked like this?
 I did. So I took a picture.