Sorry this is a little scattered...

Hey fam! How's it going for everyone?? So it sounds like this past week was a good one back home! Football sounds good Dad, hopefully PG can keep up that momentum they have and keep the wins rolling in! It"s super cool that you got to go up and see Megs play at the U! Man I miss her! That's too bad they lost so bad, but that's awesome that she is still starting! I know that she misses you guys and being at the house just as much as she misses me, she tells me she misses the family all the time. I'm sure she was thrilled that you guys came up and supported her. Keep in touch with her. Don't let her sneak away! ha ha and Dad, take care of any male threats if they come up, ha ha. The Brigham City Temple sounds so pretty! I'll have to go onto lds.org and see if they have any finished pictures of it. I love the temple so much, I definitely miss going to it so often, but I am coming up on six months out and every six months President lets you go to the temple if you want. It has to be on a p-day though, so maybe I can get a temple trip planned one of these p-days. This week is my last week of being trained. so after this week we will be done with the twelve week training program which means me and Sanders are up for being transferred. We feel like it will probably be in the next 2-4 weeks so we'll see what happens. I will most likely stay here in Trollhättan and get a new comp and Sanders will go somewhere else, possibly zone leader so that's exciting! That's cool that you saw that pic of me and Elder Christensen mom! He is super awesome, i loved being on splits with him. he has only been out about 4 months longer than me. The line of trees in the background is actually down town Trollhättan. It's super pretty. Mom you were wondering what our Sundays are like? Well we go to a coordination meeting at 10:30 with the ward mission leader and others, then at eleven we start church. We are on the backwards schedule so we start with priesthood and then end with sacrament. But yeah, we don't really do a whole lot extra other than take care of investigators and make sure they have ward fellowshipers when they come. We also look for less actives and make sure they feel welcome when they come. Then after church we kinda hang around and talk to everyone, set up appointments with less actives and investigators, things like that. After that we either go to a members for dinner if we get invited or head home and make some food real quick, then we go out and proselyte/teach for the rest of the night like it's a normal day. On Sunday nights when we get home there is kind of a tradition in the mission that Sunday nights are movie nights because it's p-day eve. So we have some ice cream or something and them watch like the Restoration movie or Finding Faith in Christ or something like that, so that's always fun. Oh and do you remember the movie 17 Miracles? Well I guess President ok'd it for us to watch so we are heading to Göteborg for p-day like always and we are going to have a movie day there with the zone and watch it. That should be fun! This week, our biggest adventure was that we went to a little city called Strömstad. It is about 10 minutes or so from the border of Norway, ha ha so that was exciting! It is a beautiful little port city with lots of water and boats. I'll make sure to send some pictures. We visited a less active there and he was so happy to see us. Missionaries don't get out to all these little cities very often so it's cool to be able to. Oh, random but I just remembered Dad asked about the fruit here, ha ha! It is basically the same here, the only thing different that I've noticed is I have not seen one regular sized watermelon! They only have the mini ones. Oh and they are famous for their strawberries here. They are called jordgubbar which means... earth guy? ha ha beats me. Speaking of food, a member invited us to eat lunch with her on Thursday and she said she is going to feed us sill. Apparently it is just a step up from surströmming. ha ha so wish me luck on that! Well we need to head soon to catch a bus and I need to get some pictures attached so I'm going to head. I love you all so very much and miss you too! Thank you for always keeping me in your prayers, you are always in mine.


love- McKay.

On The Road Again....Again

 Hey there mom and pop! How's it going? Sounds like Disneyland is a hot sweaty good time! ha ha So that's good! That's super cool Cars Land is open now! I can't wait to go to it. Hopefully by the time I get home it'll kinda be calmed down because it won't be so new. That is super fun that Mark and Jo and the family were there for a little while too! I think we need to get another Disney/cruise trip with the goodies and drapers again. that would be sooo fun! maybe.... coming home present?? ha ha I'm just sayin... think about it! So this week was a good one, lots of traveling again. me and sanders had the car for all of Tuesday and Wednesday so we hit the road hard. Both day's we mapped out our route and hit the road about noon and didn't get back until eight or nine at night. so. much. driving. ha ha We put around 500 kilometers on the car in two days. We only get 2000 a month... ha ha whoops. So we ended up taking the car back to Goteborg on Thursday when we went to district meeting just so we wouldn't use all the miles. it was really good though because we were able to get to a lot of tiny farm towns outside of trestad (tricity. that's what they call our area because of trollhättan, vänersborg, and uddevalla) Get ready for a lot of pictures today because the Swedish countryside is beautiful! we saw alot of really cool old churches from the 17 and 18 hundreds and a viking graveyard and alot of other really cool stuff. we even got to drive the car onto a ferry and ride it to an island! ha ha it was alot of fun and all the less actives were really happy to see us. they never get visits since they live so far away. so mom you were wondering about how teaching goes down with me and sanders. Well he leads the lessons and I usually just come in and add my thoughts and testimony or help clarify things or share personal experiences. My participation keeps going up as my Swedish keeps getting better. So on Thursday I went on splits with Elder Christensen. He is the one in that cinnamon roll picture with the crazy blond hair. It was really fun! He is from Draper area, went to Jordan high. I really like him alot. I wouldn't mind being comps with him at all in the future. He is into rock climbing and mountain biking too. So that was fun to talk to him about that stuff. Well I'll end with my most stressful experience this week. The time finally came and I was called upon to give a blessing in Swedish. One of the less actives we visited on Wednesday had been really sick lately and wanted a blessing of health. So Sanders anointed her and then I gave her a blessing. The whole blessing was probably about 40 seconds long. Very very simple. ha ha But it was good and I hope she felt the spirit that was there. That's all that matters. I was shaking so bad though! ha ha It was so stinking nerve racking! ha ha But it went well. My Swedish is slowly getting there. So that's good. Well fam that's it for now. It is one of the zone leaders birthdays today, Elder Linford. So we are going to go celebrate that. I love you all so much and will talk to you next week!

love- your elder.

I can't think of a good subject...

Hej Fam!

How's it going everyone? This week was pretty good for me, not super eventful but a lot of traveling again. Monday,Tuesday, and Thursday we were in Göteborg for different things but other than that we got to get some good work done in Trollhättan so that's good. Irene is still slowly progressing so that's good, and our other investigators.... well I'll let you know when we meet with them. I don't think I've told you about this but in Sweden they have this thing called semester which is like their summer vacations, but the government makes it mandatory that everyone with a job, no matter the job, gets a 2-5 week semester in July. That means NO ONE is home in the month of July. They all go to Norway and stuff so now that they are all getting back from semester hopefully we'll be able to meet them more often. It sounds like there is a little bit of confusion about transfers and how that works because both mom and dad asked about it. Here's how it works. There are no transfers in this mission. ha ha okay so there are, but President doesn't follow any kind of set schedule. He just moves people around when he feels prompted. Obviously there are some transfers every nine weeks because that's when we get new missionaries from the mtc, but other than that you could get a call from President any given Saturday and leave that Monday for your new area. Kinda crazy! A sister in our district actually got the call this week so she is leaving on Tuesday I believe. I actually have no idea how much longer Sanders and I will be together, but we are guessing probably around six more weeks because that's when the new greenies come from the mtc. So we'll see what happens. Oh, so breaking news! As I was writing I was just informed that Sanders and I now have a car! ha ha, Here in Sweden you can only drive on a US license for one year and then you have to resubmit for eligibility. so the zone leaders here in Göteborg, both their licenses are expired so while they wait to renew we get their car! I'll let you know how it is driving a tiny European car after five months straight of not touching a car! ha ha this should be fun! The streets are crazy here! Mom, sounds like you and the girls had a blast swimming, even with the wrong swimsuits! ha ha oh man, I miss those little girlie's so much! I'm glad you had a blast fishing Dad! Oh and happy birthday! Sorry it's a little late, but I hope it was a good one! 26 again huh? Man you're getting young! Well everyone, I hope you all have a fantastic week, we are going to go do something fun for Syster Shnieber's last P-day here in Göteborg so I'm gonna head. I love you all so much! Have a good week! Oh and Ty said you're heading to Cali and Disneyland? Is that this week? If it is have so much fun and take lots of pictures! Go on pirates at least ten times for me! ha ha love you all, talk to you later.

I Feel Like a Nomad

Hey Family! Can I just start off by saying I love you?! because I do! So stinking much! You are the absolute best, all of you. So this week was a good one, but a busy one. We were in Uddevalla on Wednesday, Göteborg on Thursday and then Stockholm on Friday. It was a little crazy. I did find a coat in Uddevalla on Wednesday, Mom. I think it is going to be really good! It's good looking, waterproof and I got it for 50% off, so that was a sweet deal! I ended up having to buy a new umbrella with it too... I may or may not have left my last umbrella on a bus in Vänersborg... ha ha whoops! I guess I'll tell you about Friday. We have this thing called the 12 week program that is a program both the trainer and the trainee follow for the first twelve weeks in the field. It's a study program for our companionship study basically. President and sister Newell brought all the trainer/trainee companionship's into Stockholm on Friday to have kind of a review and discussion about the program, what we like, what we don't like, that kind of thing. It was really good but I'm not gonna lie, kinda boring. Once we are done here in 3 weeks I'll have done the 12 week program for 15 weeks because we started in NC (it's a world wide program, not just Sweden) and we got three weeks in and then we started over when we got here. Sanders and I got on a bus at 5:30 Friday morning and got home at 9:30 that night. It's about five hours on trains/buses each way, so we were actually traveling for about double the time we were even in Stockholm, but that's okay. It wasn't too bad. It looks like we are going to be world travelers again this week, we will be in Göteborg three days this week and Uddevalla one. It feels like we never even get time to work in actual Trollhättan! We are on fire here right now though! We have recently reactivated two less actives and have had investigators in church for the past three weeks straight. That's more than Trollhättan has had in the past year! Our baptismal date, Irene, is doing really well actually! We found out she has Asbergers, which explains alot, but she is still completely teachable and eligible for baptism. She is still working on quitting coffee, but it's getting better! She has gone from where the first time we met with her she just kept saying she will not quit drinking coffee and it doesn't say she can't drink coffee in the bible and all this stuff, to now she says she feels bad when she drinks coffee! It is so cool to see her change of heart as we work with her. and by we, I mean the spirit. Me and Ä. sanders do nothing, it's all the spirit working on her, so please continue to pray for her! It sounds like you had a great week with the reunion and all! Haha oh man, I loved the story of the Seinfeld moment! You have no idea how many times I've tried to make Seinfeld references in the past five months and everyone just stares at me because they have no idea what I'm talking about. HOLY COW, Michael Phelps is crazy! I can't believe he came back and just destroyed again! Did he do better this olympics or last? That's funny he's retiring, probably wants to give someone else a chance, haha. Well Dad, have fun fishing this week, you lucky dog! Oh and that is super cool those connections you made to Sweden! It really is funny that you can make that many connections to a tiny country with only 10 million people. Your friend was right Mom, Göteborg is the best place in the mission! Well Göteborg zone that is. I love it to death! I hope I get called to serve in the actual city of Göteborg some day. It is so pretty! I'm gonna head for this week I think. I love you all so much and hope all is well. Give Mya and Sadie loves for me! Oh and tell Robyn and Brooke congrats on being prego!


Until next week-

love your missionary.

ps. Yes Mom I'm getting your pictures, thank you so much! I love them. Next package you send I would love some more pictures! but i'll need another one of those little mini albums like I have. Mine is full.