This is a family that have been meeting with the missionaries for. a. long. time. haha about nine years. they are so solid but just not quite to baptism yet. the dad's name is Hjalmar and he has one of the most solid testimonies of the book of mormon i've ever seen. he will testify of it's truthfulness to anyone. and this is so amazing because he used to be like the head secretary of the church of satan here in sweden! haha a pretty big change if you ask me. his "wife" in the background is anna and the kids are tobias (in hjalmar's hands) and dennis. one day i will tell you this families whole story. it is amazing and is a perfect example of why i am on a mission. to help people like this come to christ. even if it doesn't end in baptism.
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Hey family! How's it going?! So here I am, three days past my six month mark! Crazy! It really has gone by so fast. I cannot believe that I am 1/4 of my mission completed already and that here in a couple weeks I will have my second general conference while on the mission! So crazy. I'm sure you're all anticipating the transfer news so I won't prolong it, haha. I am......... staying in Trollhättan. Elder Sanders will be going to Hägersten with Elder Ouimette from my group. Hägersten is up in the Stockholm South zone. It's super close to Stockholm. I will be getting Elder Saldutti here in Trollhättan. He is transfering from luleå which is the northern most area of the mission. He will probably speak some pretty bad Norlandska (a slightly different dialect that people in the northern part of Sweden speak) haha so that'll be fun. Elder Saldutti was in the MTC the same time as Sanders and Sanders says I'll really like him, so I hope so. He seems like a pretty cool guy. He is Italian-American and he comes from Arizona I believe. His name is Roman Saldutti and aparently Saldutti means soldier in Italian, so his name is roman soldier. Haha pretty cool. So yeah, Wednesday morning Sanders and I will take a train into Göteborg, Sanders will take a transfer train that'll take him to Stockholm and I'll stay in Göteborg and work with the zone leaders for the day until Elder Saldutti's train comes in at 7:00. That'll be exciting. Other than getting transfer calls nothing too exciting happened this week... oh wait! I do have a pretty good story for you! It's probably not a great one for the missionary moment but it's pretty funny.
On Tuesday, Sanders and I were in Uddevalla and we were walking down main street when this guy stops us. He was from the US and was a very loud, vulgar black guy with a mohawk. I guess he recognized us as missionaries and stopped us and started talking to us for a minute. Then he procedes to tell us how he is a DJ and is in Sweden for a tour he's doing with this Swedish rapper named Timbuktu. He's like yeah, you know Lady Gaga? i'm her DJ, haha so we are like oh okay cool.... just thinking that this guy is a little fishy. Then he goes on to tell us how loaded he is and things and then starts talking about how he needs Swedish Crowns because for some reason he can't get any? I don't know, it was really weird. He keeps trying to get us to pull out 3000 crowns for him each telling us that he would pay us for them in US dollars and give us a couple hundred bucks extra for our troubles and all this stuff. What he was saying just didn't add up so we just kinda talked our way out of it and left and went on our way. Well it turns out he really was Lady Gaga's dj, but we still think he was trying to swindle us because it just didn't make sense why he needed us to pull out crowns for him. Haha so yeah, that was an adventure.
Now for a more spiritual story that you could maybe share for the missionary moment in church... hmm... let's see... well this kind of goes along with how you are always wondering about my language. I think I finally had my "The Best Two Years" moment. You know how in the best two years at the very end of the movie Elder Calhoon turns to that dutch guy in the train station and gives him directions in dutch without even realizing it? Well I feel like that happened to me at church yesterday! It was ward conference yesterday and there was a half hour break in between meetings. Elder Sanders went to the bathroom so I went up by myself to these visitors in the ward and started talking to them. I ended up talking to them for like 10-15 minutes with no problem, in all Swedish! It was so awesome! I went and sat down and was like... wait.... what just happened? It was a really good feeling! So yeah, I can definitely testify that the gift of tongues is real! If I can learn Swedish, anyone can learn a language.
It sounds like Yellowstone and fishing was a blast so that's good! I would love to go to Yellowstone one day. I feel like that's somewhere everyone needs to go in their lives. Hopefully this next week of football will be better than last week! Sounds like PG's team definitely has some potential this year. Congratulations to both Aubry and Cody for moving in to the new home and on being prego again! Oh man I'm so excited that I'll have a new niece/nephew to play with once I get home! I'm calling it right now, it's going to be a.... boy. Haha Cody needs a boy and we already have two amazing little girlies.
Well fam that is about it for this week. I love you all so much and am so greatful for all that you do for me! Your prayers are definitely felt. I love you all and will talk to you next week!
love- McKay
