Comin' in HOT

Hallå Familjen!


I'm glad to hear that you all got a kick out of the zombie lesson that Elder Whitworth and I gave at zone training last week. ha ha It was definitely a lot of fun :) This week wasn't nearly as much traveling as last but we still had a little bit. It was zone conference on Thursday up in Göteborg so on Wednesday night we took a train up to Halmstad which is the northern most area in our zone, and stayed the night with the elders there and then took a train the rest of the way into Göteborg on Thursday morning. Zone conference went really well and then we turned around and went back to Helsingborg that night. Other than that we were in Helsingborg all week so that was really nice to have a full week here in our area. We had 5 investigators in church yesterday, two of which are looking very positive. The first one is a lady named Hermie. She is a referral from Lucy, a Philippino member in our ward. Hermie is also from the Philippines and is very interested in the church. We actually sat down with her and Lucy during Sunday school and taught her the restoration and then invited her to be baptized. She said yes very willingly so we then felt good about extending her a commitment to a date. So we committed her to be baptized on the 13 April and she accepted! So that was pretty awesome! We will have to teach her really rapidly to get her ready by that date but we have faith that she can be ready to be baptized then. The second really positive investigator that we had in church yesterday was another member referral! His name is Gregor and he is the boyfriend of one of the young women in our ward. I guess Moa, the young woman, was feeling sick a few weeks back and Gregor wanted to help her in some way. Well he didn't know what to do but he knew that she was a member of the church so he decided to try praying for her. Well, the next day Moa felt fine again and Gregor was like, holy crap! Prayer works! ha ha So he became interested in the church and wants to learn more! How awesome is that! So yeah, we met him for the first time in church yesterday and set up a time to meet him this week! So definitely keep both him and Hermie in your prayers!

So that is awesome that Barry Holman will be the new bishop! He will do great! He is a really good guy. Mike and Korman will make great counselors too. Mike is a great guy, I really like him a lot. He was always one of my favorite leaders in the ward. That is fun to hear about all the new mission calls in the ward too! I can't believe that we have close to twenty missionaries in the ward! That is so crazy! I think I am starting to forget how big the church really is back home in Utah. I'm so used to being in sacrament meetings with 70 people max (and I've been in what are considered big wards here in Sweden) that it will be crazy to come home to our huge ward again!

So mom and dad, about picking me up next year. I think it would be really fun, but I don't think you guys want to come here in March. It is still pretty cold. Down south here in Helsingborg theres not much snow but it is still pretty chilly and up north in Stockholm they still have quite a bit of snow. I'm not really sure if I'd want to be picked up... it would be really fun, but I think I kinda want to have the experience of coming down the escalator and seeing you all for the first time:) But we'll see. I've still got a long time left! But if you were to ask me I would say lets just come back in June of next year. Because then it is for sure summer, you will be able to experience seeing the sun at midnight and, if we plan it right, we could come for midsummer which is one of the biggest Swedish holidays and it is in the middle of June. So that is what I would say. Obviously that would be more expensive because then you would have to pay for my flights instead of the church, but I think you would be able to get a better experience of Sweden if we did that. What do you guys think?

ANYWAYS! enough of this trunky talk! ha ha

So it sounds like you guys had a good weekend filled with good food as you celebrated Tyson's late b-day! Man I miss dad's BBQ skills and your rice pudding mom! That will have to be one of the first things we have once I'm home. So you asked about some of my favorite Swedish dishes mom... hmm... lets see. I still love the classic köttbullar och potatismos (meatballs and mashed potatoes with brown sauce and lingon berry jam. Like what you get at Ikea) I also really love flygande jakob (flying Jacob) it isn't really a Swedish dish at all but Swedes like it a lot. As for deserts, my favorite has got to be kladdkaka, which is like a super gooey, molten chocolate cake. It is amazing! If you could get a kladdkaka recepie down I would kiss your feet momma! ha ha It is soo yummy! Don't worry momma, I will be filling a suitcase full of Swedish food to bring home with me! There is going to be so much that I miss!
Well that is about it for this week I think. The work is going really good here in Helsingborg and I am still loving it. I hope you all have an amazing week and I will talk to you next week!

Love you all so much!

- Äldste McKay.



Slay The Zombie!!

Hello everyone! So this week was a crazy one but was super good!

So on Wednesday we took a train up to Stockholm for zone leader council and it was really good. We all got together and discussed with President about what the mission needs right now and what we are going to do with our zones specifically. During that council they gave us some time to to sit down in companionship's and really discuss specifically what our zones need and me and Elder Whitworth came up with the best plan! Our whole training would be focused on "slaying the missionary zombie inside of us" We just felt like our zone had lost the fire and the love for missionary work and were just going through the motions of it like a zombie. So we planned our a whole lesson, all about slaying the inner zombie! ha ha So then, on Friday we had a zone training with our whole zone in Lund and it went so awesome! We started out by presenting everyone with three "weapons" for killing the zombie. #1. Prayer #2. Obedience and #3. Love for the people. We trained on the "why" of each one of these things and read the doctrine behind them and the spirit was so strong! Then, at the end of the meeting, it was time to slay the zombie. ha ha. We started up a really epic song, the x-men first class theme song, and gave this huge speech about choosing a weapon, standing up, facing the zombie, and taking him down. Then Elder Whitworth pulled away a sheet that we had hung over the white board to reveal a zombie drawn on the board, then I pulled a Nerf gun out of my bag and called the first member of the zone up. After asking him which of the three weapons he would be using(prayer, obedience, or love), I handed him the gun and let him take a shot at the zombie. We did this for the whole zone and it was so fun! ha ha You could really tell that everyone got really into it and had a lot of fun but at the same time, they had felt the spirit and were ready to go our and hit the streets and kill the zombie and get the dop! ha ha It was so much fun! Me and Elder Whitworth felt really good about it and even had the assistants call us and say "Hey, what did you guys do for your zone training? We keep getting texts from people in your zone saying that they just had the best zone training ever" ha ha So that felt really good! I love being a zone leader for that right there. I love being able to be my goofy self and use it to pump other people up and get them stoked out of their minds for missionary work! ha ha

So then on Saturday, we took a train up to Göteborg and had a weekly planning training session with Sister Newell and the Göteborg zone leaders. It was really long... but there was a lot of good stuff. After that we went out to our favorite kebab pizza place in Göteborg and popped a bottle of magnum (like martinellies) because it was Elder Whitworth birthday that day. ha ha So that was fun.

Yesterday in church we had ward conference and the stake presidency came and pretty much just hammered the ward on missionary work so that was super awesome! We got three member referrals after the meeting. ha ha So at least a few of the members got the message. We also had five investigators there at sacrament meeting so that was pretty awesome!

Those were probably the highlights of the week... sorry, I'm trying to move fast and make up for lost time.

That is so awesome that Aaron Massey is going to be in Denmark in July! hey...if I'm still here in July you might want to let him know that helsingborg is only like a 40 minute drive away from Copenhagen.... just saying... ha ha.
That's awesome that Sammy went into the MTC on Wednesday! She will do so amazing! I can imagine that Mike and sSuz are kind struggling though... poor guys. ha ha It gets easier as time goes by though right?! ha ha

It is pretty nuts to think that I am on the down hill half of my mission! It doesn't seem real... time goes by way too fast!

Well fam, I'm going to call that good for this week and head. I am loving it here in the south and never want to go north of Göteborg again! ha ha The work is great as well as Elder Whitworth and I strive to find, teach, and baptize the prepared.

I love you all very much and will talk to you next week! You're in my prayers as always!

Love- McKay.

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Just some pretty pics of Helsingborg

Sorry about all the email troubles.

(Hey everyone! I have no idea what happened to last weeks email/why it got cut off so I'm just gonna keep going with this email and hopefully cover everything important from last week and this week.)


Hey family!

So... sorry about last week! I logged on to my email this morning and the first thing I see is a bunch of emails all titled "no email last week?!" ha ha and I was immediately like..."oh crap..." haha I was just in such a rush last p-day and stressed out trying to get everything done before I transfered the next day that I must have totally spaced to even click send. Well... I feel retarded... ha ha.

But anyways... So here I am in Skåne (the very southern tip of Sweden) and I am loving it! Ah, I have been dying to come to Skåne ever since I was in the office with Elders' Hart, Leirimaa and Asp because they had all served down here and loved it. And I can see why! The south of Sweden is pretty comparable to the south in the U.S. I would say. It's a lot of farm land and wide open fields with rolling hills. The people talk funny and the architecture is amazing! We have the ocean right next to us! Ah! I am in love! I love Sweden! I am serving in a town called Helsingborg, it is right on the beach and you can see Denmark on the other side. I haven't really had time to take any pictures yet but plenty will be on the way no worries :)

My comp is Äldste Whitworth. He is from Glendora California and has been one of my best friends in the mission since day one. He is in the same group as Sanders, my trainer. We get along really well and have a ton of fun together so that is nice :) It's a nice change. ha ha But yeah me and Elder Whitworth have a ton in common when it comes to our personalities and our taste in music and stuff so that is really nice.

Being a Zone Leader is pretty awesome so far. We are zone leaders of the Malmö zone, which is all of the southern tip of Sweden, from Göteborg down basically. There's not too much crazy about being a Zone Leader, we just keep working like normal in our area but then, at the same time we have some extra responsibilities. We go on splits/exchanges with all the district leaders in our zone and train them in things that president directs us on. We go to what's called zone leader council with all the zone leaders once a month up in Stockholm where we are trained by president so that we can then train the rest of the zone. We teach a zone meeting with the whole zone once a month, and then we help teach and run zone conferences once a quarter. Then we have smaller weekly things like calling all the zone members and giving them "pump up" calls, adding up numbers, and keeping track of baptismal information in our zone. Stuff like that.

So dad asked if I would be traveling much because of the new position and I kinda laughed because, the next two weeks are going to be crazy. ha ha So this week we will go to Stockholm all day Wednesday for zone leader council, then on Thursday we will be in Lund with the whole zone for zone meeting, then on Saturday we will be going to Göteborg for some specialized weekly planning training from Sister Newell with the göteborg zone leaders. then, next week is zone conference! haha so we are going to be super busy for the next little while. What an initiation. ha ha But normally, dad, we will only travel like twice a week. Once on Tuesday for us to go to our own district meeting and then once for us to visit someone else's district meeting on thursdays to go on exchanges. We have a car here in Helsingborg since we are zone leaders so that makes it not too bad.

Our apartment here in really awesome. It is super old and pretty small but I actually really like it. The kitchen is basically just a closet but other than that it is fine. ha ha. We live basically right in the middle of town so that makes things really nice.

The ward here is about two hundred members on paper but we only have about sixty active members. So there is definitely a lot of work to be done here, building the ward from the inside and out.


Nicklas' Dop!

So I'll just go over Niclas' baptism real quick from last week since that kinda got cut off. Everything went really well! He was so excited and everything went really well! He was super nervous that he would have to get dunked more than once but the member who baptized him made sure that didn't happen. ha ha And then on Sunday I got to confirm him and give him the gift of the holy ghost and it was so awesome! The spirit was just so strong durring the confirmation. I am really greatful for the oportunity I had to be a part of that.

 This is how I had to clean the floaties off the top of the water.... with a ladel and a strainer from the kitchen.

Sounds like you have had a good time in California and the temple Mom, Dad and Tyson! Thats good, I'm glad everything went well and that Hallah had a good experience. I love and miss the temple so much! I'm really hoping I'll get to go to the Copenhagen temple while I'm down here! It only takes like a half an hour to get there from here! ha ha. Because we live so close to Denmark down here in the south they speak Swedish with a heavy Danish accent and it's called Skånska. It is seriously like a different language some times. I'm still getting used to it. ha ha I honestly have to idea how to describe it so you'll just have to wait until mothers day and then I can immitate some for you guys. It's nuts.

I'm really sorry, this email probably feels really rushed and scattered but I'm trying my best to include as many details as I can in the little time I have left!

I will have pleanty more time to email next week so feel free to bombard me with questions about things I'm forgetting to mention. But for now I have to go. I love you all very much and I'll see you in a year! :)

Love-

Äldste Keetch.

The Lost E-mail...

Well this week is full of a lot of stories and a lot of news! So I'll guess I'll start with the "old" and end with the "new". So like I mentioned last week, on Tuesday Elder Cheney and I were able to ride up with the assistants to Arlanda airport to pick up the Boyer's. It was so fun! When they first came out I think there were so many kids in white shirts and suits around that they didn't recognize me, so when I went up to Stan, he just went to shake my hand like every one else and then he realized who he was and was like "Oh! I know you! You get a hug!" ha ha It was super funny but yeah they were really excited and we got some pictures together and everything it was super fun.

(Elder Christensen wrote this next paragraph while I went to the bathroom. ha ha) On Wednesday this week Christensen and I went on splits to do Niclas's baptismal interview. I wasn't actually in the room but it went really well and Christensen said that he was really prepared. After that we ended up going around teaching the crap out of people. Like I have always said there is always someone waiting to be taught. So I couldn't just sit down and relax. Could you imagine if Niclas wouldn't have ever been found because we were lazy? That's just not me. Anyway... We went out teaching and it was super fun. Christensen and I go way back to Göteborg. We laughed, we cried it was special. Then we went home and had some O'boy chocolate milk! I don't know if I have talked about this yet but it's the best stuff in the whole world! I will totally send some of it home for you all to try. But there is a special way to eat it. You have to put two scoops in the bottom and then pour the milk in. Before mixing it too much you eat the chocolate that floats to the top. IT IS DELICIOUS. Then you can stir it and drink it. If you feel that your thirst has not been satisfied then you can have another glass to fill the empty spaces in your gut.

Ya so we had the Baptism this week and it went super good! I would normally say that baptisms don't always go as planned but this one really went smoothly and we had no problems at all. Niclas was a little bit nervous but nothing could have stopped him from getting thrust under that water by Brother Olsson ha ha. He was like a member that just hadn't gotten wet. He walked in the door with his suit and nobody could tell that he was the one who was getting baptized. At the end of the service Niclas actually ended up being the one who said the closing prayer. It was a super cool experience and the ward was super excited. the next day in church I confirmed.