The Castle at Helsingborg

 Me sitting on the 'Throne'

Me on top of the Castle in Helsingborg

Beautiful sunset down by the water on Thursday night.

Week in Review

Hello everyone! It’s good to hear from you all like always! Sounds like it has been a busy and eventful week back home! I totally forgot that it was Memorial Day back home today! So... happy memorial day! I always did love seeing all the flags and flowers out at the cemetery. It’s always so peaceful and pretty. I was telling Aubry in an email that it really does not feel right that Mya graduated preschool and will be going on to kindergarten in a few months! Man can someone please hit the pause button for me! Too much is happening and changing while I’m gone! I don't like it! Ha-ha but I guess that's what happens when you fall off the face of the earth for two years. ha-ha. I’m glad to hear that the Nick and Ginny's farewell went good and that they both spoke well. I remember my farewell talk a little bit, it is pretty stressful! Man dad, it's sounding like you have become the designated smoke master these days! You ought to start charging a fee per piece of meat you smoke. ha-ha I can't wait to get back and try some of your delicacies!


Sounds like you both have plenty to do in the yard mom and dad! And dad, I want you to know that even though those Saturdays in the yard were possibly not the most fun days, I really am so grateful for them. They did more for me than I think I realize. So thanks for dragging me out of bed and putting me to work all of those years. I wish I was there now to help out with everything! I miss good old manual labor. We don't get too many opportunities to do that here. Mostly because no one has yards because everyone lives in apartments. It’s a bummer some times. It’s nice to serve with your hands. Gives us an excuse to get out of our white shirts for a bit. ha-ha So did Walkers sell to 7 eleven or what? Whatever it is I’m excited. I love 7 eleven slurpees! ha-ha They are best. There are 7 elevens here but they are insanely expensive and they don't even have slurpees. So it’s not worth it. ha-ha

I’m glad you guys were able to see the new clip I sent you. That ice cream place we were at was sooo good! Swedish ice cream is really good. I wouldn't say that it is better or worse than American ice cream, it's just different. It’s really good though. I can't really explain it but it is super creamy. I love it. We get a lot of ice cream here too. ha-ha Like basically every time we get fed by a member it is ice cream for dessert. I’m not complaining though :) So the member that posted the picture of our hamburgers was Syster Hedberg (head-berry), we were at their house for dinner on Saturday night. She was so nice, she asked us the week before if there was any specific food that we longed for or were craving and we said burgers so they grilled up burgers with all the fixin's for us. It was sooo nice and sooo tasty! They are a great family. Her husband was the stake president of the Malmö stake for 7 years and just recently got released and put in as our ward mission leader. So needless to say, he is awesome and on top of things. ha-ha So that is great. They also have a son named Anton that just got off his mission in Texas about three months ago. So he got home like ten days or something before I got transferred here. He is a really good guy and is always willing to help out with teaching and things.

Things with our investigators are going well. We were able to get in contact with one of our investigators, Alexander, again after not hearing from him for three weeks. He is doing well and is still very positive he was just sick for a while. So we are hoping to start to teach him regularly again. Otherwise our biggest news on the investigator front is that our investigator, Tabi, is amazing! She came to church yesterday and loved it. After church we taught her and when we asked her about baptism she said "after coming to church today, I want to be baptized now! I don't want to wait anymore" so we took that as a good indicator that she is ready and had received her answer so we set up a baptismal date with her! It’s for the 2nd of June, which is next Sunday. We set it for next Sunday because she has only come to church once and we have a rule in the mission that all investigators must come to church at least twice before they can be baptized so if all goes well she will be baptized on Sunday right after church! It has been so amazing teaching her. She is so incredibly prepared. It is such a testimony to me to see how much her life has changed in such a short amount of time because of this gospel. She was raised in a very strong atheist household and religion was a very foreign environment for her at first but now she feels right at home and loves learning more every time we meet. Please pray for her this week. We are really hoping that all will go well for her to be baptized on the 2nd.

We will be traveling like mad men this week. On Thursday we will be in Göteborg all day for a mission tour with Elder Richards of the area presidency presiding. Then on Friday we will turn around and take a train up to Stockholm for mission leadership council, then on Saturday we may or may not be going to the temple in Copenhagen. If all goes well with Tabi and the baptism we will probably delay the temple to another day so that we can be here on Saturday to prepare everything for the baptism so we'll see what happens. Pray for the best!

Well that is about it for this week I think. I’ll work on attaching some pictures quickly too but I hope you all have a good week and I’ll talk to you next week! I love you!!!

With love-

Äldste McKay.

 Elder Brown and I at Lucy's house eating dinner with Lucy and Herminia. They are the best little Philipinno ladies you will ever meet! they are hilarious!

Also a couple pictures of us in front of a raps flower field. I haven't been able to get a good picture of one of these fields yet but they are so bright yellow and gorgeous! 

I Almost Forgot

 So, I almost forgot to tell you guys about this! So we were in the city of Landskrona on Thursday and we saw this awesome church so we took a few pictures and then we saw that it was open. We decided to go in and take a look.

 It was the coolest old church! And then we walk up to the front and see this amazing painting of Christ! 

 Well, a priest comes up to us and is like..'You guys are from the Mormon church huh.' and we're like 'Yeah!' and he pointed to the painting and said that it is a Carl Bloch original and has been in Salt Lake on display for the last year and they just barely got it back. The church borrowed it from them.

 The priest told us, 'We must say, it came back in a lot better shape than when it left. It was cleaned, repaired and everything.' So that was pretty cool! He welcomed us to look at it and take pictures. He was a really nice guy. So that was pretty cool!

After Skype Blues

Well, I'm not gonna lie, it is a little hard to email after skyping last night! It's just not as fun when I can't see and talk to you guys! ha ha. But that's okay, I still love it:) So it really was so fun to Skype and see all of your faces and talk to you! Happy mothers day again mom! I love you so much! And miss you like crazy! I hope you know that. It was so fun to see the girls and talk to them! It seriously amazes me every time how much they grown in between each time I see them! It's kinda scary to be honest! ha ha. Mom, you asked what the biggest thing is that changed since last time I talked to you all? Hmm...it's hard to tell actually! probably the girls, a new little one added to the ranks, and I noticed a new decoration or two on the desk. ha ha What's the biggest thing that changed about me?


So today we will be heading in to Malmö. I need to go in to the migration offices there to renew my visa so that I don't get deported. ha ha So that should be fun.

Nothing else too exciting happened this week that I didn't already talk about yesterday. We were able to set a baptismal date with our new investigator Alexander. Please keep him in your prayers along with Robin. We are really hoping that they can both be baptized before the prophet comes.
Oh I almost forgot! I have an important update on chill kitty! ha ha We saw him again on Saturday! He was chillin' outside our apartment when we left the other morning so we paused and pet him for a while and then had to go. It was pretty funny to see him again though. ha ha.
Well family I know that this email is really short and I feel super bad but we need to get going to Malmö so that we have time to get through all the immigration stuff I have to do to renew my visa but please know how much I love each and every one of you! I miss you all so much and can't wait to see you again, but until then, I love this work and I love Sweden! I truly love this gospel and am so grateful for it in my life and the joy it gives me. There really is nothing like sharing this gospel with others. It is the most gratifying thing ever! I love it! I love you all! Have a fantastic week and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love-

Äldste Keetch.

Hey there everyone!


Man it seems like just a few day's ago that I was emailing home... oh wait... it was! ha ha It was definitely super nice to just have to go from Wednesday to Monday instead of Monday to Monday this week! ha ha.

I'm glad to hear that all is well at home! Thing's are going so so so well here! So earlier in the week we got some really exciting news! (I'm not sure if i already mentioned this) The prophet is coming to Sweden!!! He will be here on the 9th of June. He will be in Stockholm for a Nordic regional conference that will take the place of stake conferences for Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland. We are not sure if they will do anything special for the missionaries but we are all hoping that we will get to go up and see the prophet. So then on Thursday we flew to Stockholm for mission leadership training and president and the assistants announced that we will be having a mission goal of every single companionship in the mission baptizing before the prophet comes! We are so stinking excited! As they announced it it just felt good and felt like this was truly an inspired goal from president. So then on Friday we had zone training and we presented this goal to the rest of the zone and it went really well. We read out of Ether together about the bother of Jared and how he smelted the rocks out of the mountain and took them up to the lord. We compared that to our goal . We can't just decide this goal and then just say "okay heavenly father, help us baptize" because he will just respond as he did to the brother Jared and say "well... what do you want me to do about it?" ha ha So we have to pray and do all we can with our investigators and then take their names to the lord and pray for his help with the rest. So what we did is after reading about this in Ether and discussing it we pulled out a bag of white, decorative stones that we had bought at the store the day before and gave one to each member of the zone and had them write the name of the person that they are going to baptize in the next month on the stone and then take the stone and call down the powers of heaven and ask the lord to "touch the stone". It was really a pretty good meeting and I think everyone liked the thing with the stones and the brother of Jared.

So then, on Sunday, it was fast Sunday and as a mission we fasted for this new goal that we have and wow did we see the blessings from that fast in church! We met with the bishop before hand and let him know about this goal and then in testimony meeting bishop got up and bore his testimony about member missionary work and then told the ward about the goal and it feels like they are all really excited for it too so that is awesome! All in all, on Sunday, we taught 7 lessons, which is really good seeing that we usually average 20 for the whole week, we had three investigators at church, we got a new investigator, and we set a baptismal date with Robin! So that was amazing! He decided to be baptized on the 25th of this month and I'm pretty confident that it will happen. It is looking like Elder Brown and I could have 2-3 baptisms before the prophet comes, not just one. So please pray for Robin! Also if you could all pray for a man named Alexandro. He just randomly walked into the church from the street after church and wanted to see a priest. We told him we didn't have a priest but that we were missionaries and could talk with him. Well he wasn't in a very good place. He was on the verge of suicide and had already tried twice before but had failed. We talked with him for about an hour and testified to him oh the atonement and the comfort that comes from the savior. We prayed with him and then set up an appointment with him on Tuesday so hopefully we can continue to help him see the hope that is in Christ. So please pray for him!

As for the mothers day call! Would 5:30 our time work? So that would be like 9:30 am your time right? We should be able to Skype so if you could send me your Skype name again mom that would be great! Ah man I can't wait!

Well family sorry this is pretty short but I need to head for now but I'll talk to you all on Sunday!

Love you all so so so much!

I Ate Trees!!

Oh man what a week! so, I'll start out by just reiterating that my p-day is not permanently on Wednesdays, it is just for today. so I will be email home again on Monday the 6th, just to avoid any confusion! ha ha


So man I've got a lot to tell you about this week! But I'll start by responding to everything that happened at home this week.

So congratulations to Tyson and Hallah! I'm glad to hear that the wedding went well. Thanks for all the pictures! It really looked like a great day so that is good. Man I still can't believe that my baby brother is hitched! Ah, so weird! ha ha I'm glad to see that I was able to make some kind of appearance at the wedding, even if it was just my head. ha ha That is super funny. I can't wait to see more pics once the professional ones come back, and mom, if you include a wedding video in my package I would be able to watch it. Each apartment has a mini DVD player to watch Church movies and stuff so I could play it on that. So definitely send a copy if you can! Thank you for sending a package by the way! I really appreciate it. I'm glad to hear that the few words I wrote for Ty worked well. I really had no idea what to write so I'm glad you all liked them, and hopefully Ty did. ha ha. It sounds like the wedding was an all around great day so that is good.

Man, I've got a lot to go through from this last week and a half so I guess I'll get to it!

So last Tuesday morning Elder Whitworth and I got up and he got all ready and finished packing and then I drove him to the airport to catch his flight up to Stockholm, then, about 15 minutes later, Elder Brown's flight from Umeå landed and we got his luggage and headed back to the apartment. Elder Brown is awesome, he is one of the funniest guys I have ever met. He is like perfect mix of my friend Cameron Tribe, and Jack Black. ha ha So needless to say, we get along great together and are having a lot of fun! He is from San Diego California and has been out for four months longer than I have. So he's about to his  six month mark. So on Tuesday night we had a couple lessons set up and then we went back to the apartment for the night, Elder Brown got unpacked, and then we went to bed. Well, right before bed, Elder Brown pulled out these essential oils that he had gotten from a member up in Umeå and he had one that was frankincense... ha ha like what the wise men gave baby Jesus. Apparently you're supposed to put one drop under your tongue and it's supposed to help your memory. ha ha So I decided to try it. Well, the best way I can describe the taste is trees. ha ha It seriously tasted like I was eating a forest. All in one little drop. It was crazy. ha ha So anyways, we went to bed afterwards and I felt fine. Well, I woke up at about 3:00 and felt awful. I laid in bed for about half an hour and then I couldn't stand it any more and I got up and threw up. After that it was like clock work, every half an hour, for the rest of the night and into the next morning. About 8:00 or so the next morning I finally had had enough and asked Elder Brown to give me a blessing. After the blessing I didn't throw up at all the rest of the day and was able to finally get some sleep so that was good. The best part of all of this is that the assistants were on their way down to do exchanges with us. So at nine o'clock I had to muster the strength to put some sweats on and walk down to the car so that we could go pick them up at the airport. The car ride almost killed me and I about passed out walking up/down the stairs in our apartment building, but I made it okay and then we just went back and I went back to bed. The assistants ended up taking a train down to Malmö and working with the missionaries there for Wednesday and then came back up and worked with us on Thursday once I was feeling better. I had a pretty consistent fever the whole day but it broke later that night so that was good. I lucked out and didn't hallucinate like I usually do when I get fevers. ha ha. That dang frankincense really did it to me! ha ha Nah I'm just kidding, I'm pretty sure it was just the flu, but we decided to blame it on the frankincense. ha ha.

The rest of the week was really good. Our investigators are still doing well. Danii and Rebeka were not able to make it to Church on Sunday because their car broke down the night before. But they are still very positive and are keeping all of their commitments. We are working right now on helping them receive an answer that they need to get married. Other wise, we are really working hard with an investigator that we have who's name is Robin. Robin has investigated the church for a couple years now and comes to church every Sunday. The whole ward loves him and he has been taught everything multiple times. He just can't quit drinking coffee. We also think there's something else holding him back, we're just not sure what right now. So we are hoping to help him figure that out and take the step of being baptized.

Another crazy event that happened this week is that we got a visitor on Friday night! ha ha So we had just parked the car and were walking into the apartment when this cat came out of nowhere and just walked straight up to us, so we pet it a little and then started walking again. Well, it started following us. It followed us all the way into the building and up the three flights of stairs to our apartment on the top floor. ha ha So we just let him in and let him chill with us for a while. We named him chill kitty. He had a collar on so he must have been one of the neighbors cats. But yeah, we just let him chill with us for an hour or so and then we took him back outside. ha ha it was just so funny though because he just came right up to us and then just followed us all the way into our apartment. We haven't seen him since.

So last night, Tuesday, was the Valborg celebrations and it was so awesome! The ward here does a Valborg party every year at one of the member's house's that live out in the country a little bit. So we went to that and it was a blast! It's kind of hard to describe Valborg, but it's basically a Holiday where everyone gets together, lights a huge bonfire, and then bbq's and plays games together. Sounds kinda like America huh? ha ha It was great. We played this awesome came called kub, which is a fun, lawn game, that I'll have to introduce to you all when I get back. Then we did like a scavenger hunt and things and then ate hot dogs and hamburgers and all sorts of good stuff. It was a blast! The reason why we switched p-day to today even thought the festivities were last night is because, like all Swedish holidays, they are at least two, if not three days. So yesterday was the festivities but today is the actual holiday. So everyone is off school and everyone is basically home just sleeping off their hang-overs today. It's whats called a red day today, which means it's a national holiday. So yeah, that's why we have p-day today. So our plans are to finish emailing here, go to H&M (I had another pair of pants give out so i think I'm going to buy some slacks today, if that's okay! I promise I'm not getting fat! My clothes are just starting to get worn) and then we are going to head down to the beach for a while. Helsingborg is such and awesome town and has really nice beaches. Helsingborg is definitely on the top of the list of places to bring you guys when we come back. I love it here. So yeah we'll probably head down there for a while and just hang out. May skate a little bit. Elder Brown got it okayed by president and bought a skateboard at the first of his mission so we got skate for morning exercise sometimes. It's super fun.

The rest of the week looks like it'll be super fun. We are flying to Stockholm tomorrow for mission leadership council, then we will be in Lund on Friday to teach zone training, then we got Saturday which is always a good day, then Sunday, and then p-day again! So that will be fun!

About mothers day mom: yes it looks like I'll be able to Skype home on mothers day:) The computers here are pretty slow but one of them does have a camera and then Elder Brown has a web cam too so it looks like we'll both be able to Skype so that'll be fun:) We can work out details on time and things when it gets closer but I'm excited to see and talk to you all again! Especially you momma :)

Well fam, that's about it for this week! I am still absolutely loving life here in Helsingborg, but I definitely miss each and every one of you each day! I know that this gospel is true and man do I love sharing it with others! Everyone go out and find an opportunity to talk with someone about the gospel this week and see how good it feels! I promise you you'll get addicted. The gospel is like Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop! ha ha.

Well I love you all so much! Have a good week!

With all my love-

Äldste McKay.