Heja Sverige!!

 What's up family?! How is everybody? Sounds like this past week has been very eventful! I'm glad to hear that Strawberry days was a hit as always. It definitely hasn't been far from my mind here. It's Stawberry season here and since it was midsummer this weekend, on every street corner there was a little table with somebody selling strawberries, so I definitely got a constant reminder of that. Holy cow, I cannot believe that Ms. Mya is 4 already! That blows my mind! It seriously seems like not that long ago that she was just a few days old and Tyson was holding her in the airport before he left to Brazil, and now here I am in Sweden of all places! haha So crazy. I still have to remind myself often that I'm in a foriegn country. You think it would be easy to tell with the different language, architecture, and all that but sometimes I still have to be like, whoa... I'm in Sweden. That's no good about the fires going on! Hopefully they get them all put out. You can take some of our rain if you want. Here in trollhättan it's been raining for about 3 days straight now.

So midsummer was pretty cool! I'll make sure to send some pictures with this email. It was what's called a nonprosyliting (again, I'm sorry for my awful spelling. This computer is in Swedish so I can't spell check English words.) day, which basically means it was a pday but we didn't go out at 6:00 to work.  We got up early and took a train into Göteborg and then took a bus from there to a little suburb of Göteborg called Utby, it's the zone leader's area. About  half of the zone got together in Utby and we went to the park and did the whole midsummer celebration with the town. They put up this thing called the may-pole and get in rings around it and hold hands and dance around it singing weird songs.  It's celebrating like Mother Earth and the fertilization of the earth or something like that?? haha I'm really not sure. It was pretty cool though. After that was finished we went to the Utby chapel and had a bbq, then we climbed what the Swedes call a "mountain" that overlooks the city of Utby, it was super pretty, a little foggy though.

 Then all the missionaries went back into Göteborg and hung out at the YSA center and played frisbee and stuff like that. It was a super fun day. Oh and yes, it is pretty super weird to have it be light all the time! Midsummer was actually exactly what it sounds like, it was the mark of the middle of summer. So from here on out it will get slowly darker and darker, but for now, when we go to bed at 10:30 every night, it looks like it should only be maybe 6 or 7. haha It is pretty weird! I'll have to take a picture out the window before I go to bed one of these nights so you can see how light it is. So as far as what the work is like here in Trollhättan, we do some finding but not nearly as much as we did in NC. Knocking doors is very ineffective here in Sweden. Swedes are very private people so they don't appreciate you knocking on their door, so most our finding is just on the street as we walk places or on the bus. We have a few investigators but it's really difficult to make times work to meet with them so I still haven't met most of them. We have a girl moving in to our area this Friday that is coming from another area and aparently she is a pretty solid investigator so thats awesome! Hopefully all goes well with her. I'll let you all know. Well im going to head for this week. I love you all so much! Oh and mom, all the mail in the mission gets sent to the mission office and then gets forwarded to us in our areas. So, the mission office address is-

Enebybergsvägen 38

182 46 Enebyberg

Sweden

So if you just send stuff there with my name it'll get forwarded to me, oh and you can send packages and as long as they are under 4 pounds they can get forwarded to me no charge, if they are over I will have to pay the office to have it forwarded to me. Well I'm gonna head, I love you all so much! Have a good week and I'll talk to you next week! Love you all so much!



Hej Från Sverige!

Is this real life!? Am I really in Sweden!? ha ha Oh man this seriously is too good to be true! I love it so much! Where to even start? I guess I kind of already told you about my first day and things so I'll let you know about my area and trainer. My comp's name is äldste Chris Sanders. He is from Cedar City and he is awesome. I really do love him. He has been out for just about a year and is super super cool. He is pretty solid at the language so I'm excited to learn from him. Our area is called Trollhättan and it is in the Göteborg (yet-a-boar-e) zone/stake. So a little more down south. It is a super cool little town, we have a ward of about 60-70 solid members, and about 6 youth. We have a pretty cool looking chapel, I'll have to take a picture of it and send it to you. our Bishops name is Dag (dog) Stulen, he is super awesome, he has three kids, one son is a RM who served in Greece and one just graduated and is getting ready to start his papers, then they have a daughter who is inactive. So we'll have to see if we can fix that. We actually went to the Stulen's home for dinner yesterday. It was so good! I need to be careful here or I am definitely going to get fat! ha ha But it's okay, President lets us do p90-x for work outs and since me and Elder Sanders are going to be together for at least 12 weeks, we are starting a full 90 day cycle tomorrow. I've gotta be able to fit into these Swedish suits. ha ha oh speaking of which! This coming Friday is Midsummer, it's like the second biggest holiday to Swedes other than Christmas so we are allowed to go to it, so I'm super excited for that! and just like in America, there's always really good sales around the holidays so we are going to go shop that Monday probably. Hmm.. what else? President and Sis. Newell are amazing! I love them so much. President is a very humble, powerful man, but so loving and oh man does he have some credentials. He was the ambassador for Sweden for a long time. He has had assassination attempts on him and has served under three different US Presidents in the white house. ha ha He and Sis. Newell are definitely a little intimidating, but I love them so much! They make us feel so welcome and loved. They are awesome. Oh and apparently President Newell is on wikipedia so you'll have to look him up. ha ha So it's good to hear that all went well with the reunion! It sounds like it was a blast! Mom, I'm sure you did great in your Fathers day talk, you always do! Oh and Dad, happy late fathers day! Maybe I'll find you a nice skinny Swedish tie at the midsummer sale and send it home! I love you so much! Tell Miss Mya grattis på födelsedagen! (Happy Birthday!) Give her lots of extra loves for me! Well me and my comp need to head to catch a train into Göteborg, we are going to hang out with the zone at the YSA center for p-day. I love you all so much! Oh that reminds me, we use buses, trains and a little bit of bikes to get everywhere here. Oh and ask Tyson if he knows an Erika Sprig! She is from PG and is in my district. The Oscarson's are in our district too so I'll meet them on Thursday for district meeting. Well I love you family! So much! Talk to you later. hej då!

Sweden...sounds nice, I think I'll go!

So, by the subject of the email you can probably see what my big news for the week is! We got our Visa's! All five of us! We fly out this Thursday morning at 6:15. Unfortunately I don't know details of our flights like layovers or anything like that, but I will definitely try and call again if I get a chance! But yeah, so I will go to the mission home on Wednesday night at 8:30 and just spend the night and then get up and head to the airport early in the morning! I'm so excited you guys! And it couldn't have come at a better time because Thursday I was having kind of a rough day and I was just saying my nightly prayers asking Heavenly Father to let me know if this was my mission or if I was still going to Sweden so that I could just stop wondering and worrying and go to work. Then the next day, I got the call from President Thomas! ha ha He was like "Well, you bags got their visa to go to Sweden, would you like you go with them?" ha ha Yes please! So yeah that's the big news from me for this week! We had a good week here. We had pretty solid investigator all the sudden stop contacting us so that kinda stunk. Her name is Alma (go figure huh? ha ha) Will you please pray for her? Oh and we started to teach a mildly schizophrenic guy so that's pretty awesome. He's a little off but still totally accountable if you know what I mean. ha ha His name is Randolph. Oh Dad I forgot to tell you, the water feature turned out great! That's super cool! I'm glad Ty got back on with Costco and his car is up and running. That's definitely good to hear. ha ha ha Dad, when you were telling me about Tyson's work schedule you forgot the "F" in shift. ha ha I had a good laugh over that. ha ha Maybe a little bit of a Freudian slip there? ha ha Just teasing. The Smith fam reunion sounds like it will be a blast! You'll have to tell me all about it and send me some pictures. Oh and Mom, that picture board sounds super cool! That's a good idea. Good luck speaking on Father's day mom! And happy early Father's day Dad! I love you so much! You have no idea the example you have set in my life. I will be lucky to become half the priesthood holder you are some day. I love you Dad. Well family, I know this is short...again. But it's just super hard to email with three people and one computer. And now there is a guy waiting in here for the computer and Elder Hughes still needs to write so I'll head. I love you all so much! You're all in my prayers every day! Keep on keepin on and I'll talk to you all from Sweden next week!


Love- Elder McKay Vance.