Syster Brink in Sweden: Thanksgiving Last Week

This week has been crazy and so much has happened!!! I'm so happy to get your dearElder letters and packages! They make my day :)

So Thanksgiving was great! We had a full schedule with a devotional starting at 9 am. There were a lot of rumors going around about who would be speaking (because it was a holiday we knew it would be someone big) but we didn't find out for sure until the devotional started. David A. Bednar!!!! It was seriously sooooo good!!! He didn't just give a normal talk either, he did a Q&A session! It was way cool because I've heard he's done that kind of thing before, and it was awesome to be there for it! They passed out cell phones to all the missionaries and we texted him our questions. So the only text I've sent while I was a missionary was to Elder Bednar. He wasn't able to answer my question, but I asked him "do apostles and prophets follow the same kind of schedule as missionaries? Describe a day in the life of an apostle."

After that we had a thanksgiving lunch with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, the works. Missed the pretzel salad though :( Then we had a short thanksgiving program where some of the missionaries played some awesome musical numbers. This one elder had to be a child prodigy or something cuz his violin solo was AMAZING. Also I got to see some family on thanksgiving!!!! They showed a vid of the MTC choir that sang in conference and I got to see Justin! So that was really awesome!!! :)

We also did a humanitarian project that night. We basically made bags of lentil soup and my job was to weigh the bags and scoop out lentils if it was too heavy. It almost goes without saying that I never want to see another lentil again.

Then we watched meet the mormons! Yay! So happy to see that again :) After the movie the MTC presidency was like, "we have a surprise for you! go look at the courtyard!" so we went outside and it was all lit up like temple square!!! SO PRETTY!!! I love having a mini temple square to look at every night!

ALSO, our investigator Isabel is now our teacher!!! Her name is actually Sister Faux. She got back from her mission about 4 months ago and she's adorable! It kind of threw me off for a little while because we know things about Isabel that aren't actually about Sister Faux. We got a new investigator, his name is Haydar (High-dar) and he's from Iran.

I ended up sharing my mission story with some of the elders from my district, and as I shared it more and more people started coming and listening so by the end of the story we had maybe 15 people in our classroom. I just wanted them to know that even though things might be rough and it might feel like Heavenly Father isn't answering your prayers, he is and he always will. Sometimes he works on things and it takes a little while, but once you get your answer it couldn't be more right.

We also took a little time during personal study to share all our favorite scriptures with each other. It was so great!!!

There was one day this week were the food was almost completely inedible. They had this nasty sandwich that was basically frozen turkey slices with nacho cheese and bacon. Elder Simonson got the sandwich and the poor guy had to make himself eat it so he wouldn't be hungry in class. It was seriously so gross and he was trying so hard to eat it. He gave up because his stomach just couldn't handle it.

Sherri Dew came and spoke at Relief Society and that was awesome!! She spoke about the role of women in the church and women in the preisthood and it was way cool :) Also at the sunday night devotional we had Vocal Point come (I can just see how jealous harrison is right now) and they sang all these different songs including Nearer My God to Thee. During the devotional I found myself sitting next to a sister missionary FROM SWEDEN!!! She'll be serving in the temple square mission and she's adorable! Her little swedish accent got me so excited to get out of the MTC!!

Heather Kofford left the MTC on monday afternoon. She's been here for about 11 weeks so she was pretty excited to pack her bag! I got a picture with her on her last day! Gonna miss seeing her around here but I'm so pumped for her letters from Tahiti!!!

On monday we decided to mess with Brother Whitworth a little bit and everybody came to class with middle parts. We all looked so horrible, I wish I would have gotten a picture!!!! That night we also taught Haydar for the first time. It was very different from teaching Isabel because Haydar just kind of sat back in his seat and looked at us with this blank face. We did the lesson unscripted and only used our bullet point lesson plan. I'll admit, it was much harder than the other lessons because he had questions about the atonement that we didn't know how to answer in swedish. It was a little bumpy, but when we got to the part about prayer he got so excited! Being a muslim he had to say the same prayer 5 times everyday and he was so excited to pray to God and thank him for everything! He was soooo happy when we told him he could thank Heavenly Father for his girlfriend Karolina, it was so cute :)

There's this one Elder in the other Swedish district that seriously makes me laugh everyday and he totally reminds me of Cole Olsen. He wears these crazy socks and sweater vests and he's seriously so strange. We totally would have been friends before the mission! The other day he was in our classroom quoting Nacho Libre and it made me think of Makayla!

Well, this week has been packed and I'm so happy to be a missionary!! On one of the days we had a little bit of time so our district got on the computers to watch some mormon messages. If you haven't seen the new christmas video titled "He is the Gift" now is the time to see it!!!! #ShareTheGift! It was so good! And new mormon messages are like a really big deal here at the MTC

LOVE YOU GUYS AND I LOVE GETTING MAIL!!!

Hej då!!!

Syster Janessa Brink