ups and ups and ups... (and up again.)

hej på er! waiting on a family email, but I'm pretty sure you guys are all asleep hahaha :) This week has been exponentially better than last week so things are rolling right along here in Jönköping. Also it was RIDICULOUSLY hot this week. I even got a little sun. 

COOL STORIES:

• everybody graduated this week. So we were up studying on Friday morning when the noisiest group of graduates started marching down the street. Here in sweden when you graduate the boys wear suits, the girls wear white dresses, and everybody wears these sailor hats. They march down the street playing instruments of all kinds and making TONS of noise and then they all get into these giant trucks (because like none of them have drivers licenses) and they get driven all around the streets completely drunk at like 9 am. And then the whole rest of the day they're out celebrating. It's a sight to see. 
• I grilled a pineapple.
• yesterday at church I met a guy that lives in Justin's area in Norway! So we took a picture and like, it was cool. The world is so small in mormon scandinavia.

UPLIFTING MOMENTS:

• So. That guy. The one that wears the sweatshirt that says dangerous and is like 73 years old and thinks sister sandelin looks like his deceased wife? We taught him again. We decided we would be really clear about why we are here as missionaries. We told him we left our homes to tell people that we really believe in this gospel. That we believe that God is there and he loves us. And we want to help people make that first covenant of baptism with Him. "That's why we stopped you on the street. That's why we are inviting you to church, and that's why we want to keep meeting you. We want you to take the steps to be baptized." and he's like, "Yeah okay. When?" and we're just like; "um. what?" and he's asking us when he can be baptized. He's like, "I feel it. We talk about Jesus and we read the scriptures and we watch these videos about Joseph Smith and my heart gets all excited and I just really want to be baptized." So we set a date for the first of August. Super unexpected, but we'll see where this goes! He's come to church the last two weeks and yesterday he gave us flowers. As he hands them to us he's like, "De är inte vackra men de är billiga" (they're not beautiful but they're cheap) and every time we see them now we just laugh.
• We have this investigator named Robert. He's about 25ish and we've met with him like 3 times now. He told us that he started reading the book of mormon and that he had a ton of questions. He asked us about the Jaredite nation and what happened to them. He then asked us if we ever want more for ourselves than what God gives us. We told us that God gives us more than we could ever dream for ourselves and showed him the mormon message "The hope of God's light" and Robert talked about how sometimes he doesn't want to follow promptings because he feels like they might be too fast for him to handle so I shared how quickly my life changed. It was literally only a year ago that I got an answer to serve a mission and now suddenly I'm here in sweden teaching lessons to strangers when I had planned to be at school to learn how to be a doctor. Sometimes it is a little fast. But my life is changed. It's more than I could have ever planned for me. It's been crazy, it's been sudden, but it's been so much better than I ever dreamed. At this point he was bought almost to tears after hearing the whole experience and told us that he wants to be baptized. He's going on a trip to romania for the summer, but he promised he would read while he was gone and that he would keep in contact with us. 
• We decided to change up our contacting technique. So yesterday we did a scavenger hunt. The plan was to contact a tourist, a guy with a ton of piercings, and an old woman with groceries in a walker. It was so crazy how well everything went! We weren't able to find the old woman, but we were able to find the others and have some awesome street lessons with them! We even got some phone numbers! Proof that when you make plans and set goals God provides the way! LOVE IT!

Cool Place: there's this cool little exercise park by our house. my new favorite place. training my vertical jump, maybe one day I'll have high tucks again. 

Hope you all have a great week! 

puss puss,

syster janessa brink

 sorry to send a food picture, but this is one of the first nice places I went to eat and it was super good!

gardening! 

awkward art in centrum. 

wandering around the cities here you just find cool little fountains and parks and I wish we had stuff like this in america!