persiska

It's time for the highlight of your week ;) 

well friends, it's been a week. This week felt kind of long, but that's not a bad thing! I will take the long weeks as they come! 

we walked across the giant sundsvall bridge this week. really windy, really cold, really worth it though

Monday we took a train up to Umeå and got to spend the night up there with my favorite Umeå sister, Sister Wirtala :) This was my 4th and final time I got to spend the night with her and it was fun to sit and talk with her like old friends. As my time winds down up here in Norrland, I'm beginning to say goodbyes to all the people that I have loved so much these past 6 months. 

Tuesday we had a great specialized zone training with President and Sister Beckstrand and the assistants. We talked about teaching repentance and baptizing converts and it was so much fun to be up there with them! 

we found the elders while contacting!

Sam, our new investigator I wrote about last week, set up another appointment with us :) We were sitting in the library waiting for him when another guy walks up to us and tells us that Sam will be there shortly. It took me a moment to put two and two together but I realized this guy was David, Sam's brother who had told us he wasn't interested! Sam showed up and we sat down at a table and started chatting. I was like, "so David, did Sam invite you to come along or did you become interested yourself?" and he confessed that it was a little bit of both. We had a great lesson and taught a good portion of the plan of salvation. We weren't able to get through all of it, because they had so many great questions. We invited them to come to the movie night we'd be having later in the week and they both seemed excited to come!

We had a dinner with the District President and his family. It was so good and after the dinner I felt like I had to apologize to sister davis that we eat only cereal and bananas all day everyday. We really like the Stegeby family, and I'm super glad that I get to be around them all the time!

that night we got a package. our car was in the shop getting some repair work done, so sister davis and I walked down to the gas station to pick up the box. We walked home carrying this heavy box and put it on the floor in our apartment and just stared at it for a little while. After saying a silent prayer that this wouldn't be a(nother) shipment of swedish books we cut the tape and opened it up. Inside we found 20 beautiful hardcover fully translated persian books of mormon. I felt like I had opened a treasure chest. I can't even wait to get them out in the hands of persian speaking members and investigators!!! #miracle

We had a lesson with a less active sister named Lisa, and she told us about the spirits that she had the elders cast out on tuesday night. ha. ha. at least they were cast out when we got there. We taught her about repentance and showed her how to use the gospel library app and play MoTab in her home when she's alone and starts hearing things. We like Lisa :) 

friday was an adventure. As our car was still in the shop we have been fully dependent on public transportation this week. Friday, we got a notice on our phone that something was up with the busses but we didn't quite realize the full extent of what that meant until we were told we couldn't ride a certain bus and there wouldn't be any other busses coming for another 45 minutes. We had an appointment to be to at the church in half an hour so we decided to start walking. Long story short we got lost in a forest. One moment we're in a totally residential area and the next we are surrounded by thick trees. Whoops. So we call up Murre, to tell him that we're gonna be a little late and he tells us he's actually at work. So we ask him when he'll be off and he's like "I'm in Stöde." Stöde is a quarter of the way to Norway. There was no way he'd be making it for a lesson with us. So we wandered through the forest for a little while longer and then finally made it to the road. We found a grocery store, bought a rotisserie chicken and some bread and sat down to eat some food after our long journey. We had a correlation meeting at the church and our mission leader gave us some kinder eggs. We were planning on going home right after the meeting but the bus schedules were still insane and we stayed to talk with some of the young women after their activity. We went down to the bus stop to catch the bus that should have come but never did. Finally we got a ride home with a member that felt sorry for us when they saw us standing out in the cold. 

Patrik was in town from Lund so we met up with him. I told him that this would probably be the last time I would be able to meet with him and he wanted to do something nice so he took Sister Davis and I out for lunch. Once again, I had to apologize to sister davis for only ever eating cereal hahaha. We had a great lesson with Patrik and felt the spirit with him. It's been super cool to see how much he has changed and grown over the past 6 months that I've been teaching him. 

lunch with Patrik! Now you understand why I keep apologizing to sister Davis ;)

That night we had a movie night at the church and watched Meet the Mormons. President and Sister Beckstrand were there and we even had Sam, David and Patrik there too! It was a lot of fun and I want to try and persuade the branch to have movie nights every week. 

Yesterday we had branch conference and we sang in the choir. I sang in Swedish, English, french and Finnish. Be impressed because it was super hard. We had a great meeting and talked a lot about coming unto Christ and keeping the Sabbath day holy. After church we set up appointments with some of my favorite members and Farhad and Bakhtiar came up to us and told us they had a surprise. We followed them into the kitchen and found that they had made us a big lunch of delicious Persian food. I almost wanted to cry. They are the sweetest people ever! We decided that if we all pray hard enough and it's God's will, I'll be transferred to Stockholm and then I can go to the temple when they do baptisms for the dead. 

this is the text we got from Farhad. Also for your information the NO stands for Ny Omvänd (new convert)

this has been a long week, but it's been very fun :) I'm excited to see what my last week here brings. We'll be getting transfer calls on saturday (so maybe you guys should also pray that i get sent to stockholm, haha) and it's crazy how quickly the time flies. I never want to say goodbye to Sundsvall or my sweet little greenie. 

my favorites :)

I hope all of you have a great week! Keep praying, keep studying the scriptures, and keep helping others. 

I love you!

syster janessa brink