city kid

sounds like it's been an exciting week at home! 

this week has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster to be 100% honest. 

Monday was fun, sister davis and I got out and I became the biggest Sundsvall tourist ever and got some souvenirs and took her thrift shopping at our favorite little shop "återkommande mode" and then spent a good chunk of the day packing my life into my suitcases and cleaning the apartment and making it feel almost like I wasn't even there to begin with. at the end of the night we stopped by my girl Lisa Grafström's and had a little goodbye meeting with her. 

Tuesday we had a lot more little goodbyes. While we were out walking down the street we decided to stop a woman and chat with her and she told us that we were shining. She remarked how we walked down the road and had smiles on our faces and light around us and we were very different from the people that she normally sees walking the streets. It was actually super cool to talk with her. From there we took a bus all the way up to Timrå to say goodbye to my friends Noenoe and Saysay. They were some of the first people I taught up in Sundsvall, and I was really sad to say goodbye. We had to keep the conversation going for a while or else I'm pretty sure all of us would have started crying. We were heading back to the city and had an appointment with one of our less active members and just felt like we needed to stop into the library and check out an exhibit (super weird feeling, but we did it) and lo and behold, Armin was there with Shirin and it was actually his brand new art exhibit that he was showing off! I was thinking I wouldn't get the chance to say a last goodbye to them, so it was a real tender mercy that they happened to be there. We invited our less active to come and chat with Armin and Shirin and all of them taught us some more persian words. 

goodbye to noenoe and saysay

some of armin's art

In the middle of the week I finished packing everything up and had a tender moment saying goodbye to the city I've come to love and my companion that became my best friend. We said our last prayer before heading out the door and then gave each other a big hug before my SJ Snabbtåg made it's way down to Stockholm Central. 

I rolled into Södertälje with my three big bags on wednesday evening and my two companions Sister Neilson and Sister Crawford were there to pick me up in the rain. Sister Neilson is from Taylor, Utah and we actually overlapped by about 5 days in the MTC. And Sister Crawford is from Rexburg, Idaho and is only 6 weeks behind me in the mission. All of us graduated in 2014 and all of us are pretty old on the mission. It's been a lot of fun!

the first pic of the tripan

district meeting in Katrineholm

Södertälje is also called the Detroit of Sweden. There isn't a city symbol that I know of (unless you count gang colors as a symbol). We have a lot to do everyday. We spend most of our time in the chapel teaching people and I don't really know how to get anywhere else. I'm back to riding busses full time and trying to memorize city streets. This is a big change from everywhere else that I've ever served, haha. Our investigators are really sweet and I really like the ward. I spent a good portion of my first sunday asking people what their names were, forgetting their names, and then playing with the kids and some stuffed animals. 

a member of the ward, Nina, is a the voice of swedish google maps. She also owns a voice company where they record sounds and voices and send audio files to clients around the world. They needed lots of different voices for a children's toy so that the toy could do voice recognition. SO. Now my voice is inside of a japanese stuffed robot dog. #goingplaces

cool thing about being in a tripan? it's totally allowed for the elders to give us rides! we're in the same area as the zone leaders, elder Larson (from my MTC group) and elder Peterson.

I didn't think that being a sister training leader would be that big of a change, honestly. I was convinced that I could keep being a normal missionary in most ways. But being an STL is a lot more than I really expected. We've had a couple of stressful nights and one of them I didn't really sleep much. On the bright side though, I now know to expect the unexpected. I've spent a lot more time on my knees than I have in the past 6 months. 

All in all though, I'm really enjoying my time here! I look forward to this coming week because we will be very busy again. I already know what I'll be doing for nearly every hour of the next seven days (no spoilers though, you'll have to read again next week!). 

keep eating your vegetables. 

mvh, 

syster janessa brink