First Week in Sweden!

This is crazy! I'm typing this on a Swedish computer breathing Swedish air with Swedish food in my belly in, you guessed it, Sweden!!!! We left the MTC at 3:30 on monday morning and got to Sweden at 8:30 on tuesday morning. The flights weren't too bad, just read and got to catch up on sleep from the MTC. We were greeted by our mission president and some other missionaries at the airport in Sweden. The objective of that first day was pretty much to keep us awake so that we could start adjusting to the time change and getting over jetlag.

My mission president, President Beckstrand, and his wife are awesome! The first day we went and applied for a temporary residency thing at the migration office, then got to tour Stockholm! It was a beautiful sunny day and such an amazing city. There was so many diverse, different kinds of people that all seemed so busy. After touring the city a little bit, we went and had lunch and then went street contacting. That was crazy haha on my first day, all jetlagged and pretty nervous I got paired with an experienced Elder. We just contacted people on the streets of Stockholm, it was hard and most people weren't interested but cool experience. That was my first lesson in that if we step out of our comfort zone, the Spirit steps in. We went and did some paperwork at the mission office and had dinner and slept over at the mission home. 

On wednesday morning I got paired with my trainer, Elder Christensen! He's from Spanish Fork, UT, has 3 months left on his mission and served in area's in Stockholm for about a year. I would literally be clueless without him, he's got the language down and has taught me a lot already! We got transferred to the Kungsbacka I area of the Goteborg zone. We took a 3.5 hour train ride from Stockholm to Kungsbacka. We're serving in this area with two sisters, Sister Spencer and Sister Mecham, who's from my district in the MTC, exciting! Our apartment is apparently one of the best in the whole mission and dang, I can see why. We call it the bachelor pad and it has a whole big top floor with a couch, workout area and desks. I lucked out for sure, no sad mission housing stories coming home from me! I'll be serving here for at least the next 3 months while I'm being trained but probably more like 4-5 months! 

There's a lot of African immigrants that live in Sweden and we contacted one of the first nights we were here. He was either kinda crazy or a little drunk but he like told us his whole life story of going between Muslim and Christian and said he wanted to learn more about Jesus so that'll be fun to teach him, his name is Ali! Contacting here is really hard but we do a lot of it, basically walk around and try and talk to people about the Church. Most of the country is anti-religion and also always on their phones or with headphones in so it's tough. The African's are a lot more open to religion but there's not very many in Kungsbacka. We get around either by walking or train and bus, it's pretty nice. Most of the things I heard about Sweden are pretty true, like on a bus every sits alone and is on their phone, if you make eye contact with anyone you're crazy haha it's a different culture than in America. Also I can understand my companion's Swedish but the native accent is so hard to pick up on so he does most of the Swedish talking but I'm improving everyday! And in Sweden you speak as much Swedish as you want to since everyone speaks English too.

We swung by a kind of investigator's apartment named Jimmy, he's all tatted up and has long hair but is a nice guy and is interested in learning more about the history of the church than the gospel but hopefully we can gain his trust and talk to him more about the gospel! Our ward mission leader is awesome, we've had dinner at his family's house twice, I'm excited to work with him! We had a cool experience where we contacted a guy on the street and showed him the EftersomHanLever (because He lives) easter video and talked to him about our message and how Jesus can help him in his life. While we were talking and showing the video he was smoking an e cigarette, that was an interesting experience. He wasn't interested in meeting to learn more but took a card and seemed to like what we said. The thing I've learned is even if people don't accept or are interested, you're planting seeds that maybe someone down the road can help them come unto Christ more! 

It's crazy cause 3 out of my 4 teachers from the MTC served in Kungsbacka so looking through the area book you see their names on the records and people they taught that I've met like Jimmy, so cool! 

We have an investigator named Saeed who owns a candy shop so when we visited him he let us take as much candy as we wanted, that was awesome and came in handy for general conference. We watched Priesthood session and the two satuday sessions of General Conference on sunday cause of the time difference. My fav talk was probably Elder Andersen's about not only dancing, but hearing the music. I think that's so true and something that is really important to recognize as a missionary and helping to truly bring people unto Christ. Here in Kungsbacka we've got to work on finding more investigators so we can teach more lessons and also strengthening the ward and getting them excited for missionary work! 

Hope everyone had a glad påsk!

Äldste Hainsworth 

From Sherri:  Pics are coming!  Many, many pics. Spring break got in the way, but they're coming.  Last weeks and this weeks.

studying outside mtc and one of the norwegian elders creations

 walking to dinner at the ward mission leaders house

 companion 

climbing some stairs and the view

 chapel and chapel lobby

Tenny's answers to a few of my questions.  One was do you say "your mom" the same in Swedish as you do in Danish which is Du Mor?

That's awesome, I told my comp about our easter tradition and he thought it was really cool

And I'll have alot more time to email, it's way more chill in the mission field so you can just email, not dear elder. That's awesome I forgot about your little trip with the sansing's, have fun! Maybe take a little detour to Sweden if you have time! Haha that was close, it'd be din mor. Crazy that it's sunday night there. Älskar dig!

Äldste Hainsworth

This is a shot that Stan took outside of our Utah house to be used for Tenny's plaque that will hang in our ward church building during the 2 years he's on his mission.   He's been gone for 2 months tomorrow & I'm still working on getting his plaque ordered through our Stake (made up of 8-12 wards).  I now know that those plaques cost the Stake about $50.