Monday, October 3, 2011

September 25 - Week 4 - The letter Å is my favorite


Well! It has been another great week here in Uppsala! Can you believe it-time just seems to be flying? (I wonder if it is flying on your side as well). It sounds like you are all doing very well. Mom and Katie-be mostly careful and write back about all the adventures in full detail please! This sounds like my kind of adventure. I tried to remember some of my Spanish... but it came out all Swedish. I don't know how people try and learn more than two languages. Crazy.
So this week's adventures:
We finally got invited to a member’s house for dinner! Yay! He fed us this really good apple cake (kaka is the word for cake is Swedish...he he) and delicious soup. After eating we played a game where we each took an item and had to bring up the gospel (this is to help members talk about the gospel more often in their everyday conversation) ... (all thanks to Katie’s wonderful advice). The game went great and we are excited to keep trying to work with members to get them excited about missionary work. That is actually one thing I am most excited about coming back from a mission--getting to be a member missionary. Man! Members are so important! And I would love to go on teaches with the missionaries. I often wish that someone else could plan my days and they would do all of the finding... and then I could just go from lesson to lesson. :) I love lessons! Finding on the other hand is a bit harder.
Syster E and I are really excited about one girl in particular. Her name is Ingrid... she is a tall pretty Swedish girl in her early thirties. We have been inviting a member named Alice to her lessons. Alice is WONDERFUL! She is from Austria. She had a boyfriend in Austria who was a member... went on a mission to Sweden and then came back to Austria and baptized her. Now they are married and have moved to Sweden and are going to school in Uppsala. She is SOLID. This last week we had our lesson in the library on the top floor. Imagine an old Greek library. We found this little room on the top floor that has huge windows that look over the city. O! It’s like a little heaven. So it was just we four in this room. We were teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ (3rd lesson) and we invited Alice to share her experience in being baptized. It was so powerful! After she shared her experience I just felt like it would be the right time to ask Ingrid why she was still meeting with us and what she felt. (It felt like a prompted question) Background on Swedes-they are not very open about themselves and so we didn’t really know a lot about Ingrid and Syster e and I were trying to get her to open up. Because it is hard to teach someone the gospel when you don't know him or her. Every time we teach a lesson it has its own touch for each individual. That is what is so great about the gospel--it applies to everyone individually. But if you don't know whom you are teaching it is hard to put those unique touches to it. Well it was the perfect time... probably not the perfect question... especially with my Swedish... but that didn’t matter because the spirit was there and Ingrid opened right up. Something interesting that I have noticed is that... most of the time... I kind of just get the basic gist of what our investigators are saying. And sometimes I don't understand anything. But for some reason that doesn’t matter... The spirit just helps me know what questions to ask--and then I just have to wait till after the lesson to find out what their answer was. It has been really neat. I have had quite a few experiences where if the Lord didn’t direct this work... it just wouldn’t work.
SOMETHING MARVELOUS happened!! A boy just called us up last night and said he had met Syster Dabb (previous missionary in Uppsala) twice in town and he would like to meet with us now and learn more. YAY!! I LOVE IT WHEN THEY FIND US!! Soo cross your fingers.
MOM!! Guess what I found! Nyponsoppa! Remember when we went to Sweden and we brought back with us that red liquidy hot stuff that we would putt whipped cream on top? And there was also that purple stuff that you let cool and put whipped cream on that... they still have it!! I found some in our cabinets and tried making it the other day... it still tastes the same!
Last week we had a whole bunch of students show up to church (I think I told you about it)... well this week we met with a few more who had to finish their school assignment. What was so interesting to me was...as we taught them the first lesson... I asked them if they believed in God... None of them believed in God. And they are all going to be religion teachers! That was just crazy! They all said it was interesting to see how religion influenced people... but they themselves had no belief in a God. So odd.
My other favorite person we meet with often is Jason. He looks like the old guy from karate kid but... at 30 years old. He is a new member but only speaks English and doesn’t really like to come to church. So we have been teaching him the lessons again and trying to help him understand the importance of coming to church every week. This week we met up on Saturday for lunch to get him excited to come to church the next day. We sat and discussed the talk by Elder Uchtdorf about "what matters most" on his favorite bench right by the Dome Kyrka (the biggest church in Scandinavia)... It was a beautiful day... and Jason made such progress... he is really smart and intellectual... but maybe doesn’t have the greatest diligence.

I don't have much time left... But life as a missionary is wonderful. You have your ups and downs often. But the overall feeling is amazing. It is something amazing to be a part of the Lords work.

 Love you all
 Syster Schneiber

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