Week 89 - Spring Has Sprung

Week 89 - Spring Has Sprung

Well the flowers have all bloomed and it's gorgeous up here in Övik. Moving from Stockholm to Norrland meant I got two springs since spring comes about four weeks later up here. #countyourmanyblessingsnamethemonebyone We've had just about as good a' weather as you could ask for too. So we went and hiked a mountain today. That was pretty fun! We ate lunch on top of it and got rained on a little. We also met two guys that had rock climbed up the backside where it's sheer cliff. They were from Minnesota and South Dakota. Always fun to meet some Americans! 

During the week we had a lesson cancel, so we went on a walk looking for opportunities to share the gospel. We went into the mall and ended up in a men's clothing store called Dressman. Then I suggested that I could try on a shirt and then Elder Gilson could try to talk to the people waiting for their friends trying on shirts. Well it kind of worked. The lady sitting there was speaking Spanish which kind of threw Elder Gilson off, but when I came out with the shirt on, a guy looked up and just said basically, "Dang that looks really good on you!" Haha he was a nice guy and we talked for like 20 minutes. I thought it was so funny, I just went ahead and bought the shirt! Then on the rest of our walk, we saw two people we had been trying to get in contact with! It was a really inspired walk apparently.

We had a girl who hadn't been in a while come to church yesterday and she brought her family who aren't members. It was fun for us to meet them. We had played sports with her little brothers before and it was fun chilling with them too :) 

Well that's been my week. I hope you all have a good one :)

Love,

Äldste Denton

Week 88 - Hitting the Links

Week 88 - Hitting the Links

Elder Gilson had his birthday so we celebrated by making our own kebab plates and having the youth come have a party. It was a hit and a new guy came and then came again for our activity on Friday. Super fun! Elder Gilson manned the deep frier and I was in charge of frying the frozen kebab meat. 

We helped our branch president plant potatoes this last week too. He lives way out in the country. We got to eat a nice fish and potato stew afterwards with him, his wife, a friend who's considering being baptized, and her three month old baby. If you've ever sat behind a tractor and loaded potatoes then you know how much fun we had. It was my first time ever planting potatoes actually. It's funny that I'm born and raised in Idaho and I had to come to Sweden to try it for the first time :)

We decided to golf for p-day today. Super fun. The boys at the clubhouse were just spendid and gave us discounts and free stuff and yeah it was a blast. It was a beautiful course out by the water. 

Well that's it for this week! Love you all, the Book of Mormon is true. It can change your life if you read it. 

Love, 

Äldste Denton

Week 87 - Lions and Tigers and Bears (Oh my!)

Week 87 - Lions and Tigers and Bears (Oh my!)

We spent a lot of time setting up lessons and tracting and stuff like that this week. I got to see some familiar faces in church yesterday when a lady from the Stockholm ward and her daughter showed up to sacrament meeting. That was pretty cool!

We taught a guy that isn't active this week. He told us some really cool stories about when he served in the military down in Africa. My favorite was this one time he snuck out of camp to visit a nice family he had made friends with from all the other times he had snuck out of camp. He had 20 minutes before the nightly role call and he was making his way back in the pitch dark. He said that as he started walking through the thick forest, he kept hearing something behind him, but every time he stopped, it stopped. It was then that he remembered the nice family he had been with warning him about a lion that lived nearby. The lion was stalking him getting closer and closer waiting to pounce. So he loaded his pistol slowly and then sprinted. He dived to the ground and turned around so he could see the lion's silhouette charging at him with an open mouth against the night sky and right as it was about to reach him, he shot three times and it collapsed right in front of him. The gun shots got everyone in the nearby military camp excited so he sprinted to the back side of the camp and went into his tent and pretended to be sleeping. They found him and got him to talk and he had to spend seven days tied to a post out in the sun and seven days in a little prison cell for sneaking out of camp. Pretty awesome story I thought.

Well that was pretty much my week :)

Love you all,

Äldste Denton

 We had our live district council for the transfer. This is us eating chili together.

Also me watching a guy pole vault while on splits with Elder Bird in Umeå. The picture says it all. 

Week 86 - Back in Norrland

Week 86 - Back in Norrland

What a week! It's been awesome transferring back to a normal area and being out every day. Up here in Norrland the sun doesn't set till about 10:30... It feels soo good. Our branch is tiny, but we've already seen some miracles! We had a lady come back to church on Sunday that hadn't been to church in years and it seems like she's back to stay.

Örnsköldsvik is a cute little town where the main attractions are two big ski jumps, a nature store outlet, and a hockey stadium. People here enjoy fishing, gardening, hiking, and picking berries in the forest. The branch has about 15 active members and we probably average like 12 in church every week. I'm excited to give everything I've got to this branch before going home. 

Elder Gilson is great. We get along. We're both drummers so it's been fun making some fresh beats with him. He's a hard worker too. He's from Utah and he went to the University of Utah for a year and was part of a fraternity. 

Hope you all have an awesome week! 

Love, 

Äldste Denton 

                                 Leaving the Office

                           Views of Örnsköldsvik.