A Royal Wedding, Graduation, and Meatzza

Hey!!! How's it going?

Everything's pretty good over here. It's still not warm here! It's rainy and dark and hasn't been over 70 here. Swedes think it's soooooooooooo hot when it gets to like 80. Haha. But when it's sunny they allllllll come out. They're like lizards. In Luleå, you almost wouldn't even know there was human life during the winter months. It's WAY easier to be a missionary now.

I also got my hair done. I walked in and set up an appointment and the guy lifted my hair up and said, "Did you do this yourself?" And the lady who did it was like, "So..... it was pretty bad." Haha Swedes are SO honest. But yeah, I got it done and told the cute girl who did my hair all about missions, and she told me all about weird Swedish holidays. Which, there is SO MANY. She told me about Midsommar which is coming up this Friday, I'll tell you all about it next week. And she told me about a random holiday where you eat crayfish while wearing hats with crayfish on them. She didn't give any explanation for that one. I mostly think of all the holidays here as a messed up bus schedule and a lot of drunk people. That was a long tangent, but Syster Kimball is awesome and she taught a lesson while I was getting my hair done. It's blonde now, and I don't know what I think of it, but the cut is way better. You'd be happy, mom.

What else was interesting this week? We helped Saara clean her foster son's apartment. I don't know if I have talked about Saara before. She's a Finnish sniper. Fought in Lebanon. I am trying to even find words to describe her.... She broke her arm and took off her cast a few days later and just uses the arm. Haha. She is absolutely fantastic, and just loves us. But we were cleaning and there was a hookah.... contraption. Haha I am not embarrassed that I don't know what to call it. That was an adventure for sure. She also told me my accent was super cute and I should stop trying to sound like a swede.

Let's see... the prince here got married! To a girl "from the people" and that's suuuuuper uncommon. But it was fun, everyone was excited about that. You should look it up and see pictures and they probably have videos on YouTube. It's like going back in time. They had a bunch of royalty there and they rode off in a carriage pulled by horses around Stockholm and people come out to see them and wave to them.

Also it was graduation and it was insane. The students had a water fight in town! Also, they drive these huge trucks around that say "Don't drink and drive" and has all the graduates are drinking and playing super loud music and screaming at everyone. Swedes are so reserved... until you get some alcohol in them. 

Distriktsmötet was something else this week. I had the "grabbag"... An activity to get to know each other better, and I taught everyone what a botch was and made them say a botch from their mission. The foreigners (from Finland, Sweden, and Denmark) were so confused.. "botch??" Haha. But anyways. So Elder Bradshaw and Held are the most hilarious companionship ever. They are obsessed with lifting and they eat low carb and ridiculous amounts of protein, so they made us "meatzza".... It was literally hamburger as the crust, sauce, cheese, topped with hot dogs, bacon, peppers. It was the manliest thing I have ever done in my life.

Sorry this letter isn't very spiritual. A lot of crazy stuff happened! One cool thing too, we went to this Italian food market thing in town and a guy wanted to hear about our church and we gave him a Book of Mormon in Italian, and his friend came out and said "WHAT are you Mormons doing? I am trying to keep him catholic!" Haha. But Reed said I just throw out random names so I will tell you our investigators with baptismal dates are Jerry, Benji, Bruce, and Alvin. Jerry is a swede that wrote himself out of the church a long time ago. Benji is from Africa and she is the one that showed up at church and said she knew it was true and wanted to be baptized! Bruce is African and was an old investigator that really wants to change his life around! Alvin is from Iran and I talk about him all the time haha. But yeah! God has blessed us so much here. :)

One thing I read this morning, I love Alma 15:8, "If thou believest in the redemption of Christ thou canst be healed" Think about how powerful that is. And think of how many ways we can and need to be healed. I have honestly had a hard time in this area, I don't know why because we are SO blessed with WONDERFUL people to work with and I've made amazing friends, but I have really learned what it means to build a relationship with Christ, and the blessings that come from that relationship.

LOVE,

Syster Stetler