June 25, 2018 Midsommar!

Making the maypole

Elder Bills and I 

in front of the maypole

Well this week I got my new companion, Elder Bills, who I'll be training! He comes from Peoria, Arizona, and before the mission he attended BYU for a year where he actually competed in swimming. He had to wait for his visa, so after finishing at the MTC he served in the Yakima Washington mission for a transfer. Despite any sort of jet lag, he's got a lot of energy and works harder than just about any missionary I've met, so we haven't slowed down a bit. It's been a lot of fun to share some Swedish traditions with him and get to show him around the beautiful city of Stockholm.

On Friday we celebrated the Swedish holiday Midsommar Eve. It's by far the most celebrated holiday in Sweden, and unique to the Nordic countries, so it was a lot of fun to participate in. The church started a yearly Midsommar celebration a few years back in Tyresta By, a national park about an hour south of Stockholm, which has grown into one of the

biggest celebrations in Sweden, and all the missionaries in the Stockholm area were in attendance, about 30 in total. Throughout the morning they have little games and activities the kids can do, and the adults make the Maypole. We actually got to assist in the making of the Maypole, which including stripping green branches off of trees they had cut down and tying them to the frame of the Maypole. After wrapping branches around the Maypole everybody goes into the meadows, picks flowers, and weaves them onto the pole. Around 2:30, they raise the maypole, after which everyone gathers around it and dances to traditional Swedish songs. After the dancing, they have a few more activities, the

Tug of War

highlight being a tug of war competition (or "dragkamp" in Swedish). You were allowed to make teams of ten, so naturally the missionaries assembled the dream team to represent. We had a good run, and made it to the semi-finals where we finally lost to a team that broke the rules by having 21 people on it... Let's just say they were determined to beat us. Although we put up a good fight, we ended up barely losing, which I'm convinced was actually caused by the bad footing created by wearing dress shoes.

Midsommar is in coordination with the Summer Solstice, June 21, the day with the most amount of sunlight for the year. June 21 was on Thursday, and being so far North, the sun rose at 3:31 and set at 10:08. Missionary work is pretty fun when the sun is always up.

Dancing around the maypole

On the way to church yesterday we had a pretty cool experience. We showed up at Stockholms Östrastation and were waiting for the train by track 4 when a member showed up. I was so focused on our conversation that I missed the fact that the train came in on the other track. It had said that it would come in on track 4, but it switched to track 5, and I had no idea. By the time I realized, we went to get on the train and the doors shut right as we got there and the train left.... I was kinda disappointed, but the next train would get us there just in time for Sacrament Meeting, so it would all work out. The amazing part is that when we got on the train, we told we told the member we were going to go talk with someone, so we sat down next to a girl and started a conversation. Her name is Cassandra, and it turns out that she lived in Thailand for 6 months and is now Buddhist. We asked a lot about her faith, and told her a lot about ours as well. We told her about the Book of Mormon, and she was interested, so we gave her a copy and a card. I know without a doubt that God wanted us to talk with her, and he truly directed our path, even though it may have seemed like an inconvenience at the time. I'm grateful that as we were willing to open our mouths, he truly filled them and made us His messengers.

Äldste Sirrine

Hiking to the coast to fish with a member

Fishing

We were getting off the bus when we 

heard the driver announce, "If you 

look to the right, you'll see a dog sitting

 on a motorcycle." He wasn't wrong.