This week I will be hitting my ONE YEAR mark!! (8/18/14)

Well this week has been a quick one! It just flew right on by! Pretty crazy! It is insane that this week I will be hitting my ONE YEAR mark! I can't even begin to explain how crazy that feels. Needless to say, we will be having a big celebration here. You can be expecting pictures for sure. It will be great! We worked hard this week and I am quite pleased with what we were able to do! Monday night was a good Family Night! We had like 20 people show up! That was amazing! (You have to think with the mindset that this was more people than ever came to church in Linköping) We were going to have a "Selfie Picture Savenger Hunt" but it was raining for we went with Plan B! So we ended up just playing Mofia. These Swedes are pretty brutal. They will just kill you so fast and they act super innocent after. It was a good revealing of everyone's true colors.

I got your amazing package Mother! Holy cow you are awesome! What a great surprise that was to get that at Zone Conference! That came right in time! It was awesome! All the American Goods! Yum! I finally met with my Mission President! Oh man, he is an awesome guy! It was really great! He is super nice and really like personable. His wife is super awesome as well. They just are really fun and understand that it doesn't have to be so serious all the time! It was really cool. However, when I did ask him a question about the gospel and we were talking about it he was really good at answering my question! It was so sick! I am super excited to work more with him in the future!

One of our investigator was moved on Wednesday... It kinda sucks because the night before we had such a strong lesson with him and I had really grown to love this guy. But the positive part is that he is in an area where is it possible for him to get to church and the missionaries are really excited to teach him more! So it's sad for me but I am happy with the turn out! The other one is still here though! We don't know when he will leave, so we were able to teach him a few more times this week and he came to church on Sunday it was super awesome! He is really cool! There is always like leftover clothes in missionary apartments so Elder Billodeau and I went through and found him a full suit that he could wear to church!  It was really cool to give that to him! He was really happy! He is really progressing as well. We are just dreading having him move as well. But everything has it purpose! We have faith it will all be okay!

Something that was a little out of the ordinary that happened this week was we got interviewed by the newspaper! So on Friday we will be in the newspaper, here in Gävle! It was a ton a fun doing the article. It was about "Life as a Missionary" so someone came and she just asked us a lot of question and it in the (3 hours later) we had taught her the entire missionary lessons. It was really cool and pretty fun! Then she sent us the pre draft for the article and she did a really good job! So I will send a picture of the newspaper when we get it this week! It will be all in Swedish but you can translate it if you want or just look at the pictures :) haha

In my efforts to keep this email short, I have a spiritual thought that a member told us last night and it stuck with me! She was talking about the final chapters of the Book of Mormon and how Moroni is all alone and then she asked us what it would be like for us if we were all alone. If we had no one else on the earth to strengthen us or help us stay on the path. Cause at that time he had no one. He literally was the last person alive. All he had was his relationship with his God. It was a really interesting thought. If we had no other members of the church, there were no leaders and it was just us. Would our own personal testimonies be enough? Would they be strong enough to continue to fight through the Adversary power? We need to find our own personal answer to that question. It was a really cool thought for him so I hope it was good for you guys too!

I love you so much! I hope you have a great week! This week we are going to Stockholm to have a big meeting with a Area Seventy! So I am excited!

 Stay positive!

Äldste Farnworth

 Arts and Crafts at the Sjökvist's house. They are the best. 

#SabbathDaySelfie #AntonandMe 

Swedish Art... #awkwardpicture

 This is my friend Sam. I call him Baloo and he calls me Mowgli. I like him a lot.

 Ocean Selfie! Sister Hill and Me 

Swedish Baseball... Brännboll. It was really fun!

We bike all the time...(8/11/14)

Let's see what happened this week.... I am at a loss. It was a great week though. I figure I will just start typing and the memory will come to me. We had a really great P day this week. We just spent the whole day in places that had Air Conditioning. For example, IKEA! It is really cool to see IKEA in Sweden cause it is almost the exact same as it is in Utah, it's funny because I was in the IKEA with my mom about a year ago, we where there for some reason and she was looking at all the things in Swedish and she told that she was so excited for me that in 2 years I would be able come back and read all the item names and know what they are. Well, sorry to disappoint but most of the Swedish that one would see in IKEA is made up. We were there with a member named Sofie and we were walking through the store with her and we were just making fun what all the things are called cause they just nothing. It was actually really fun! Then for Family Night we went to the church cause it was too hot to be out and running around. So we went and watch 17 Miracles it was a lot of fun actually. 

Then the week start and it was like just going and going and going, and the whole time just pretend like it is not killing you! We finally go rain on Tuesday, it was so nice and it was the day that we had to ride bike from Gävle to Valbo (a small city outside of Gävle) it took about 45 minutes to bike there and there wasn't to much rain when we started but God must have a sense of humor because about 5 minutes into the ride it was a complete DOWNPOUR. It was awesome! We were just pedaling our little hearts out and we were so wet! It was all worth it when we got to our appointment and the man asked what happened and he told him we biked... IT was pretty epic if you ask me. We bike ALL the time. It is awesome and it is getting me in shape again! I was pretty pathetic when I first starting going. I got tired pretty fast! now.. I still get tired but not as bad! 

Okay time for the missionary moment of the week! I have two for you guys this week! 

1: We were coming back from somewhere and after we got of the bus we decided we would go and contact people. There were these two guys that were walking so we choose them and started talking, did the whole opening and we got the response: "Sorry, Guys we don't speak Swedish!" (Sound familiar) So we switched to English and found out that they have only been here in Sweden for about 1 month! They are from Uganda. They are trying immigrate here. The way that works is that anyone can come here to Sweden but you go through a few phases, when you first get here, they send you to a housing place that is like step one. Then you relocated to anywhere they choose in Sweden and you stay there until you get either accepted for a visa or denied. So these guys were just at the end of step one. So they will be moving to who know where on Wednesday! ANYWAYS, they are so cool. They are born again Christians and they just want follow Christ and do what they can to be good! SO we invited them to Church and they were so excited about that! They even asked if we could met before that so we could explain more about what happens at church! It was Friday,so we set a time the next day to meet and teach them! It went really well actually! We had a great intro to the Book of Mormon and it was just so awesome. They came the next day to church and loved it! We are really hoping and praying that they get sent some where that missionaries can continue to teach them! Pray from them, please!

2: Okay I will make this shorter can this is turning into a really long email! We visited this less active couple on Tuesday and they really had a big impact on me! The wife was amazing. She has a lot of sickness and that is the main reason that she is unable to come to church. She has had cancer 7 times! We were talking about being positive and everything and she told this amazing story. She said that a few years ago the cancer was so bad that she was in bed all the time. She wanted so badly to be able to walk and be able to be out and about. Through a miracle a few years later she was able to walk again, she was in Stockholm and she was in the train station when a huge storm hit. It started raining really bad and everyone was running inside and complaining about the rain and such. She said she just remember back to being in bed years before and think how badly she wanted to be outside in all weather and so while everyone was running inside she ran outside! She went out and played in the rain and the Thanks The Lord for the blessing she had to be able to walk and enjoy the wonderful creation of the world. It was a really cool story cause she just was so grateful for something that everyone else had thought to be a bother. To her, it was a huge moment. She is now even more physically handicap but she is grateful forever think that she can do! She doesn't waste time focusing on anything she can't do! Truly inspiring!

Okay this is really long and I am sorry for that! Sweden is amazing. I wasn't able to meet with the President last week but that will be happening this week! So I am still looking forward to that! Should be a really cool experience. We have a great week again and I am excited to get going! I am hitting my 1 year mark in 10 days and I don't know what to think about that! I am so stoked to give this next year my all! 

I love hearing all about your great adventures that you are all having at home, it won't be long till I am there with you guys again! I love you so much and I hope that you have a great week! 

Äldste Farnworth

#elderfarnworth #sweden #sverige #staysweet #bepositive (8/4/14)

Well this week has been long to say the least! My body is aching and I am feeling like I gave it my all. To be honest, there are basically two kinds of weeks as a missionary. The kind that works for you, everyone can meet right at the time you want and the members have dinners for you and it is just like a water slide you just sit down and the current takes you and you have a great time. And then... there are the weeks like this one. Everyone can't meet at the times that you can meet and you start a lot of your days with nothing planned. Which doesn't mean that you give up it just makes for a week that you are tired at the end. Can you guess which we had? Unfortunately the second one. With that said, this was a good week. Not every day was a great day but the week over all was really great!

We made a big effort with the less actives in our area and really set time apart to go and swing by them in this city about 1 hour from Gävle, in a city called Sandviken. It is really a small place! We were walking around just swinging by the members there and kind of trying to get a update on everyone and pretty much the whole city has port codes (pad locked door, very common in Sweden) they make  random swing by completely impossible. So we ended up just seeing who had those and making a note of it. Cool experience though! We went to this one building that had a port code and the door was just unlocked! So we walked in and went to the member that we weren't even sure lived there and she answered and was very friendly! Told us she was a member and she was willing to meet! It was a little tender mercy for the two hot, tired missionaries that day. Made the whole trip worth it! We set up a few other appointments to come back in the next week! I am quite excited for that!

Another cool experience this week was with contacting! That is when we just talk to random people on the street about the church! We were walking home one day and we saw a couple that looked quite normal, I got a prompting to talk to them, so we did! And they didn't listen at all. "Nope, not interested!" Which was weird, I was certain that the spirit told me to talk to them! Then in my disappointment I notice my companion advancing towards a man who was walking behind us, he starts a conversation with him, I was a little confused what he was doing. We had just gotten rejected but this man listened to his opening line about us as missionaries and then said, "I can't speak Swedish" he said in broken English. We asked if English was better and he said no. So we went to last resort. Slow English and hand signs! We tried to make ourselves known and he seemed to get it! We gave him a card and a goodnight! We got excited cause he was from Albania! They are cool people from there!
Anyways, the next day we get a call from a random number.. No, not from that man but from his friend! He told us he got the card from that guy and he wanted to meet today! In a few hours actually, we were just on the way to open the church so it worked out well. We had a great first lesson, he was a little weird on some things but then again, who isn't? It was a really cool experience. We haven't heard from him since but we figure he got deported or something! Oh well, I think it was a good story nonetheless.

If you are wondering what the weather is like in Sweden in the summer I can tell you, HOT. Holy crap it is like I am in a oven, So hot! Yes, mother we bike a lot here in the summer. It is a lot faster than buses and I just generally love it. Have I biked a lot on my mission? No, this is my first area that even has working bikes. This whole city I feel was built for bikers. It is really cool, except when you fall... not as fun.  They don't have air conditioning in any of the houses here so they just open windows and doors so there is no escaping the heat. Luckily, our apartment is in the basement and doesn't have big windows, depressing during the day? Yes. Heaven to come home to? Yes. It is a good place to leave, minus the whole infested with spiders things... good thing I am not scared of them!
This upcoming week should be a solid 10/10, I am really thinking it will be! I am very stoked for it to happen! We have a lot planned and on Friday we are going to Uppsala to have our first interviews with President! I am so stoked for that!

Well I love you all and I miss you a little more every week! I am loving it still and I am not lying when I say that! So much happiness on this end, a lot of tiredness but also happiness! I just can't tell you when one is usually stronger! Haha I love it though! Doing The Lord's work. I am excited for the future! I miss Twitter. I hope it is still cool in a year.
#elderFarnworth #sweden #sverige #staysweet #bepositive
Äldste Farnworth