Oh How Swede It Is!: HUMP DAY

Hi everyone!!

Happy last week in January! Not that I've been counting or anything....but at this time, my thoughts turn to Jon Bon Jovi and his inspiring words...."Woahhhhhh we're halfway there...WOOOOOAAAHHHH LIVING ON A PRAYER". Happy 9 month mark to me :) Time is slipping through my fingers and I am not really sure how to deal with it. Weird weird weird.

FROZEN EYELASHES!!!

This week was the coolest!! On Monday, the STLs came and we did workovers together. That was a lot of fun. All the sisters here are so fun. We all slept over in our tiny little apartment, and then got picked up by the Tolleys and the elders and headed to the Arctic Circle!!! I'm not gonna lie, this time was cooler. There was soooooo much snow and it was absolutely freezing. It got down to around -35 degrees Celsius. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but I know Fahrenheit and Celsius scales are the same at -44....needless to say it was cold. (This is Marci.... -35* C = -31* F) And so cool. Our eyelashes iced over! After visiting the Arctic Circle sign, we went to Jokkmokk, which is a city in the Arctic Circle. It is full of Laplanders, which are kind of like Swedish Native Americans....hahah does that make sense? They are called Sami people, and I am 110% sure I was born Sami. THEY ARE SO AWESOME. They wear reindeer fur and pretty reindeer leather bracelets and I think they are so cool. We went to a museum and learned all about them!

The rest of the week, we got blåsted every single day. Haha. I am going through my planner right now and literally every lesson we had written down for the past 5 days blåsted us except for 2. It is pretty impressive, to be honest...haha but we still found ways to teach!

One of the lessons that actually happened was super awesome. We had a less active call us out of the blue (he hasn't been to church since I got here in October) and invite us over to his friend's house so we could "teach about the Mormon church". We were more than willing to oblige! We got to go over and celebrate our less active's birthday, eat some cake and hot dogs, learn some Spanish (they were all from South America), and teach about the Book of Mormon. I LOVED it! It was loud and noisy, and I haven't heard loud and noisy since I was in America. Swedes do not roll like that. I decided I would have been just fine being called to South America... ;) (just kidding. BUGS.)

The biggest lesson I learned this week was to not be hard on myself. I feel like ever since I came on my mission, my expectations for myself have jumped 10 times higher. I am a lot better of a person than I was before (haha trust me), but I keep falling short of my expectations....it is not fun! I realized this week just how much God loves me and all of you and He does not want us to feel terrible about ourselves all of the time. He wants us to learn and grow and mooooove on. So yeah. Little missionary piece of advice. God loves you just the way you are and He is proud of you no matter what you are doing. :)

Mod is a word in Swedish, see?

FUN FACTS:

-Sweden has 3 other languages that I never knew about--nordsamiska, sydsamiska, and lulesamiska. Only Sami people speak them! But since I was born Sami, I think I need to learn them too :) Except they look like Czech...#hard

-I speak Swinglish now...Stetler points out to me every time I speak English like a Swede and it is embarrassing. I use Swedish grammar in English sentences and apparently emphasize weird things in words. I can't speak any language now...

-Mod is a word in Swedish, and it means courage!

-Life is really good. I like being a missionary. :)

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!! <3

xoxoxo Erin