Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Elder Christian Tanner - What is with Sweden and people answering the door with no pants on?

Hey everybody! It's me again. I first want to start off by saying that I went to a bakery this week and ate a Semla. It was SOOO good!! It was by far my favorite part of the week. I will probably go and get another one this week. In fact, I will go get another one this week. And I will think of you, Mom! :)
So how is Trollhättan doing? That is a very good question. This week was a rather difficult week. We did not get the results that I was expecting from our Investigators. In fact, we had one investigator (Ramiza) cancel on us twice. That was a little bit frustrating. Especially since she is our most positive investigator. The first time she called us and said her mother was sick and didn't think she could have us over. So, we made another appointment on Saturday. On Saturday we went to her place and she wasn't home. The ward member who referred us to this woman was with us. This ward member is, well, different. She opened up the "Reklam" (I don't know the word in english...) slot and started shouting inside the apartment "ÄR NI HEMMA!?" It was one of the weirdest things I have seen. Well, we get a call from Ramiza later that night and she explained how one of her neighbors saw that woman that was with us shouting in the reklam slot. It scared her, obviously. Nothing bad happened just that the woman was really mad. Now we can't bring that member to our lessons anymore. So, that was one experience that was "off."
 
All in all, we ended up having only like 5 lessons this week. It was one of the most awful "numbers" week I have had in my mission so far. People just kept cancelling on us and nothing seemed to be going our way this week. And I was thinking about this the other night. Why were were so blessed last week to have such a fantastic week and then this week just extremely awful? I really know, but I think the answer is this. That the Lord just wants to see how we handle different situations. For example, patience. Both areas I have been in have required extreme patience. Maybe, the Lord is teaching me patience so that he can trust me with one of his children who requires a lot of patience. The Lord works in mysterious ways; ways that drive me nuts sometimes. But these experiences are for our good and will only make us better.
 
On the bright side of this week, we did get one new investigator. The sisters ran into him a few weeks ago and referred him to us. He owns a pizzeria in Drottingtorget (which this week I learned that "Drotting" means "Queen" so the translation of Drottingtorget is "The Queen Square"... kinda cool I thought.) So, when we visit Roger we go to his Pizzeria and talk to him while he works. If we go there in the evening nobody is there so we just sit down with him and talk. Its kinda fun. He gave us free Kebab Rulles the other day. So, it has its perks :) haha.
 
In order to make this email entertaining, I have to tell you two stories that happened this week. Both of which are incredibly funny. Well, they were for me anyway. One afternoon we come home to make some food for lunch. My companion decided to take the rest of the potato soup. We had no other left overs so I had to figure out what I was going to make. We had chicken, rice, carrots, frozen bags of veggies, Red Thai Chili sauce and such. Perfect. Grill the chicken in with the veggies while the rice is cooking. Then mix it all together and pour the chili sauce on it. That would be good. Well, I was doing great! I was chopping up the chicken, the veggies were starting to grill, the rice was cooking. All was going good. While it was all cooking I got out a piece of bread to butter and put cheese on to eat with my meal. Finally, the chicken and veggies were done. Then I realized that I hadn't touched the rice in a long time. I opened the lid and it was burned . Every last bit. It was all black. I ran over to the sink with it and poured cold water into the pot. Bad idea. There was so much smoke. So much that the fire alarm went off....while my companion was sleeping. HAHAHA. At first, I thought it turned on the fire alarm for all the apartments next to ours too. But then I realized it was just ours. The bottom of the pot is no longer pretty and shinny looking. It is black with little imprints of where some rice got fried to the bottom of the pot. It is a piece of art. I could hang that up in a museum and get a bunch of money probably haha. But yeah, that was kind of freaky.
 
The other funny story. Well, you kinda had to have been there for it to be funny. We decided one afternoon that we were going to go do some less-active swing bys in an area about 15 minutes away. When we got there, we were able to get into contact with all of them. Which was great. But one house we came to was... well... interesting. We knocked on the door and this guys daughter answers the door. We asked if her dad was home. She called him down. Now this guy comes to the door wearing no pants with a huge grin on his face. And he's eating a carrot. I think he was trying to get us to laugh because after he declined our offer to meet with him, he just stood there. We're walking away and he's munching on his carrot with the cheesiest grin. When he finally closed the door I just busted up laughing. The total number of people who answered the door with no pants on this week: 9. Why, Sweden? Why?
Well, I think that about does it for this week. Have a good week everybody!
Äldste Christian Tanner

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