Hi! I'm having a great time here! My district is great and I'm feeling successful as a missionary. The language is coming well too! I hope you all are doing well. I hope I can fit everything in in just 30 minutes.
I can't send home pictures on these computers and I don't think they have photo printing anymore, so you'll just have to wait. Sorry! I have a few good ones of the district and my residence and classroom that I'll send home once I get to the field.
I got all your Dear Elder letters! Thanks for writing so much! That gives me time to e-mail. If you'd like to send a handwritten letter sometime, that would be nice as well. Dear Elder is REALLY convenient, but it prints out multiple pages kind of weirdly. I already have a rather large pile of unorganized letters. :)
Thanks for all the support!
My first day was great! It felt like everything was better when I walked in the door. Getting my nametag was great! Meeting my teachers was crazy. We have two of them and they ONLY spoke Swedish the first day. It's become less intense now though. There are 8 of us elders in the district learning Swedish. We do pretty much everything together, and it's been great! We're all quite unique, but we're bonding pretty well.
The flight was pretty good. There were 5 missionaries on the flight, and then I met up with a bunch of them in the SLC airport. That was fun.
The shuttle went well.
My carry-on fit.
My companion is Elder Tomlinson. He's from northern England! From a city called Scarborough near York. He's really funny! His testimony is also really great. It's a bit of a culture shock for him though. He couldn't work the blinds and I got to witness the first time he ever had a corn dog.
About half of the people here are from Utah. But there are people from all over! The people from Sweden are fun to talk to. They're going to Estonia or Finland or whatever. They don't send any Swedes to Sweden.
There are 8 missionaries in the district. We're the only ones learning Swedish. It's cool how that means something different for each of us. Elder Sargent's mother is full Swede, and his father met her on his own mission to Sweden. Elder Tomlinson was going to go to university in Sweden. Elder Tietjen has ancestry from Christianstad, probably named Olson, so we might be cousins. And Elder Francom is studying international relations and just spent a year in the German foreign language housing at BYU. It's a fun group!
I'm having fun. I feel like I'm being very blessed to be focused. I'm not miserable being away from friends, family or entertainment because my calling is keeping me focused on Christ. So it's great!
I have lots of class every day. Gym every day too. Thursday is p-day. Sunday is a lot of studying and a temple walk. It's good.
Today's been great! It's nice to finally have a break.
So, crazy story. We have an investigator! His name is Jonas (pronounced Yonas) and he's from Sweden and hardly speaks English. He moved here to study chemistry at UVU and is interested in the church, so he signed up to be taught by us. We gave him the first lesson on our third day. That was intense! We mostly just read a lot of stuff from the phrase book. He's come back every day, so we've taught him 5 lessons by now. We've improved on our Swedish and gotten to know him better, so we're actually starting to have conversations. We can usually understand his questions, but the hard part is figuring out how to answer. He's really interested in how the Holy Ghost works. We've really focused on explaining, and by the 4th lesson he told us he could recognize it. That was so powerful! The joy I felt after hearing him pray with so much spirit was incredible. I'm going to have a great time doing this work!
The 5th lesson (yesterday) we told him about the word of wisdom. He was really concerned about not being able to drink, even a little. That was rough! We eventually got him to commit to try it out and see how he felt, as a trial of his faith, as an experiment. He's going to California this weekend with some friends, so please pray for him! He needs all the strength he can get to learn how to commit to Christ.
The language is going very well. It's starting to feel natural. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm not struggling or anything.
We accidently told Jonas that Jesus "did drugs" instead of "was baptized." Oops! We all had a good laugh over that. :)
8 hours of sleep a night is just enough. Though I am getting more tired little by little. I have strength when I need it though. Time feels like it's slowly speeding up. The first few days took forever!
There's no way I can tell you everything that's been going on. That makes me a little sad. Hopefully this is enough. Know that I am doing well and having a great time. I love you! Thanks for all of your support. I can do this because of you.
No real time to proofread or even form good sentences. Sorry!
I know that this church is true. I know that Jesus Christ makes all things possible and that coming to Him brings salvation. I want with all my heart to bring people to Him. I want to serve Him as best I can!
I love you all. Thanks for everything!
Elder Lawrence
