Letter dated 30July2013

Dear Family: I had another fantastic week! It was great to hear that you are doing well. Right now I am waiting for my laundry to be finished. The window on the dryers has a yellow tint, so it appears that my white clothes have been thoroughly stained. Luckily I found out the cause shortly after I began the investigation. Whoever designed these dryers has a choice sense of humor. So far, I have had 0 dreams in Swedish. However, on Tuesday night I had a dream where I was teaching myself grammar and woke up knowing more than I did when I went to bed! It was neat and great that I just dreamed it! Especially helpful in learning Swedish is a great computer program called TALL that I hear is similar to Rosetta Stone. It has native Swedes pronounce each word or phrase and has great settings for discovering and reviewing words. It has been such a help! It has also been amazing to teach our teachers acting as investigators the gospel lessons. It is very difficult, but I can't wait to actually do it in 3 weeks! I am incredibly excited to actually be in Sweden. Many Swedish words, especially the more-common ones, sound very similar to English. For example, to say "Shall we now go to his home?" sounds like "Ska ve noo goa till hans hem?" It doesn't happen often, but occasionally I will begin a sentence in Swedish that sounds like English, and say the rest of it in English with Swedish pronunciation. I think it's really funny. Our zone, which is has about 120 missionaries, has missionaries going to Scandinavia minus Finland and Dutch-speaking nations. Some elders in the zone played soccer on Wednesday in what was mostly a Swedish vs. non-Swedish game. We Swedes were really good at scoring, and the other team was not so good. When I was playing goalie, one did get past me which came by a round-house kick from roughly mid-field. Later I found out that the kicker broke his ankle from the kick, so I was glad for him that it got past me. And the elder with the broken ankle is a champion and isn't letting his injury stop his non-athletic activity (or much of his athletic activity). On Tuesday morning while doing service outside, I saw a really sweet sight: I was by the half-circle of nations' flags, Sweden's was the most northeastern, and I was such that Sweden's flag fell right between Squaw Peak and Y-Mountain; the sun was rising between these mountains; and the air was glowing from the dust from the leaf blower I was operating. So I saw the Swedish flag alone between the mountains with sun coming through it and the air around it glowing. This got me so excited and I thought it a real tender mercy. On Tuesday night, Elder Taggart and I had a really incredible experience: we were hanging out at by a building we typically are not by right before our curfew when the sister missionaries in our district came outside with a sister from the other Swedish district who was very sick. They asked us to give her a priesthood blessing that she would feel better, so we did that and left to our dorm. She later went to the hospital and felt much better in the morning. Later we found out that at about the same time as we gave her the blessing, the elders in the other Swedish district had been praying fervently together that the ill sister, who'd been ill in the daytime before we gave her a blessing, would feel well. Because of the rare odds that we were there then, when other priesthood holders were not around, and because of the prayer, I reckon that it happened for a reason and that it was a help to her. I also felt really blessed to have been able to participate in the ordinance and to have partly been an answer to a prayer. On Sunday, we heard a talk in sacrament meeting given by an elder who is going to Norway. Its topic was recognizing the Holy Ghost, and it was a really touching message because he is legally blind so he had it memorized and he did such a good job. I also thought of how hard it would be to want to be a missionary if blind, and of how well I have been blessed. He is a really inspiring person! It would seem that all the letters Andrew, Nick, and Chris are sending to me are getting lost in the mail. Please review my mailing address :P Some questions: how often is one to polish his shoes? Is once a day too often? Which is bigger: the continental United States or Brazil? How much money is in my checking account? I will be withdrawing about $40 therefrom this week to prepare for my travel across the Atlantic. Mom: Please tell me how much remains via DearElder when you can. Love you all! You're the best family I could imagine!