Letter dated 5May2014

Dear Family and Friends! It has been a terrific week!! It was sad to say good-bye to Äldste Bybee and everyone in Eskilstuna. But we had a really fun service project where we went with Mahmoud and Zohreh to Helena (a member who is quite ill) and cleaned her windows. It was a great last thing to do before leaving because nothing is better than service, especially when it's with great buds! Right before that, I was teaching Zohreh a piano lesson at the church. We were working on "Come Follow Me," and she said that the song felt very familiar to her from her childhood, which is pretty impossible because she grew up in Iran. So it was perhaps that she remembered that song, which is about baptism, from the pre-earth life and had a moment when she could remember a little bit from the pre-earth life. We talked about baptism for a while, and the Spirit was felt so strongly. It was so cool!!! Well, now I'm in Lund, the deep south, with Äldste Dahle, who is great! Lund is the home of Lund University, and most of the students are open to listening to us and several of them only speak English, which are great things! The ward is very big and very good. The first day I got here it was Valborg, a Swedish Holiday. We went to a member family's house, had a big fire whose traditional purpose is to scare away witches, played some Swedish trivia, and had great food! There were so many people there!! I met Christian, who's in the bishopric and is Superman when it comes to member-missionary work. When my MTC group first arrived in Sweden, Sister Newell told us about a couple who had both served missions and who study Preach My Gospel everyday together... and that couple is Christian and Amanda! They are really amazing and there are so many other people in the ward who are great member missionaries! The accent is pretty difficult. It is described by Northern Swedes as being as if a person has porridge in her upper-throat. I don't plan to ever pick it up because they can understand me easily, but I did a really good job on it by accident when I was talking to Äldste Dahle in Swedish with a hunk of fudge in my mouth. It was really funny. There is a piano in our apartment, which is really nice! It's great; I love Sweden! Here're pictures of a squirrel and me, "Welcome to Lund!" sign, a really great church (Lund is Sweden's perhaps-second-oldest city and has great architecture), and me eating my first Kebab in Lund, which every missionary looks forward to :) I hope that you all have a terrific week as you're doing Celebration, AP Exams, play performances, other school stuff, serving, sharing your testimonies and everything else! Love you all! I cannot wait to talk to you and hopefully grandpa and grandma on Google Hangout on Sunday!! Med kärlek (shairlek), -- Äldste Daniel Schindler