January 6th, 2013

Hey!!!

Sorry I haven't written for a while, we have had P-day on weird days and I didn't have as much time as I would have liked. 

I am doing great! I love Vendelsö! The area was pretty slow when I got here, but me and Elder Johnson went through the area book and the phone and we got three new investigators last week! so the area is gaining traction. 

We do have one investigator named Victor who has been investigating for over a year now. He is super cool and he loves to talk about cars... we are actually going to make pizza with him today. We went over their yesterday for the second time and he showed me these virtual reality goggles called occulus... it was super cool he bought them as a prototype and he is pretty much beta testing it, so it is pretty new but it was really cool. He showed me a demo of a roller coaster and it kind of felt like you are actually riding it. 

He met the missionaries about a year ago and he even had a baptismal date, but apparently it has been hard for him to recognize answers to prayers. I think that is the biggest thing that has been holding him back. 

Hjalmar was doing great when I left he was the last person I visited in Trollhättan, I talked to my last companion a few days ago and he said that he was still doing great and working towards getting the priesthood. 

Our mission President let us all stay up till 12:30 on new years eve to watch the fireworks... it was incredible, at midnight fireworks started going off all over the city, and our apartment is on the 5th floor so we had a spectacular view. 

I hope that everyone is doing great back home.

Thank you all who sent me letters for my birthday and Christmas, I love getting letters! Skypeing was so cool it was great to see everyone! Audrey is the cutest niece in the world, and she is very gifted at writing letters too!

Love you guys!

me and Hjalmar

Hjalmar, me, Tobias (Hjalmar's youngest son) and Anna (Hjalmar's wife)

mmmmmmmmmmmm rice.

the view from our apt

December 16th, 2013

Hey!
Well this week was great! I found out that I am going to Vedelsö as the district leader! Apparently it is the smallest geographical area in Europe. 

On Saturday Trollhättan had a Christmas party and I got to play guitar for a lot of it. Super fun! 

The food was... well interesting. I did like the seel though, which is raw fish. We also got to go to Detlef's house and visit a less active woman that lives out there in Örust, It was fun and we got to play violin for a little bit as well. 

Yesterday we were at the Bishops house and the Bishops wife cooked super good food! They gave me a wreath of candy as a farewell gift which was super nice of them. 

Anyway... I am doing great as usual.

Love,

Äldste Peterson

This is me and Samuel, we played and sang Närmare Gud till dig (nearer my God to thee) together for the Christmas Party.

me Samuel and his Dad

me and my comp.

me and Christine, a lady from our ward

me and Hernan, a super cool guy from our ward

me and the Ljungs... he was the temple president of the Copenhagen temple when we were there in 2008

me and Detlef

Me an Johnathan a Teacher from our ward

me and Tobias... he hadn't been to church in three years! but we played silent night for the Christmas party and had everyone sing along

me, Bishop Stulen, and Sister Stulen.

me and Bjorn Anderson, He was in the same mission as the Cards.

looking cool. haha

me and Andreas

me and the twins

December 9th, 2013

Hey!

Well this week was great! Hjalmar got baptized on Saturday, and confirmed on Sunday! so that was super awesome. We also got to visit Detlef again, and play violin. We were going to go to the group that he plays with and maybe get a few more investigators, but there was a storm so we just stayed at Detlef's house and played violin together. He let me play a violin that was made in the 1700s! I took some pictures of it. Also it snowed! a lot, got some pictures of that as well. 

Other then that week was good. 

Hope all is well in your part of the world.

Äldste Peterson

so this was the date that the violin I played was made. pretty sweet!

this was the head of the violin... I think it was supposed to be a dragon or a horse.

his is me and Detlef... he is a super cool guy.

this was me playing violin... pretty fun I gotta say.

This was before it snowed, but it was really cold.

Snow.

more snow

more snow, but dark as well

This is the bishop, Hjalmar and me, right before his baptism.

My comp, Hjalmar and me.

me and Hjalmar

December 2nd, 2013

Hey!

Well this week was great! Hjalmar's getting baptized on Saturday! Please continue to pray for him as he will need it this week, and thank you all so much for the prayers! 

It is an interesting story actually, we visited him on Wednesday and he told us that he had only taken two packets the whole day (normally he takes at least 8)... we were very excited and I told him that if he continued on this path he could make his baptismal date on the 7th... on Friday he called us and told us that he hadn't had any snus since we had been there and that he was never going to have any ever again. So he is getting baptized on Saturday. He came to church and got up and bore his testimony in fast and testimony meeting... It was great! The ward was very supportive of it and I think that we will have a good turnout. The only difficult thing that we're dealing with now is that Hjalmar wants Bishop Stulen to Baptize him, but Bishop is in Dubai and won't be back until Friday, we texted him and he said that he should be able to do it... so we pray that it will work out.

Other than that the week went great! I get to play guitar in the Christmas party on the 14th with Samuel Jubel, a young adult from our ward... I'm super stoked for that. 

anyway love you all, thank you for all the prayers, peace, joy, and love to all.

Äldste Peterson

This was on Sunday, we went to Samuel, David, and Andrea's house for a Christmas party.

This was at about 7pm on Tuesday, we had an appointment with a less active family but they blösted us (missionary for "were't there") but on the bright side there was a playground nearby and because it is so cold and dark we had it all to ourselves.

more from the playground

November 25th, 2013

Hey Everyone!
I have been bad at writing very much lately but I feel like so much happens and it is so hard to put it all down on paper (or email) this week was great though. We are progressing with Hjalmar and he came to church!!!!! I think that there is a big possibility that he will be able to make his baptismal date on the 7th... he needs the prayers though so please pray hard for him to be able to stop using tobacco. We also got to go to Detlef's house, he is the German guy in our ward who lives on Örust in the middle of nowhere... it was super cool because my comp and I both play the violin and Detlef took us with him to his musical group, a bunch of older Swedish people that play Swedish folk music together, there was one extra violin so we switched off every two songs... it was a ton of fun, and there were two accordions that were playing with us. To sum the week up, it was pretty much awesome. Here is a picture of the lights in Uddevalla, I thought that it looked a ton like the square from The Polar Express haha

This is a shot of the streets in Uddevalla. by the way this was at like 5:00 in the afternoon.

 we went on a "secret mission".... to get a Christmas tree. 

Us in the Christmas spirit.

My trophy... Tree hunting is dangerous.

first time trying Pepper Kakor.... super good!

this is Elder Tanner my companion

I guess people think that I am handy with cars... cuz I keep getting asked.

So we changed all 4 of a lady in our wards tires to winter. Pretty fun actually... I have now waxed, vacuumed and changed all the tires on this car.