December 21st, 2014 | SUURRR STRÖMMING

Well this week I finally tried surströmming which is fermented herring... (very old very raw fish that has a reputation of making missionaries throw up)
hilariously though I liked it... We went to a less actives house with the two other elders that are here in Örnsköldsvik (Urrn-shulds-vik). My companion Elder Pearson and Elder Simmons and I all tried it. It was pretty salty but pretty good, Elder Pearson and Simmons hated it though. It might have also been that I was pretty hungry but I don't know.
Afterwards Ulf who was the host had made a Christmas dinner, so we ate it... it was good!
Other than that this week was good... it is really dark pretty much all the time, and when the sun does come out it never gets really high in the sky and it's usually overcast. The snow did brighten it up a bit though, so that's good.
Oh yeah and we also had our Christmas zone conference thing... it was good, I realized that pretty much everyone in the mission that I know is home now... so I felt pretty old :( but there is a bright side to that I guess.
Anyway I am super pumped to skype for Christmas, I will be skyping at about 17:00 my time so 9:00 in Utah I believe... I will have Mom call Tess and Kyle to schedule that.
anyway Love you all!
Äldste Peterson

Here we are eating rotten fish together

here's a close up mmmmmmm

digging in

Snow outside our window

When we were in Stockholm we went to gamla stan into this super cool si fi store... I felt like we walked into comicon! (I've never been so I guess I don't really know how that is but......) here's a shot of the street.

December 14th, 2014

Well this week was great! I am emailing now because we are going to Stockholm tomorrow for a Christmas mission conference, and we probably won't be able to access computers.
highlights on Tuesday we went to Runo's and brought Root Beer for him to try it (he's never had it before). He liked it! which was super cool because most Swedes say it tastes like toothpaste haha. Then we got to bastu with him which was super cool. Bastu is the Swedish word for sauna, it was fun.
This week I decided to start a comic strip because last Saturday for institute the lesson was on drawing and I realized that making comics is actually really fun! so I will include a picture of one of the comics I drew below.
Other than that I don't know what else to write, I am excited to Skype home on the 25th! Christmas is coming fast and there's a little bit of snow on the ground although I think it's colder in Utah and Wyoming right now.
I am loving life right now and enjoying the opportunity to build relationships with the people here.
 I hope that everything is going well with everyone
Love you guys!
Äldste Peterson

Here's the comic it's especially for you Dad! haha

me and Elder Pearson at Runo's

me and Runo, with his first american root beer!

Oh I totally forgot to mention that we went to see Santa Lucia yesterday... it's a Swedish Christmas thing celebrating an Italian saint... it was pretty fun. They did it in the mall this year (usually it's in a church)

This is the Christmas tree for our branch! We set it up last night.

December 7th, 2014 | well hej there Allihopa!!!!

Hey!

Well this week was great! We got to meet some super cool investigators, one of which is a nice old Swedish man named Runo, he lives in a house on the edge of the city, and he had a bunch of art in his house so I talked about art with him for like 30 minutes, then we had a super spiritual discussion and ended up teaching him how to pray... he was a little hesitant at first but once he said it I could feel the spirit fill the room even more (I hope that makes sense).

We also met with Tim a 20 year old Swede who is super cool, loves video games, Crash Bandicoot was a major topic of discussion, and likes just talking with missionaries. He has been taught a lot but I think that we will have to go over everything again. Some of the concepts are hard to grasp, especially authority. But he's a super nice guy.

The last guy I will mention is named Henrik he is in his late twenties early thirties and Swedish, we spoke English with him which is always an interesting change. Personally I like teaching in Swedish much better, because I have done it so much, I feel like it's easier.
We talked about how we gained our testimonies of the gospel with him, he is willing to change and he definitely has an open heart. At the moment he is atheist, and I hope that at the very least we can help him believe in God.

Super nice people though, other than that things are going great, Elder Pearson is a great companion!

Oh also yesterday was fast and testimony meeting and it was good, all four of us missionaries bore our testimonies and a new family moved into the branch which seemed to double the people there, I think that counting us four missionaries there were 21 people there.

I hope everyone is well, I love hearing from you all!
Elder Peterson

December 1st, 2014 | Up to The North

Well I'm here in Örnskoldsvik... It is AWESOME! Funny thing happened on the train ride up as well... so I first traveled to Skövde which was a 1 hour ride... went great. Then I took a train from Skövde to Stockholm, which was a 2 hour ride, also went great. Last of all I took a train from Stockholm to Örnskoldsvik which was a 6 hour ride, and right when I sat down the man who was next to me offered me the window seat which was super nice, and then we started talking. When I told him I was a missionary he guessed that I was a Jehovas Witness, and when I told him I was Mormon he was shocked mistaking Mormons for Amish.
He was also shocked to find out how big the church was and we had quite the conversation. I taught him the restoration and the plan of salvation and answered a lot of questions he had about Mormonism... he looked us up on Wikipedia on his phone as we were talking. We also talked about cars (he is a sucker for oldies so we got along just great) he even showed me a picture of an old 67 Jaguar that he had sold a few years earlier. He was also an avid traveler and had done a trip to america with his buddy last summer visiting Floirda, Las Vegas, and LA, among other places. He's in his fifties.
Anyway it ended up that he added me on Facebook gave me his card and invited me to dinner. (wish I could use facebook) his name is Kjell, pronounced Shell. Super cool guy and he lives about 9 Swedish miles from Örnskoldsvik so we will see what happens, it's about a 30 minute train ride to get there.
  The week continued after that, our apartment is super nice, it's HUGE, so that's great. My new companion is Elder Pearson, he's really cool.
One of the first Investigators that I met here is named Adel, he is originally from Afghanistan but when he was 13 his whole family was murdered by Al Qaida, they wanted him to suicide bomb somewhere, and luckily he smuggled himself to Iraq where he worked at a factory sewing clothes, until things got to bad there and he moved to Sweden seeking asylum, he met missionaries a few months ago read the whole book of Mormon in Persian (he speaks good Swedish because he has lived here for two years living with a Swedish family, he lives alone now though) and he has a testimony of it and want's to be baptized but if he does and his friends from Afghanistan who live here find out that he has changed religions then they will kill him. He's only 20.
I have been surprised at all of the middle eastern people I have met on my mission... Sweden has a lot of immigrants. There are so many kind people, it's sad to see how the bad decisions of a few can have a huge impact on so many others.
In Sacrament meeting I gave a 20 minute talk on how we can be better missionaries as members, and in it I shared a lot from the talk:
Make the Exercise of Faith Your First Priority

It has a lot of really good things that we can do to strengthen our testimonies.
I really liked giving the talk and it wasn't nerve racking at all because there were only 20 or so people there and we meet in an apartment.
Anyway this week was good.
Love you all sooooooooooooo much,
Äldste Peterson

Ice on the side of the road yesterday... pretty cool.

Örnskoldsvik town square (we live about 5 blocks down that street.