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.