Traveling Around Sweden

Aloha!!!

Hope everyone is doing fine in the US of A, And a quick shout out for all
the Fathers, Happy Father’s DAY!!!!

The Quote of the week goes to President Newell. We were at the mission home talking to some of the missionaries who were done with their missions, and we were chatting with one of our super good friends who happens to be Britt. He asked us if we could stay the night with him for his last night,and we told him we actually really need to go home. So he says, (In a British accent,)”Oh that’s fine mate, I didn’t want to stay with you anyway.”

President Newell then blurts out, “That’s exactly what we said to you about 230 years ago!”

To be fair he was an ambassador and chief of state, so I imagine he has to be pretty quick on his toes when he is around the Britts.

Oh man, So much has happened in this little time, we got 3 new missionaries to the mission so we got to help them in and got them ready for missionary life in the Stockholm Sweden Mission. Which is always a good time.

Day after we got a new companion. So right now we have 3 Assistants. His name is Elder M, from Brighton…. That is all I got to say about him. We also as soon as he got here had 3 Zone Conferences. So we traveled the whole country in the span of 4 days.

First took a plane to Umeå, way up in the North. While I was on the plane I had an interesting experience. We were all split up so we weren’t near our companions. So I’m sitting in the middle seat next to two strangers. So of course I thought this would be the perfect time to talk to some people about the Gospel. The first lady to my right, after trying to start up a conversation, put on headphones and turned the other way.  A little
embarrassing but its fine I can bounce back from that. So I turn to my other side and just say something to the effect of, “Hey! What great weather we are having!”

She turns and looks at me with the most disgusted look on her face and
yells, “I do not want to speak with people like you!!!” As you can imagine I am a little shocked, and a little scared that this Swedish speaking Russian lady is about to murder me. And that was only the first 2 minutes of me on the plane. The rest of the plane ride if I even looked in her general direction I probably would have received a gnarly backhand to the face. So that was a long plane ride to say the least.

When we get to Umeå, we realized we have about a 45 minute presentation to plan for to the zone the next day…… And we haven’t prepared ANYTHING! So we got to the hotel and started to plan and we all fell asleep with our books
and pens in our hands. Woke up 6:00 still have nothing planned and we had to run to the Chapel. Get there and just start getting everything set up and we literally had 10 minutes to prepare for out presentation.

We come in do our part, actually turned out pretty good. After President Newell told us that he was so impressed with it, it must have taken us quite some time to put it together…haha, yes it was very well planned to say the least. (To be fair he only gave us a day to prepare, so it wasn’t even our fault.)

After that we took a 7 hour train ride to Stockholm, went to Church in Täby then right after hopped in the car and drove west to my home town Göteborg!!! It was great to go back, the west part of Sweden is so much more relaxed. They people are just the best there. So it was wonderful to check it out again.

After the conference there, we drove right after with President Newell,
down to Malmö. (The Dirty South.) It’s just super beautiful down there.
Flat and full of windmills. Everything went smoothly there. Then had the
long journey back home, driving with only Elder Mangum home.

This week has been crazy defiantly very busy, but I just want to say I
still absolutely love what I am doing, I’m so happy to be here, and to help
the missionaries, members, and non-members here in Sweden. It is something I love and will never regret.

Love you all, and don’t forget to email!!!!

Love,

Elder Haddon