Cat Mermaid

Letter sent October 10, 2016:

Sister Jackson and I thought the difference between our natural hair was funny.

Hallå hallå!

Where to begin. First off, I do not know how to comfort people in Swedish. That's a whole new level of language that I haven't quite mastered which was all too apparent this week. First, a members dog died from a gigantic cancerous lump on his leg that she hadn't gotten removed because who even knows why. Sister Jackson and I spent a good 20 minutes discussing things that we could say to her. We sought help of the elders and they told us to share this quote with her, "In mortality we have the certainty of death and the burden of sin. The Atonement of Jesus Christ offsets these two certainties of mortal life. All dogs go to heaven. But apart from death and sin, we have many other challenges as we struggle through mortality." -Strengthened by the Atonement of Christ, oct 2015. Clearly, they did not help the situation. Then later on in the week we were calling less active members and this lady answered and she was like, "I'm still sick and just sitting and resting." I just panicked and was like, "Oh, boring." Pull yourself together, Sister May. Nobody says wow, that's really boring to a person who is on their deathbed. 

Other than that the weeks been good. We went up to Stockholm on Monday for MLC. We talked a lot about motivation and being "work horses." I think President and the assistants are trying to gear up the mission for winter. It worked. Everyone got pumped. Then Friday we had our zone training down in Malmö where we taught the missionaries in the Malmö zone about the things we had been taught.

Train ride home from MLC.  Not actually sleeping.

Then we got to go on splits with the Kristianstad sisters! I got to spend the day with Sister Kinnison and she is literally hilarious. She hasn't lost her slang from America and she just got here a month and a half ago so she even has pretty recent slang. I didn't even know what she was talking about half the time haha. 

With Sister Kinnison

 We went on a cheery little fast-paced walk with a less active member named Katarina during the week that was super super fun. She talked about her story and the things she's been learning recently. We sat on these strange bean shaped orange plastic things in the middle of the woods and found a drawing of a tiny cat mermaid that Katarina thought was hilarious and then she had us go try on lipstick with her. Sister Jackson and I will be going to purchase said lipstick in about an hour. 

Cat mermaid with Katarina

Sister Jackson and I reluctantly gave up our fight against tights this week. And coats. And scarves. Malmö is the windiest city I have ever stepped foot in except possibly Twin Falls, ID. I always just want to burst into that song from that one movie that like, "The windy city is mighty purty but it ain't got what we've got." C'mon mom, I know you know what movie I'm talking about.

Just tryna stay warm

I'm happy as a something that's really happy.