Merry Christmas!!!

So I have basically no time to write this so I'm gonna be super fast!

This week was Christmas!! We gave out toooons of Christmas Light the World cards this week, it was out big final push. And on the 23rd we and a few other missionaries around gave out almost 500! We were working hard on it for a really long time, but we did it! We got out all of out cards and all the extra ones they had in the mission office, so I'd call that a success!

Christmas Eve and Christmas day were both awesome! We had a 1 hour Sacrament meeting that was primarily music, and that was fun! I was in the choir and we sung several songs in Swedish. If I thought it was hard to read music when singing before, I shouldn't thought about how much harder it is when you have to do that and sing the words in a foreign language! But that was really fun, and afterwards we went to a members house. We watched some traditional Swedish Christmas stuff, such as Donald Duck (not even joking, it is seriously a Christmas tradition for the whole country to watch an hour of Donald Duck on Christmas Eve, it was a little weird but also fun!). And we spend the whole day at several member's homes. Then on Christmas day we had a big American Christmas breakfast with several other missionaries from around, and we ate pancakes, bacon, and fruit. It was really good! We also had permission to watch 'Frozen' in Swedish, and that was super cool as well! It was funny to watch in Swedish!! We opened some presents, then went to member's homes for the rest of Christmas. Oh, and I got to skype my family which was awesome!! It was a wonderful Christmas (even though it rained on Christmas day. I'm not even kidding, no snow!!)

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!! Be safe this week and have a good New Year!!

Elder Nelson

Nästan Jul!

Hello everyone! This week has been pretty awesome out here! A lot happened this week, so I'm just going to get started!

We've been working really hard at getting out cards for 'EttLjusFörVärlden' cards out. And it's been a lot of fun! We've been making little bags of brownies and gingerbread with a card on it and then giving it out on a super busy street. And it's been super fun! We've given out about 200 bags or so, and it is basically just a party! We'll see how it pans out, but for now we've gotten a lot of bags and cards out, so it feels like a success!

Santa Lucia was this week too! It is basically this choir concert thing in big churches where they are all dressed in white and have candles. It is actually kind of weird at first, but it was seriously so cool! We got to go to one is a really old church building and the singing was really good! I think we took a video, so I'll try to send that too.

This week we had zone conference, and it was an awesome Christmas themed one! There were a ton of music numbers and we did some of our mission president's Christmas traditions. One of those included watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' and that made me so happy! I've seen that movie almost every year for the past couple of years and it made me kind of sad that we wouldn't get to see it this year, but then we got to watch it in zone conference! It was so cool! The whole zone conference got me in the Christmas feeling, and getting a Christmas package from home helped too (thanks mom!)

I'm pretty pressed on time today, but things are going really well here. We've had a good week and I'm excited for the week ahead. I hope that everyone has a joyful and safe Christmas! Merry Christmas!!

Äldste Nelson

Pic 1-3: Us passing out cards and treats
Pic 4: Santa Lucia!
Video: Santa Lucia also!​

Elder Nelson's Mom here: We're having trouble accessing the video.  I'll update the post if we can get it working.  And, once again, this letter was actually sent on 12/18/17.  The same nameless someone didn't get it posted on the correct day.

All ready for Christmas!

Hello everyone!

And just like that, another week seems to have come and gone! It seemed to be pretty quick this week, at least for us way out here in Sweden. I guess the shortness of each day could be because the actual daylight only lasts a few hours! It is now officially dark by around 2:45 or so, so that's fun! It is pretty sad each day to have it dark so early, it makes me feel tired and like the day should be nearly complete by around 4:00, but nope! It just means you get used to the dark, but it really isn't bad. Anyways, there were several fun and cool things that happened this week!

We got to go and clean the temple again, and that might not sound too exciting, but I really love going! Being in the temple that long is just awesome! And it was also cool to see the nativity that they put up in front of the temple, it was a good reminder of Christmas! However, it was disorienting to come out of the temple at 3:00 to go back to work doing normal proselyting and to have it be dark already. But that's just the way it happens sometimes!

To make things a little more Christmasy in our apartment we got a Christmas Tree (the term 'tree' is being used very loosely in this case)! Haha, it is actually just the end of a branch from a pine tree, but that doesn't make it any less good of a Christmas tree! We made a little stand for it out of a toilet paper roll, were able to borrow some Christmas ornaments, and then I made a star out of some sparkly pipe cleaners I had found. It may not be the best Christmas tree in the world, but it is better than nothing, and it makes me laugh each time I see it! Merry Christmas! (I'll attach a picture, don't worry)

Overall, our investigators and work in general is going alright. I've kinda seen that people are less prone to talking to you on the street when it is freezing cold and super dark, but that isn't going to stop us! We've still met some awesome people, been able to teach, and tried to help out how we can. Things are all good! And what was also fun was that our ward had a morning last week where we went and played sports all together as the young men and the rest of the priesthood. We played basketball (me being 6' 5 certainly helped) and then a sport called innebandy, which is basically floor hockey. But it was a really good way to get to know people in our ward better and just have fun with them. It's been really good!

Well, that seems to be all the exciting stuff we were up to this last week. I hope everyone is as excited as I am for Christmas! I am grateful to be a missionary and to be able to serve people. I hope you all have a great week!


Elder Nelson


Pic 1-2: The Swedish temple (the second picture was taken at 3 pm, just so you can see how dark it gets!)
Pic 3: Our Christmas tree! (Yes, it is as majestic in real-life as it looks in the picture)

Elder Nelson's mom here: Just for record keeping purposes it should be noted that this letter should be dated Dec. 11, 2017.  Someone who shall remain nameless may have forgotten to post it on the right date.

Christmas time is near! (Finally December!)

Hello everyone, life is going well in Stockholm! We actually don't have any snow on the ground right now, but it is looking like Christmas is close everywhere we go! There are a lot of lights in people's windows, the stores have gone crazy with Christmas decorations, and a giant Christmas tree was even put up in a park-thing near our apartment. It's exciting! This week was pretty full, so I'll get into what's happened!

Firstly, we got the chance to go to the Stockholm temple, but only to clean it! It's closed for the next two weeks for cleaning, so we were invited to go and help. I wished we would have been able to go and visit the temple and do some temple work there, but at least we got to go and help prepare it for people to come in the future. And honestly, I was just happy for the opportunity to be at the temple, it's such a great place to be! Haha, and as a bonus, I was given a mop/sweeper thing and was told to clean some of the ceiling. And I can't say that I'd ever mopped a ceiling before, so that was interesting too!

Our ward had their Christmas party this week! At it we had a Julbord (traditional Swedish Christmas food), sung songs, and then the primary kids did a Nativity scene. It was really fun! We got to help set up all the decorations and helped to organize some of it, and it turned out well. The food was good, and included stuff like meatballs, ham, mashed potatoes, sill (picked herring), and a few other things. Then the nativity well done, and the singing was awesome! For the singing there was a Brother from our ward who just played the songs on his bass guitar from memory and we all sung along with him (we sung each song twice, once in Swedish and once in English for the American families). It was a really good party!

We've met a lot of really cool people this week, but one of the highlights was a new convert we got to meet with. He is pretty inactive, and it sounds like it's really hard for him to get to church. He is actually homeless, so he can't really get out to where our church is located we learned. But he is the most kind guy you'll ever meet. We didn't have a good place to sit and talk where we met him at the Stockholm Library, so we went to a nearby McDonalds. While we were there the new convert went up to buy some food for himself. He came back with a bag of several burgers, dropped them on the table, and said, 'boys, I got us a bag of burgers!' He was just so nice to us, even though he doesn't have a steady job and doesn't have an apartment right now. We are seeing what we can do to help him and help him find some help, or at least work on getting him a way to get to church each week. It was amazing to hear about how strong a testimony he has even though he doesn't have the money to get to church often or to even afford many things. It was an example to me about how our physical circumstances shouldn't determine our faith in God, but that we should be steadfast at all times. It was awesome to see!

It was a great week out here, and I'm hoping that this upcoming week will be a good and safe week for all of you! For anyone who hasn't seen it, I suggest watching the 'Light the World' initiative video, it is a super good one!


Äldste Nelson

Pic 1: Statue thing near our apartment (I know, really descriptive)
Pic 2-3: Castle/Museum down the street from us
Pic 4: View from a bridge over the water (also near our apartment)