Today is Friday and we are at the Distribution Center by the Sweden Stockholm Temple. We changed our preparation day from next Monday to today, so I have just a few minutes to write a short email.
It has been a good week since last Monday. Before preparation day ended, I got my first haircut in Sweden. I have been putting it off because it takes time and it is very expensive. It was 200 SEK, which is around $32 depending on the exchange rate. I have seen many places charge 300 SEK, so I even got a pretty good deal. When I sat down for the haircut, he asked me what style I wanted and showed me a book with hundreds of options. I went with the simpler option of “shorter.” It turned out great. I went to Karlstad on Wednesday for another exchange. This time I was with Äldste Leavitt. The main thing we did was participate in English classes. We were the native speakers and we just talked about the differences between Sweden and USA, as well as answering a lot of questions. It was fun and the two classes we went to liked us. The teacher asked us not to talk about our religion, so we did not get to say much, but most importantly, it showed the students that we actually have personalities and we are relatively normal. Afterwards, we contacted in Centrum until it started getting dark and rainy. On Thursday morning, we went back to Skövde to exchange back and have District Meeting. Throughout the week, we had several teaching appointments, which was nice.
Jared and his new haircut 🙂
Today we woke up earlier than usual and got on a bus to Stockholm and then Västerhaninge where the temple is located. We already attended a session and we are about to go to another. I did it completely in Swedish, which was interesting. I understood a good amount because I am familiar with it. I love the temple! It was fun to go to this temple and see it in person.
Thanks for everything. I will write again a week from next Monday!
Elder Jared Ririe 