June 29th letter

Okay, sorry no pictures this week, but still a really good letter. This past week went by very quickly for Elder Arko. They have been trying something a little bit differently and set a goal to get 15 teaches in one week. It could be through members, investigators, or less active members. So, they have been teaching A LOT more than usual when they would normally get only 10 teaches. They did a great job and met their goal! To achieve this goal, they met with a lot of members who really appreciated it. Everyone in their area really likes having the missionaries over. Elder Arko really noticed how much people respect the missionaries and how much of a spirit they carry with them and not even notice it themselves. For example, they had a short teach with a member one day and after talking about sharing the gospel they said a prayer. Elder Arko didn't think the spirit was really strong there, but after the prayer he noticed that one of the members had to wipe tears away. That really showed him how much he and other missionaries can touch people's lives.

Elder Arko made his first clothing purchase in Sweden! It's a green shirt and it cost about 50 krowns or so with equals about 8 US dollars. We should get a picture of it next week.

Elder Arko had his first dream where someone was speaking Swedish. The man in it looked a lot like Larry Walters, a family friend, and he looked at Elder Arko with a smile and said 'jag vet inte' which means 'I don't know' and that's all he remembers, funny huh?

Church is still way tough for Elder Arko because it's like having to concentrate for 3 hours on really advanced Swedish words with people speaking very quickly when they give talks. He is starting to follow conversations better so that is good. He still struggles with people who speak with pronunciation that is different from what he's used to.

He thinks he's been keeping his weight down since cycling is a good workout program, so we should all be able to recognize him in 2 years if he keeps it up!

Well, that's all for now. Oh, yeah and write him! He's been reading the comments on this blog, so if you want to drop him a little line, use this! Love from Elder Arko to everyone!