July 26th letter

Elder Arko is having a blast in Sweden. He got to play innebandy (aka floorball) for the 2nd time ever! He said ,"It's a crazy sport with a lot of randomness, but still pretty fun." Well, that wasn't enough for me so I looked to Wikipedia for further guidance. This is what I found 'Floorball, a type of floor hockey, is an indoor team sport which was developed in the 1970s. It is a fast paced sport, with limited physical contact allowed. Floorball is most popular in areas where the sport has developed the longest, such as the Czech Republis, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland. The game is played indoors on a gym floor, making it a year-round sport at the amateur and professional levels. There are professional leagues, such as Finland's Salibandyliiga and Sweden's Svenska Superligan.' Sounds pretty exciting, eh? Hopefully we'll get some pictures next letter!

Elder Arko also described the weather in Sweden right now. It has been mostly rainy and the temperature is around 20-25 degrees Celsius so it's not bad at all. They did however have a week where the temperatures reached 40 to 45 Celsius which is extremely hot for Sweden, not to mention the humidity. How would you like to ride a bike in that? There's an area that has quite a few little hills and the Elders have street bikes which means no gears so that's not the most fun for them especially in the hot humid weather.

Elder Arko and his companion have been trying to get the ward jump started on helping them with refferals, but it has been kind of hard for them. They haven't had a baptism for a while in Alingsås so it's kind of hard to do that, but they're working on it. They have actually found a lot of new investigators recently that are a little younger so that has been an exciting change for them. On Tuesday they are going to a bible study class/skate session that a bunch of youth have so they are excited for that. Not only do they get a chance to meet a lot of the young people, but they also might get to try skate boarding at a skate park...that would be interesting.

The last thing Elder Arko said is "Have fun, I miss you all and I'm not worried about you one bit because I know that God is watching over all of you! LOVE YOU"

Elder Arko

And now for some pictures. Elder Arko and Elder Seegmiller saw these HUGE apartment complexes up on the hill and Elder Seegmiller wanted to go check them out so they did. It turns out they were locked, but before they found that out and were trying to find a way in, they went around to the back door. They realized that it was right on the edge of this nature preserve so they took some pictures of the discovery they made. Elder Arko said it was very fun to see a forest in Sweden.