Malmö - Part II

Continuing with Malmö!




Syster Vaarola was my next and final companion in Malmö (February 5th to April 16th).

As happens sometimes, with the leaving of Syster Eborn it seemed like the majority of our progressing investigators just disappeared: left the country for vacation, moved, or simply stopped answering our calls.  Missionary work comes and goes like that and transfers always seem to be a time that marks change.

We had a sister training meeting up in Göteborg, where we got to meet with half of the sisters in the mission.  I love these sort of meetings because it is one of the few times that we can meet with most of the other missionaries and friends. You can see some familiar faces in the group picture to the right from the various areas I served.

Malmö had some of the hardest parts of my mission, some of which still affect me to this day and perhaps forever.

On March 3, 2014 we learned that Elder Bailey had been killed in a car accident the night before. You can read more about my thoughts at the time here and here.  This was a lot harder on me than I had expected it to be.

Shortly thereafter, the anxieties I had been dealing with cumulated into full-blown panic attacks.  The first time I ever had one was while I was in Malmö and once they started they didn't really stop.  There was a point where I was having several every day - whenever we were about to leave the apartment, whenever I tried to contact someone on the street, whenever I had to play piano in front of others, and simply whenever anything went wrong (which as a missionary, things rarely ever go exactly as planned haha).  It was absolutely terrifying.  Every time an attack came along it felt like I was drowning and it was so difficult to come up for air.  It was getting to the point where I was wondering if I could even stay in the field because it felt so debilitating for me.  Tears would just be streaming down my face as I tried to let it pass so I could regain control of my breathing again.  To just ride out each attack.  I would continue shaking and be on edge for hours afterwards, often leading me to be susceptible to further attacks.  It was definitely difficult to keep going, but I made it through this time.

The worse of it was during the month and a half before I got transferred.  Syster Vaarola was fantastic with helping me through.  I eventually was able to get to the point where every time I tried to contact someone didn't trigger an attack, but it honestly wasn't really until the middle of April.  Panic attacks and anxiety still comes and goes, but I'm no longer in a constant "anxious" state.  I might write a more in-depth article on that later on, so that could be something to look forward to.

Even so, I never failed to appreciate the beauty of Sweden.  Little things always add up to create something extraordinary.  You never know what you might find.  For instance:

Here is a little pond we found near a church and it was complete with little duck villages!  It was the cutest thing seeing these little houses.  The water features in my neighborhood remind me a bit of it, just because you can tell that the ducks love living here (as well as the many geese) - guess that's why they keep coming back!

As companions we spent a lot of time visiting and contacting all of the less-actives in our area.  The Malmö ward is one of the larger wards in Sweden with over 600 people listed on the ward rosters.  In our area alone we had about 200 people to work with if my memory serves correctly.  During my time with Syster Vaarola we were able to finish making it through most of that list, which meant that we travelled extensively to the outer reaches of the ward boundaries (we only didn't make it to a few places where it would take us over 4 hours to travel).   We got to see more of the wonderful architecture of Sweden, including this church in Svedala.

Not to say that we didn't have some fun times too!  The first time I played laser tag (not counting the at-home equipment that you could buy) was on a p-day for the birthday of a young adult in the ward.  I wasn't in last place, but I don't know if saying I was 17th out of around 20 is really all that much of a compliment in the end haha.

We also had an interesting contacting experience.  We contacted this one woman who was smoking and asked her what she thought was the meaning of life.  She said that we had asked the right person and she begins explaining how she has dealt with a lot of difficult things in her life, when this other lady with her dog (waiting to pick up a pizza) comes over and asks if she heard right that we were talking about the meaning of life. We explained that we were and the first lady continues to explain how she has found the strength to continue living each day, even among years of abuse. The original lady had to leave (we were able to give her a mormon.org card before she left) and we kept talking to the woman with the dog. She was interested in learning more, but didn't want to give us her number--but she was really happy to talk to us.

And then she lets her dog off of his leash so she could show us a couple of his tricks. He was a little skittish because there were way too many interesting things/smells on the street. But he eventually cooperated and showed us his trick of jumping through a loop that she makes with her arms.

And then this guy on a bike with a trailer comes around the corner and the dog immediately starts running and barking. The biker starts pedaling faster and the dog follows him down the street.

Syster Vaarola and I start running after the dog to help catch him--we definitely felt that it would have been our fault if something had happened to the dog. So just imagine this guy on a bike, with a trailer, a crazy barking dog, two sister missionaries in skirts and backpacks sprinting after them, and an older lady speed walking down the street.

Thankfully after rounding the corner, the dog decided to come back and we were able to catch him. We just sprinted down the one block in the end and we were glad that the dog didn't keep going. The owner was certainly grateful.  We never did see her again, but at least we were able to save her dog!

We were also able to have a little beach party on p-day with most of the zone to say goodbye to the "senior couple" of the area, the Bybees (who were returning home). Roasted marshmellows and made s'mores with digestive cookies.

We found this graffiti with the elders outside a member's apartment.  They were all really excited haha.

We also got iPhones!  These were a huge lifesaver - having GPS, Google Translate, Rasit (a Swedish online directory with everyone's addresses) and the entire Gospel Library app were such a help!  The phones were locked so we were limited to various apps that they had downloaded for us but we definitely had far more than before.  These phones were definitely well-used!

Some classic Malmö pictures of the Turning Torso - one of Malmö's more famous buildings.  It was actually in our area, so we walked by/rode on the bus by it rather often.  Some of my favorite pictures:

Ystad is this adorable town that is "classic swedish" - what we think of when we think of Sweden.  It has this adorable church in the middle of town.  We would go to Ystad at least once a week, if not more to visit with a member and a few others.  It was about an hour away from Malmö by train, but it is a beautiful ride.  During some parts of the year it's little golden, full of fields of flowers (rapeseed for oil).  I moved right before they blossomed but you can see the general idea here: on Google

Ystad

Then it was one last zone conference and on to the next area, Kungsbacka!  I ended up parring down my belongings a bit so I didn't have to have so much for the transfer (I backed my carryon and then placed it inside of one of my big suitcases so I didn't have to lug around three suitcases during the transfer).

Right when I learned I would in fact be transferred (we had interviews with President and he told me I was going to be a Sister Training Leader then)

Malmö Part I - Welcome to Skåne!

My first impression of Skåne was how much longer the days were even in December compared to Örebro.  It really was only like an extra hour or so, (maybe even half hour) but it made a huge difference!

You can see inside this church in a lower picture

Downtown Malmö

I love the city and felt I had the best of both worlds - being innerstan (downtown) as well as most of the outlying towns including Svedala, Ystad, and Trelleborg.

I just love old architecture and seeing detailing like this always leaves me in awe.

The ward is a great mix of cultures particularly since Denmark is only a short drive or train ride away.
My journey to Malmö was long... I think my train ended up being delayed about two hours in the end. Transfers are always interesting because they involve sticking a bunch of foreign young adults on public transportation for hours without any sort of communication device.  I'm amazed at how well they really do go considering all of the things that could most definitely go wrong.

I arrived late December 30th and just had enough time to settle into our apartment before turning in. This apartment was definitely one of, if not the largest one, I had the chance to live in or visit while on my mission (I think it beats out my Jönköping one a smidge because the living room was so huge, but the Jönköping one was two bedroom... not that we ever really used that second bedroom because we liked studying in the main room so much more.... anyway Malmö).

Syster Eborn is just incredible!  I love her (though she's no longer known as an Eborn ;-) ).  She's spunky, fun, intelligent and gorgeous.  One of my absolute favorite things that we did was share stories with each other - both real and fiction.

A blurry picture from New Year's haha

My first full day was New Year's Eve.  We had two lessons with two new investigators before heading off to the Clarks - Stake President's home, for New Year's Eve with all of the missionaries serving in the ward.  My entire 3.5 months in Malmö we had 8 missionaries serving there - 3 sets of elders and us :-) . Definitely made for some fun times!

New Year's we had permission to stay out until after midnight but you can just tell as the night wore on we were all getting exceptionally tired.  After going to bed consistently at 22:30 every night, it's just hard staying up later.

The hours leading up to new years and for hours afterward there are just fireworks everywhere.  Come midnight we went out on the street and we were just surrounded by fireworks.  It was a surreal experience.

Malmö had a very different dialect of Swedish (known as Skånish or skånska to my American friends) which has a very definite Danish influence.  My first Sunday there, the relief society lesson was taught in Danish and I was impressed with how much I understood.  My time down there helped me a lot with understanding Danish, but I definitely don't speak it.  Similar enough that I can understand, different enough that there is no way I would be getting it right.  Some dialects of Norwegian are closer to "traditional" Swedish so I have better luck there... but still.

At one point we had to cancel a "date."  We contacted a man on the street who was from the Dominican Republic.  He was super friendly and said sure he would love to meet but he wasn't sure if he would tell his girlfriend about, which frankly wasn't entirely weird.  We had called him to see if we could reschedule because of a last minute dinner appointment and he wanted to see if we could meet earlier, because he wanted to do things right with flowers and coffee before we got going.  We just ended up canceling altogether.

We had an explosion of lessons and we were teaching so many people that were actually progressing!  It was a super fun time spiritually as well as traditionally.

We even went bowling and I didn't totally lose my bowling skills.  We were able to go with some of the other missionaries and with a member or two from the ward.

We also had the chance to be able to go to the Denmark temple together with some recent converts to do baptisms and it was a cool experience!

We were only companions for just over a month, but it was an eventful and thankfully busy time!

Everything

When do you know you love someone?

A touch?

A glance?

A heartbeat?

Does it begin at the meet cute?

A moment

A thought

A feeling

Realizing that all in the world changed?

A second

A life

A forever

To learn that they are absolutely everything

Örebro Part VI - My eyes are cold!

Örebro Parts One, Two, Three, Four, and Five

Some stories from my journal:

"I woke up.  I stared at the wall for six hours.  I counted how many times it took me to breathe." - most exciting/boring journal entry ever.  We were talking about boring journals and this was my made up example of an exciting--boring-- journal.


Camille looks up to see a plastic figurine in one of our candles on the bookshelf.
Camille: "Why is there a man in our candle?"
Me: "It's the brother of Jared."
Camille: "Why is he in our candle?"
Me: "He was looking for light."


We also learned that there are very specific instructions to my hairdryer to not use it while you are sleeping, to not use it while in the shower, and to not use it on your eyes.  But you know, when you eyes are cold... there are just some things you need to do.

Conversation between me and Camille after Karlskoga
Me: "Do you think that I could balance this book on my head all of the way to the bus stop?"
C: "No"
Me (in a poor Vader impression): "I find your lack of faith disturbing."
C: "Well, I find your lack of face disturbing."
This mad us laugh way more than it probably should have...

Santa Lucia and Christmas were both absolutely wonderful! Santa Lucia aka Saint Lucy's Day takes place on December 13th every year.  You can read about the tradition at the wikipedia page here.

Christmas is more celebrated on the 24th in Sweden, which reminded me of my dad's side of the family that typically celebrates on the 24th (not Swedish, but it just happened haha).   We were able to spend some quality time with different families in the ward for which I was and still am incredibly grateful.  We even had breakfast at the church with the elders and some ward members (Camille and I attempted to make some American pancakes in addition to eggs, potatoes and ham).  It was a fun time!

Even so, all good things can still come to an end. On December 28, 2013, I received a call that I was to be transferred on December 30, 2013 down to Malmö.

Örebro was a wonderful ride. I was there from the middle of June until the end of December.  Those near seven months changed my life. By far my longest area and one of the most loved.  But onto SKÅNE!!

Camille and I - we couldn't resist!

Elder Lundquist and Elder Bailey, who was tragically killed in a car accident early 2014.  He is a wonderful young man who I was honored to meet.

First real snow!  Huge snowflakes at least the size of quarters!

And for some journal drawings/doodles:

Law School - 2L

Sometimes... I like highlighting things excessively.
Maybe a little highlighter happy

Law school!  Most everyone knows that I'm currently studying at law school... but I often get questions about what that entails.

Law school is typically a 3 year long program so you can earn your Juris Doctorate.  I attend San Joaquin College of Law in Clovis and there they do offer a couple of longer programs that enables the students to spread out the degree over 4 or even 5 years so they can take night classes and still work.  I'm enrolled in the 3 year, Day Division program.

I started my second official year back in August.  I had originally been law school way back in 2012 at Michigan State before going on the journey that would lead to me heading off to Sweden for a year and a half, but I decided to give law school another try (as opposed to switching to some other Master's Program).  And thus, I enrolled at San Joaquin.

Schedule

My typical weekly schedule this semester looked something like this:

Where green is time at work, blue is class, yellow is time studying/reading for class, red is church, and purple is sleep time.  Everything blank would be the little bit of free time I had.  Sometimes I would switch things up a bit, for instance where I would skype Rikki after work on Fridays and wouldn't do my homework until that evening (we would squeeze skype sessions in the most random times sometimes).

So in short... very very busy!!  

Things changed throughout the semester because both of my two-credit classes ended at the end of October.  But to help balance that out, I'm a candidate for the law review journal, where I am writing an article that will hopefully receive approval for publication at the end of December.  I'll be writing more about Law Review in another blog entry in the future.

Homework/Reading

Now what is class/homework/reading like?

My homework sessions tend to look like the following: 

Screenshot of the basic outline of my notes... also note that for this particular class, how many pages are actually present.  

These are just notes for this particular class.  I have separate files for each of the 5 classes of the semester.  This was by far the most intensive class and I will indeed have over 150 before the end of the semester.

I also spend a decent amount of time in the library... lots of books! Though.... you rarely ever use any of those.  Only in certain research projects and the majority of resources are accessible online.  I have some (cough) bored (cough) selfies from my time there.  Just looked at that excitement. 

 

Honestly though... the work is time consuming and intensive, but it's certainly not the end of the world and sometimes there are some rather interesting topics.

But sometimes.... highlighters and pens decide to be difficult.  

Not one, but two pens broke on me within 5 minutes haha... thankfully I avoided getting ink on my white bed haha.

And it is always a sad day when a highlighter dies:

Classes

A normal class consists of the professor questioning the students in the Socratic method.  Very rarely is a class a "lecture"--- most often it is the students that end up teaching the class with the professor covering any gaps.  The student presents the facts of the case and the rule given.  The professor asks questions concerning the details of that rule and application... how the rule applies to the facts of the case and in other hypothetical situations.  The student would then go through how the court analyzed the case.  The emphasis is on the analysis process.  And frankly, it can be rather daunting being on the hot seat... sometimes you really don't know how to answer the questions that the professor asks.

Other classes are even more hands-on.  This semester I took my Moot Court class, where we prepared to argue a criminal case before the supreme court (Cases have to go through several levels before the supreme court - trial court, court of appeals and then the supreme court).  We had to write a brief representing our client and then we argued before judges twice-- A 15 minute argument based upon the brief we wrote and then a 15 minute argument from the other side.  So I argued first for the People and then for the man accused of the crime.

My oral notes ended up looking like the following in the end:

We would argue before a panel of three judges.  I ended up arguing in front of six practicing lawyers, but some rooms argued in front of actual judges.  We would stand at the podium and begin our case and then be prepared to answer any question the judges felt like asking us.  We would use facts from the case and relevant case law to try to persuade the judges that our side should win.  The courtroom like settings ended up looking like this:

  


 I ended up passing the class no problem!  But I would constantly get the advice to speak louder.... I need to project a bit more XD  But they always liked my argument and use of facts/case law.

And sometimes you can even find little gems in reading a case,  Notice a little three word sentence in the following case:

Örebro Part V - Busy days, All Saint's Day, sunrises and sunsets

Days can sometimes be extremely busy and full of travel!  (The amount of weekly travel definitely peaked when I was a Sister Training Leader, but the following is the summary of day in the life of Örebro).  This is taken from my journal entry about the 25th of oktober.

1. We started the day down in Kumla (about a 15 minute train ride which would first require a 10/15 minute bus ride) to visit a referral from another area in the mission.  The referral was a sweet lady from Brazil.  She was definitely interested in discussing religion, but more for the purpose of converting us to her religion instead.  She was impressed that we were able to give a Portuguese Book of Mormon though!
2. We then took the train back to Örebro to then take an hour bus ride up to Lindesberg to meet Collins, who at the time was preparing to be baptized (Collins is an awesome guy; he had to move suddenly, so we don't really know what came of him, but it was pleasure teaching him).
3. We then took the bus back to Örebro to meet a recent convert in the library for a lesson.
4. Then we hopped on another bus to Karlskoga (about 45 minutes) to have a dinner and lesson with a fantastic ward family.
5. And then we were finally able to take the bus back to Örebro and then take another bus back to our apartment.  So a good five hours of traveling and four lessons that day!  Busy, but good.

All Saint's Day!

Halloween is not really a "thing" for Sweden, but All Saint's Day Swedes take the time to visit graveyards and place candles on graves.  It may sound a bit morbid, but my mission in Sweden developed my love of Swedish graveyards.  Very peaceful and most often just beautiful.  These candles though, absolutely gorgeous!

Syster Hauglid and I had really wanted to go see this in action (action being a relative term) and had made plans to go to one of the bigger graveyards in the area, but that plan fell through for two reasons: 1) we forgot that it was a holiday bus schedule so bus times were off, but we didn't realize this until we were waiting at the bus stop and 2) we were invited to a family's home for dinner.  We had been teaching this cutest couple  (she was from Turkey and he was from Azerbaijan) and the wife is seriously one of the best cook's I've ever met.  (I've posted some pictures of her food before)  They had invited us over for dinner but then surprised us by having it actually be their daughter's birthday party!  It had AMAZING food.

And afterwards... we barely felt like we could walk because we ate so much.  So we waddle to the bus stop and realize the bus wasn't actually coming for an indeterminate amount of time (it has missed the regularly time and it didn't come at the holiday time).  With absolutely no one in sight, we decided to wait on what was beginning to be a very foggy night.  So to pass the time, Syster Hauglid did laps around the bus stop and I made creepy handprints on the glass...  anyway a bus finally came and we made it to the town center.  We quickly realized that there was no way we would be able to make it to the graveyard we wanted but we walked to one in the city and were really glad we did. Just look at the picture below!  I loved it!

It wasn't long before the Christmas lights were up in the city =) And as winter was drawing nearer it was getting darker earlier.  Which can make for some beautiful photo ops!

The following were taken on December 13th Santa Lucia day, where we were able to actually catch the sunrise (at like 8 am...) but I love this little castle!  

Updates forthcoming!

A note of the influx of new updates about 2015 and then continuing more detailed stories from my mission.

Let's celebrate the events of the past year, shall we?

As my journal says: