D& C 59:21

(Aldste Cummings)

Må Gud utgjuta sin oändliga kärlek över era huvud mina kära syskon,

I thought I'd change up the greeting a little bit today. Hoppas det smakar.

Anyway, this week has been pretty great. We've had lot's of good fun.

We got transfer calls and Elder Mathias and I are looking at another 6 weeks together here. It's gonna be great. Maybe I'll get to see the grass before I leave.

This week we had a musical fireside with the branch and a lot of people brought friends and nonmembers and it ended up being a really nice evening. The sister missionaries were in charge of the whole thing and had asked us about two days in advance to prepare something to perform so I asked a member if we could use their piano so I could brush a little dust off of "Bröllopsdag på Troldhaugen" by Edvard Grieg. The performance ended up going really well and the Swedes really appreciated that I played a little Scandinavian music.

Funny thing I've noticed from my observations here: There's this big rivalry between the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland) over which one is the best and they're constantly making jabs at the other countries and making claims that their [insert cultural element here] is better than all the others. Unless they don't have a [cultural element] to represent their country in the debate in which case they claim their Scandinavian fraternity justifies their showing pride in the accomplishments of the others. For example, Edvard Grieg is Norwegian and Sweden doesn't have a comparable Swedish composer to rival him so instead of admitting defeat, Swedes glory in the musical prodigy of their Norwegian brother. It's a pretty smart tactic. Either you're the best or everyone's the best and it doesn't matter.

Anyway, the rest of the week went really well. We had this really cool experience on Tuesday. We had prayed in the morning to be led by the Spirit without our being conscious of it and we ended up asking our mission leader to come with us to visit some women who live alone but said we could come back another time. On the way to the first woman, our mission leader didn't hear the directions we gave him and we spent about two minutes driving around in circles in parking lot. We eventually get there and knock and the woman didn't answer. But just as we were leaving, she came walking up from the laundry room and asked our mission leader what he was doing there. Turns out, she was actually an old neighbor to our mission leader and they knew each other really well but had lost contact over the years. We came in and had a fantastic lesson with her and our mission leader was able to give her teaching and advice specifically tailored to her needs. It was incredible.

Everything worked out so well. We decided to swing by her that day specifically with our mission leader who turned out to be an old friend to her and spent just enough time getting lost in that parking lot that she came to the door right when we were leaving rather than having missed her entirely.

To some of you this may just seem like coincidence, but this kind of stuff happens far too often to us and to other missionaries to be anything other than divine intervention. I know God lives and is actively engaged in this work.

Have a great week!

Love,

Äldste Cummings

1. In a town a little south of here, they have a Polar Plunge every year where they cut a 25m lap pool in the ice on the river and have people race each other in it.

2. "Here comes the Sun, ba ba baba" --The Beatles

3. You may think this is the prints made by two people falling into the snow simultaneously, but you'd be wrong. This is, in fact, the prints left behind when the Elder's Quorum President in our branch pushed me into the snow and then Elder Mathias pushed me back into the snow after helping me up.

4. This elderly woman was standing in the middle of the apartment complex looking scared so I offered her my arm to help her walk over the ice. Super adorable.