Marissa's Mission Musings

Don't have much to say except that things are good good. Our awesome Finnish friend Valter is making a lot of progress! Please pray for him. We love him a lot.  Sends the sweetest unprompted texts about things he loves about the gospel, or how we are good at being missionaries. Has become an unexpectedly very dear friend! I love Syster Williams a lot. Lots of laughing and lots of learning and having so much fun dreaming about sweden & norway this summer together. Trying to work as hard as we can. We almost became a safety zone video--- we were hiking by ourselves this morning and heard sirens and a nearby speaker thing saying "warning warning water is coming, please evacuate the area" .... actually kind of freaky. We booked it out of there. Caleb Paul is one year old tomorrow. If that doesn't paint the passing of time and the beauty of life I don't know what does! I'm so grateful for this chapter. Grateful to have things to learn and people to miss and a c...

I'm going to attempt to recount a most magical and spiritual week in the five minutes I have right now... Passover-- this was beautiful. Wasn't quite the same as the ones of my childhood in our costumes at Jana's house, but we sure tried! we sat in our tent and ate bread and fruit and talked about the beauty of the message of Easter and I pretended to be a seminary student and syster Williams expounded the scriptures to me. It was really really wonderful. We had the most chaotic six person lesson after we met the teeny tiniest little old lady on the way to the church, where we were meeting two young middle eastern dudes and a member. We read in the Book of Mormon altogether and it was hilarious and awesome! President Lake let us watch Lamb of God as a mission at our request. I love it so much. I am so moved by Peter's song of devotion before his denial of Christ. He sings "I'll go with thee to prison if thou asketh it of me-- yes, I would die with thee, yet wil...

I love Easter season! I love teaching about it. We've been finding on the streets purely with questions about easter and it's been so cool. Trying to focus all of our lessons on this message of LIFE AND LOVE. It's been wonderful. One friend who is so intrigued by the message of easter is Grete. I met her on the bus last week and we've had a few lessons since! She is not religious in her own words, but describes feelings of something bigger, and a hope that can't be explained. This is the message of easter! That we, tack vare Kristus, can have a higher joy and purpose in this life. That all we try to do and build in this life matter. That our relationships here can continue.  I am so grateful for that. We are listening to the corresponding songs of Lamb of God every day of holy week which has been a dream. We played "skeebo" (skipbo) with some very very very old ladies Caleb can walk 😭 So things are good. Happy easter! Love you all! Syster Barn https://pho...

Hej my friends. I can't believe it's been another week. I get so nostalgic about every change of season-- it must be noted that the river that runs through Umeå has finally melted. People were cross country skiing on it when I got here and now there's just ice on the sides-- it's beautiful. Conference was amazing. This week was amazing. Start of a new transfer! I love Syster Williams. I love Umeå. I love getting to talk to so many people. I love my Savior! I love being here. Some highlights... - tried to stop a guy who was on the phone and he waved us away, so we continued only to have him come up TO US maybe fifteen minutes later because he thought maybe we needed directions! Had an awesome conversation and now we've met him a couple times! We were touched by his goodness and grateful we got the chance to talk to him. - Our finnish friend Valter was adorably touched by Elder Renlund's mention of finland in conference. Texted us excitedly that the place was 6 mi...