Knitting, Tracting, Near Misses and of More Cold weather

Dear Family,

I knew the "warm" weather was too good ot be true. It got pretty chilly again this week, but I'm getting used to it. I know I complain about the cold a lot, but there's really nothing I can do about it so I'll stop whining about it. It's not that bad anyway (trying to convince myself of this...) and Spring will be here soon (so everyone says...). I'm not sure if I believe them. Every time someone says that Spring is coming soon, it snows. hard. Enough about the weather. How was everyone's week?

We actually had a pretty awesome week. Sister Hegstrom is amazing. We're having the BEST time! We just talk and laugh together all the time. Also we do missionary work. She was sick for most of last week so that kind of threw a wrench in things. On the upside, she did teach me how to knit while she was laid up so now I'm addicted. Also I know how to knit. Woo hoo (although, you don't get much knitting time when you're a missionary...but it'll be good next time I have a sick companion!)!

We had our first district meeting in Västerås on thursday and it was really good. we now have 6 missionaries in the district: us and the Västerås elders (Elder van Vliet and Elder Hanes from my MTC group. SO FUN!!) and the Eskilstuna elders, Elder McCan (DL) and elder Francis. It's going to be a really fun transfer! I got a little story...Elders Francis and McCan have a car so they offered to drive us to the train station so we could get back to Örebro. Well to get out of the parking lot at the Väasterås chapel you have to drive up this hill and get a little momentum so you don't slide down it and get stuck in the snow. So Elder Francis was driving and he got some good momentum up the hill and stopped to look both ways and started to go. Well there was a big snow bank on his left that totally blocked his view of an oncoming car! SO scary! He grazed th back end of this guy's car. Luckily both drivers were going slow enough that no one was hurt and no airbags were deployed. We were pretty shook up though. The story has a happy ending. When we finally got to the train station, we were completely sure that we had missed our train (bless Elder Francis...!) so we were gonna have to get new tickets. But we looked at the arrivals boad and our train was 25 minutes late! So we were still able to get back to Örebro in good time. What a miracle! And don't worry. We're all safe and sound and the Elders are back in Eskilstuna.

We were able to teach Juan Carlos a few times this week and things are really progressing with him. He understands that this church is God's church and he wants to belong to it. We also went to see James again and he's doing really well after his baptism. He says he's so happy! I'm so happy! It's been an interesting journey with him. He was so ready to be baptized. We spent most of our meeting Saturday talking about what time he needed to take the bus to make it to church on time for his confirmation yesterday. His ride is in the Ukraine for a few weeks so James needs to take the bus to church. So we told him that he needed to be at the bus stop at 9:00 sharp. He's African and Africans are amazing,
Well, James did not make it to the bus stop on time and he did not make it to church in time to be confirmed. He was very disappointed. We were too. But he'll be confirmed next week and get ordained to the priesthood the week after. He just needs to make it here in time be at the bus stop 20 mintues early!!

We were able to teach a really awesome young guy yesterday. He came to church to check things out for a school project and wee had a little interview with him after Sacrament meeting. John Nilsson was his name. He's so nice! We gave him a Book of Mormon and some literature and he was very thankful. Well, last night we were going to go tracting in our apartent complex. It's a pretty big complex and we started working on it a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I could NOT find the tracting record for the place! I looked everywhere and it was not in our apartment. Then we remembered that we'd given John a Book of Mormon. Now I have the bad habit of just sticking papers in Books of Mormon and I was pretty sure that John had our tracting record. So we called him, and sure enough it was in his brand new book! SO we didn't get to tract last night. Kind of lame because I have felt for a while that there's someone we're supposed to find in our complex. It seems like every time we try to go tracting there something happens so that we can't go. I think Satan just doesn't want us to find and baptize someone wonderful!

Well that's about all of my fun for this week. I think I'll go knit myself something wonderful! I love you all and miss you. I know that this Church is true and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. Love you all!

Love,
Syster Coleman