Sweden - April 8, 2013

I was able to watch three sessions of conference, 2 of which were live (the Saturday and Sunday morning sessions which were kl 18,00/ 6pm our time haha).  The stake had recorded the Saturday afternoon session, so we watched that early Sunday afternoon.  I was glad that I was able to get to watch them in English so that I can actually get something out of them!

Lessons were a little more sparse this week, but that certainly doesn't mean that we haven't been working hard!  We just had to deal with a lot of fairly last minute cancellations, which isn't any fun.

We have a couple of new investigators this week.  One is the cousin of a member in our ward, came to general conference and we've had a lesson with her before.  She agreed to meet with us on Wednesday, so I 'm excited to get to know her better!  We also have another member referral from Handen, who wants to learn more about the Church and to learn some more English as well, so we're hoping to be able to help him with both.  

We've been working with a couple of potential investigators as well. There is a couple that we're very optimistic for.  My Companion first met them last month, where they said that they would love to meet us after the 6th of April (one of them was involved with an art show).  We were able to meet them at the art show and we plan on meeting with them later this week.  We also have been working with another member referral. We were first able to actually meet him last week and we have an appointment with him on Tuesday and another on Sunday.  He was eager to learn more about how we have a living prophet so we were glad to be able to give him a copy of last month's Liahona.

I had one instance that really stood out to me in regards to the Spirit this week.  Early in the day I had found my copy of Elder Holland's talk "None Were With Him" and as a little side note to myself, I stuck it in my bag on the off chance that I would be able to read it throughout the day.  Well, that day we had a lesson with an inactive.  It turned out that talk wasn't meant for me, but rather for her.  It fit perfectly into her situation.  We were able to give it to her to read and she told us that it really did help her.  

This is certainly one of the reasons that I've been a little more focused on my studies in the Book of Mormon this week.  One thing that I found really interesting was a story of conversion in Alma 24.  In Chapter 24 the Lamanites came to destroy the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi.  The Anti-Nephi-Lehites had already taken up their oath to never fight and they instead just remained kneeling in prayer.  A thousand and five individuals were killed that day. The Lamanites saw this and realized just what they were doing.  They repented of their deeds, and more than  a thousand were converted to the Lord that day.  In verse 27 it states quite deftly "Thus we see that the Lord worketh in many ways to the salvation of his people."  Which is most definitely true.

Love you all!

Hey Everyone! - April 1, 2013

Glad Påsk!  (Happy Easter!)

I'm actually in one of the largest wards here in Sweden.  With over 200 members to the ward (and over a 100 of those are actually active) we meet in one of the, if not the largest, chapels in Sweden.  The majority of our work is through members or with inactives.  We are also in the ward with all of the Temple missionaries called to serve in the Swedish temple (since it's pretty much across the street from the chapel and the place were all of the Temple missionaries live), so there are actually quite a few Americans in the ward.  

Pretty much everyone is fluent in English.  We do teach some lessons in English, but the majority is definitely Swedish.  What this means for me though, if I don't know a word in Swedish, I can just say it in English and people will still understand most of the time.  So I make an effort to try to say everything I can in Swedish.  I've definitely noticed my Swedish improving, but it's still difficult at times.  It's definitely coming though!

It's definitely been a bit cold, but it's warming up and that ice is finally starting to melt.  Which reminds me... I may or may not have fallen and I may or may not have scraped up my left knee and bruised my left elbow and I may or may not have twisted my right ankle because I stepped off the path a bit and lost my balance.  But!  It's really not that bad....  no need for crutches or anything since I can walk.  My ankle is just a little bit swollen is all!  And I have my brace so that helps when I'm in my apartment.

Food isn't all that drastically different here.  The biggest change is that things are more bland.  Sweden doesn't really have spicy food.  At least not the way we see spicy food.  I've been willing to try everything they give me.  Desserts are by far the best - and since we have a large ward and both sets of sisters get fed pretty much every night (most often by two sets of couples, though every once in awhile they'll have all four of us over for dinner), most members include dessert of some sort when we're over.  

It's been a busy week.  We had some last minute training exchanges last week - which through the luck of the draw, I got to see my companion from the MTC again (since her companion is the one doing the training) which made both of us extremely happy!  I don't think either of us realized just how much we missed each other until we saw each other again! We also have exchanges this week, where I'll be placed in a trio, so I'm interested to see how that will turn out, particularly since I'll be in charge of getting us everywhere since we'll be in my area.

As for a little bit about how I get around.  We pretty much walk/take the tåg (train) everywhere since it's too icy right now for bikes.  We actually technically live outside of our area so we always have to take the tåg at least twice a day.

We've been working with a new investigator. My companion was able to meet with him twice this week (I only had the one time because of the exchanges) to teach him about prayer and baptism and we have plans to meet him several times this week. We know he feels the Spirit during our lessons and during our last lesson he told us he wants to think and pray about baptism before he commits, because he knows that it is a big step to take. We know just how much he needs the gospel in his life right now, so we hope that he will come to the decision to be baptized.

The young boy I mentioned last week will most likely be baptized some time in May (he turns 8 on the 29th of this month), but there is no official date set at this time.

We were also able to meet with an investigator my companion worked with before I came here. Since it was almost a month since his last lesson with the missionaries we had a sort of refresher lesson, where it ended up him teaching us (remembering pretty much everything that was taught to him before) the Plan of Salvation and the Word of Wisdom. We went over the Restoration in more detail and he's beginning to work with the Elders (since we realized that he actually doesn't live in our area -- he was introduced to the church through a friend in the ward, so we're coordinating with the Elders in the area he actually lives in), which I think can help him quite a bit.

Something that really stuck out to me in the scriptures this week is the parable of the Good Samaritan. This parable has always been significant to me, but this week I was hit very strongly with how every role in the parable can be representative of us, particularly placing myself in the role of the man who was attacked by thieves. Then the role of the Good Samaritan would be taken by the Savior. The Savior does His all for us. He cares for us in every way present and when He cannot physically be there, His presence is known because He has already paid the price for us at the inn. He hasn't forgotten, and He never will.

Until next week!

Love you all!

Week 2 in Sweden! March 25, 2013

Another week has already passed by?  Time certainly is in an interesting warp here on a mission.  

This week certainly had its ups and downs.  One of the harder moments was our lesson with a couple that Syster Spjut has been working with for several weeks.  During the lesson we were telling them why we are here as missionaries (our personal reasons) and that our purpose was to teach people about the church.  It wasn't much later that they straight up told us that they weren't interested in becoming Mormon and that they didn't see any difference between our church and their current religion.  And then on top of that our next appointment that day was a no show. 

We were able to teach a little boy his second lesson (he's a member and his mom wants him to have the discussions before he's baptized).  He's definitely excited to have us over.  At church that day he had written out his testimony and then copied it to give it to everyone.  So sweet!  He also really liked out object lesson for the restoration - we use little cups, each labeled with something that is essential to Christ's Church.  We then build a pyramid with those cups, making sure that priesthood is one of the foundational cups.  We then have someone remove the priesthood cup, which of course causes the pyramid to collapse.  We then show how other churches tried to make do with what they had, but it just wouldn't be the same shape as Christ's Church.  We rebuild the pyramid as we talk about the Restoration, the only difference being that the Church is called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints instead of the Church of Jesus Christ.  He agreed to pray about the things we taught to know if they were true. 

We've been working on a member program where we hope to fuel the enthusiasm for missionary work in our ward.  We plan to fully implement it this week and we expect to receive a number of referrals from it, which we are greatly looking forward to. 

A scripture that stood out to me this week was Luke 6:21 where the second half reads "Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh."  It just served as a good reminder to have hope and to find joy in the journey.  Though things may be difficult now, they will get better. 
  It's interesting to me how subtle the Spirit can be and how sometimes we don't immediately recognize its influence.  One thing that clearly stood out to me this week is how the Spirit works through us during preparation for lessons as well as the actual lessons.  Like this week when Syster Spjut and I were going over a couple of different lessons, we realized that inspired questions would come.  Things we haven't previously thought about for our investigators came to mind and we were able to implement these things during our lessons.  Through the Spirit, we knew that we needed to share why we were there as missionaries in the discussion with the couple I mentioned.  Even though things may not have turned out as we expected, it still needed to be shared, perhaps for some reason we won't be able to fathom until much later. 

Things are still a bit hard, but the language is coming along and the future looks bright.


Love you all!

Sweden - March 18, 2013

I'm in Sweden!  (If you couldn't guess).  My first area is Västerhaninge of the Stockholm Södra Zone (Stockholm South). 

My area is actually the one with the temple, so I pretty much get to see it every day.  

We have two sets of sisters assigned to my ward and all four of us share an apartment.  One Syster is one of my MTC roommates.  One of the other Systers has only been out to Sweden for about 12 weeks.

Speaking of training, it looks like I will be training extremely fast.  I knew that this was a possibility since like week 2 of the MTC, but it's still a little  intimidating to think about.  The next transfer coming in from the MTC has 18 missionaries - sixteen of which will be sisters.  And with my group from the MTC, there's approximately 20 sisters out in Sweden, so doing the math, the likelihood of training by May is pretty high.  

Learning Swedish is a bit frustrating actually.  I can understand (or least get the general gist of the conversation) a lot more than I expected, but I feel like I can say very little.  A member here explained it perfectly:  the average person has a 2000-4000 word vocabulary they use regularly and then an educated person has more of a 6000-8000 word vocabulary.  So you take that person with a 6000 word vocabulary and force them to be limited to maybe a 1000 words if even that.  I do know more than what I think, but it's forcing the 22 year-old writer/law school attending version of me to talk like a 5 year old and let's just say I'm not accustomed to feeling like that.  

Now as for the work, we're currently working with several inactive/less active members as well as building our relationship with the ward (and teaching practice lessons with them).  We have several potential investigators and old investigators that we hope will become actual progressing investigators.  We have a couple of progressing investigators already, but I haven't had the chance to meet any of them yet, so I can't say that I know much about them.

I hope that your weekend together was fun!  It's exciting that Jared only has a few short weeks left before he heads out.

Love you all!

MTC - March 7, 2013 - Guess I'm still here!

Hey everyone!

I know that the question that is on everyone's mind is "are the visas in?"  Right now that is a big "no!" but that honestly is okay really.  We actually have no idea when they might come, we are relying solely on the Swedish government.  The travel office/MTC are trying to keep all of us here as long as possibly at the hopes that they come in soon, but if we don't get a definitive answer within the next week, those of us remaining will probably be temporarily reassigned.  My best guess is that some of us (I'm hoping for over half of the now remaining 19 missionaries going to Sweden) will get our visas within the next week, so I'm optimistic! 

It's been a bit difficult though, since my district was dissolved when the original group of 12 left (since 5 of those 12 were from my 10 person district).  I'm still companions with the fantastic Syster Faux gratefully!  They put us and one of the elders into one of the districts and they put the other two elders who stayed into the other district.  I'll admit, I miss my Elders!  After spending 6 weeks with each other constantly is is super strange to be without them.  It was what we lamented the most really, that we were unable to go out to Sweden together.  Anyway, since now I'm in a new district, I have two new teachers who are both really awesome (and now I actually have a teacher that's older than me haha).  It's been strange though since we don't have as strict of a schedule since they weren't planning for us to be here, everything is a bit more fluid. 

Other than that I finally have the first vision memorized in Swedish! It took me a bit of time (since memorizing is not necessarily my strong suit) but I've got it down.  The three things I have completely memorized in Swedish are the first vision, our purpose and the baptismal commitment question, so I'm ready to go right?  Well, obviously I've learned a bit more Swedish than that while I've been out here, so I'm not going to die when I finally head out to Sweden.  

Last Saturday was really awesome though.  Both of my main teachers told us stories and showed us pictures of their missions!  It certainly helped get me even more excited about the chance to be able to serve there, even if it won't be as early as I thought before.  Then on Sunday, during our district meeting, we had a share a scripture that was significant to you (either your favorite/something that helped you) and your testimony day, which was a good note to ending my time with my district.  That night we had district blessings and I was able to get one from our District Leader, which I'll readily admit helped me immensely in many regards to the things that I've been going through.  It's such a great thing to see such young elders be worthy of such an amazing power as the priesthood.

On Tuesday we were able to hear from Elder Marcos A. Aidukaitus for our devotional.  He's actually from Brazil!  He emphasized the importance of trusting in the Lord and the willingness to be bold in our testimonies and sharing the gospel.  He also talked extensively about D&C 76 and the three kingdoms of glory.  He challenged us to make the decision of which kingdom we would like to enter in big bold letters in our journals so that we can notice it everytime we flip through the pages.  He focused on how if we have already made that decision so readily, it makes every other decision so much easier; we would just need to keep in mind, "Would this help me reach the kingdom I've chose?"  It's a simple concept, but very poignant.

Love you all!