Mission Week 16

Hey everybody hope you all had a good week

Pretty uneventful week for me overall, but a few things to share.

We went on splits with the Umeå Elders on Wednesday. I got to be paired up with Elder Brown who is from my MTC group so we are pretty good friends. We were able to go meet with this super awesome lady named Masia. She is from Congo and doesn't speak much English or Swedish, so most of our communication is using google translate. She is soooo nice. When we walk in she cheered and gave us both hugs even though it was my first time meeting her. Then she had us sit down the couch and then she put on one of those videos where there is the kids who make a house or pool out of like mud and sticks and stuff in the wilderness. She just had us watch that while she cooked and then she brought out two huge bowls of food and told us to just relax and watch the TV while we ate. Then she put on some of her African music and we all danced to it while she sang along. Definitely highlight of my week though. 

Other than that nothing out of the ordinary happened really. 

-Visited with Daniel and had a pretty regular lesson

-Met with Abraham and he just keeps getting crazier haha. This time he told us that he has never made a mistake in his life and that he has talked to Jesus face to face. He says we have to believe in him to really believe in Jesus. He just constantly says "du kommer inte att tro på mig" which just means "you are not gonna believe in me". Idk what we gonna do with him it's just hard to stop teaching him if he has a strong testimony of Joseph Smith like I mentioned last week. If we ask him if he believes that Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ he says "ett hundra procent" (100%) with a smile on his face. 

-We met with Jessica twice, just planning everything for her baptism this week which is really exciting🙌

-Somehow the kids still wanted to play basketball this week even though it was like 30 degrees outside so we did that

- Went to Sollefteå again on Saturday but everyone we tried to visit just said they were busy so not much happened that day

- Got our first snow yesterday. We have daylight savings early here so the sun is now rising at 7:30 and setting at 3:30 and it's only gonna get worse from here lol

Been thinking a lot about faith this week. I listened to some interviews of people who have left the church because of suspicions and rumors about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Or because the gospel seems impossible or there's no way to prove any of it happened. 

As I thought more about it, I realized there's a reason that there's no hard proof that the Book of Mormon is true, or that Joseph Smith was a prophet. There's a reason that if we pray to God and ask for a sign that He is there or if the gospel is true, most of the time we don't get a big sign or experience that just tells us yes or no. God wants us to have faith! There's no faith if we just get a 100% sign telling us the way. 

Ether 12:6 - " And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." 

The witness of the truth comes after we have faith. Faith in Jesus Christ is the first principle in the gospel for a reason. It's the first step we need to take before anything else can happen. Faith is what brings us closer to the Savior. Faith is what causes miracles. And faith is what keeps us going when the miracle we hoped and prayed for doesn't seem to go the way we wanted. As we have faith in our Heavenly Father and His Son, we will experience overwhelming peace in our lives! 

Helaman 5:47 - "Peace, peace be unto you, because of your faith in my Well Beloved, who was from the foundation of the world."

Have a great week!

Pics:

Mission Week 16

Monday, October 30, 2023

Mission Week 15

Hej,

This week was pretty good.

First and most important, we but Jessica on baptismal date 🙌🙌. She is so excited and you can just see how much she really wants it. She truly has changed as a person since the first time I met her. She has made a lot of sacrifices to prepare herself for baptism which just shows the faith that she has. She said coming to district conference last week really made her 100 percent that she wants to get baptized so I'm glad she was able to come. The baptism will be on Nov 4 which is a week from Saturday so stay tuned!

Our lesson with Abraham was interesting and disappointing this week. After a 2 hour conversation jumping between many different topics he came to the conclusion at the end of the discussion that our purpose of visiting him that day was for him to tell us that President Nelson is not a prophet and that he himself (Abraham) is the prophet on the earth today. And told us to go to President Nelson and tell him that there was a guy claiming to be a prophet and then President Nelson would want to talk to him.😂😂 Pretty crazy but also disappointing, we are going to try and keep teaching him but not sure where we can go now. It's weird because he believes Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true but yeah pretty interesting experience.

We went back out to Sollefteå this week (the place that is about an hour away) and tried to visit a lot of inactive members. Most weren't home but we were able to meet with this family from Ethiopia for a long time. The mom has been a member for 10 years but doesn't come anymore because she lives so far, but she has 3 kids none of whom are baptized. Two of the kids are girls who are around 20 and 16 and they are starting to get interested in religion. They asked us a lot of questions that we were able to answer and we are hoping to go back and start teaching them everything. Their family was super nice tho and we were also able to give them the sacrament which was good too. 

That's honestly most of the interesting things that happened. Rest of the week was just hours of knocking doors and a few more lessons with other people. We found 1 or 2 people knocking doors that could be interested so hopefully we will be able to meet with them this week. 

I gave my second talk already this week in church. There is so few people that come there is just not many to give talks. I talked about being a twin and not having an individual identity a lot of my life, but that the most important identity we all remember about ourselves is that we are children of God. And that as we begin to see ourselves as children of God with our own divine identity, we need to try and see others as God sees them and treat everyone equally. Here's a quote from Elder Soares on the topic. His talk in the most recent general conference was completely on this topic so I encourage you all to go read it.

"For this reason, it is not uncommon to see people characterizing the way of thinking, acting, and speaking of other cultures, races, and ethnicities as inferior, making use of preconceived, mistaken, and often sarcastic ideas, generating attitudes of contempt, indifference, disrespect, and even prejudice against them. Such attitudes have their roots in pride, arrogance, envy, and jealousy, characteristics of a carnal nature, which are totally contrary to Christlike attributes. This conduct is improper for those who are striving to become His true disciples. In fact, my dear brothers and sisters, there is no place for prejudiced thoughts or actions in the community of Saints."

And if you don't think an apostle is a good enough source. Here is what our prophet has said about this.

"Each of us has a divine potential because each is a child of God. Each is equal in His eyes. The implications of this truth are profound. Brothers and sisters, please listen carefully to what I am about to say. God does not love one race more than another. His doctrine on this matter is clear. He invites all to come unto Him, "black and white, bond and free, male and female." I assure you that your standing before God is not determined by the color of your skin. Favor or disfavor with God is dependent upon your devotion to God and His commandments and not the color of your skin. Today I call upon our members everywhere to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice. I plead with you to promote respect for all of God's children." 

Sorry for the long quotes, but I know that as we see ourselves and other people as children of God, we will feel love for everyone around us and experience greater joy and fulfillment in our lives. I encourage you all to make an effort to improve at this, because it is something that each and every one of us can do better at. The church has made wonderful strides at improving in this area, but there is still so much more that needs to be done. There are definitley a lot of things that have frustrated me because of how much I care about this. This is an extremely important issue to me, and I know as we all put in an effort that we can create a better community of love and acceptance for everyone no matter our differences.

I appreciate you if you took the time to read the entire spiritual thought today. It's something that has been on my mind even more lately and I hope you can see how important it is.

Hope you all have a great week

Pics:

Mission Week 15

Monday, October 23, 2023

Mission Week 14

Hello hope y'all doing well

This week was pretty slow as far as lessons or even generally meeting with people, so there was just hours and hours of knocking doors or talking to people in the streets. Not much success but that's ok we are always planting seeds.

We did have a few lessons with our friends that went well though. We went and talked to our friend Jessica's husband to ask if he was ok with her getting baptized (he is against religion). It went really well and she should be getting baptized soon so stay tuned for that. Our friend Daniel who has been struggling with alcohol was a completely different person when we went to see him this week. He stopped drinking and you can just see how much better he is. And we got to share more principles of the Restoration with our friend Abraham.

We also had district conference which is basically just stake conference for our area because we aren't big enough to have a stake. And for those who don't know what either of those are it is basically just when all the churches in the area come together on a Sunday twice a year and have a big church meeting with everyone together. Our area covers a lot of space so it is more of a big deal up here, some people drive 3-4 hours to be able to come. It was fun to see all of the other missionaries and it felt weird to be in a church meeting with more than like 15 people again hahaha. Jessica, Daniel, and Abraham were all able to come though, and it was both Jessica and Abraham's first time coming to church so that was cool to have them there. They both loved it so that was good. 

Last cool experience from the week was that we had someone cancel a lesson on us so I just suggested to my companion that we visit this area that is kinda far away that we were already in the direction of. The area has some inactive members so I thought we might as well try and visit them while we were a bit closer. We called this old lady and asked if we could visit, and she said that she had started feeling really sick the night before so probably not. We offered to come and give her a blessing and she gladly accepted the offer. When we got there, she asked us if the branch president talked to us and told us to come. We said no and asked why and she said that she had called him the night before and told him how sick she was feeling and that she needed help. She was amazed that we just randomly showed up without anyone telling us, on the exact day that she needed a visit. It had been over a month since we had visited her and we came back on the day where she needed a blessing. Just a cool experience that shows that God cares for all of His children and their needs, and also a lesson that the Spirit sometimes leads us to where we need to go without us realizing it. 

For my studies this week I have been reviewing a lot of the recent general conference talks. A theme that stood out to me for all of conference is that we need to remember our identity as children of God. Here is a few quotes from Elder Daines talk "Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus". "You may struggle to see God as a loving Father. You may look heavenward and see not the face of love and mercy but a thicket of rules through which you must wend your way. Perhaps you believe God rules in His heavens, speaks through His prophets, and loves your sister, but you secretly wonder whether He loves you. Perhaps you have felt the iron rod in your hand but not yet felt your Savior's love to which it leads … When prophets and apostles talk of covenants, they aren't like coaches yelling out from (red velvet) bleachers, telling us to "try harder!" They want us to see our covenants are fundamentally about relationships and can be a cure for spiritual face blindness. They are not rules to earn His love; He already loves you perfectly. Our challenge is to understand and shape our life to that love." God loves us perfectly and we can come to feel His love by living his gospel and turning to Him! As we turn our efforts to Him we will feel His strength and His love for us and for others in all that we do. 

Pics: 

Mission Week 14

Monday, October 16, 2023

Mission Week 13

What's good everyone hope you all doing well

Not much to talk about this week. 

First half of the week was mostly just a farewell tour for Elder Smith. Just visiting all the people he wanted to say goodbye to and we spent our pday at the thrift store so he could look for anything that was Swedish to buy haha. Thursday was transfer day so me and Elder Smith flew down to Stockholm together and then we waited there for a few hours and talked with a lot of other missionaries, and then I flew back up to Örnsköldsvik with my new companion. 

My new companion is very reserved. He is really smart and really good at guitar and also a redhead lol. It has been a really tough adjustment for me getting a new companion though. Everything that I am used to just feels a lot different. He does a lot of stuff more by the book than Elder Smith did which I am not used to. Last week was probably the best week of my whole mission so far. It seemed like things were starting to pick up, and we had so many miracles. This week every thing that seemed like a miracle last week has fallen apart. Everybody who seemed promising seems the opposite now for one reason or another. This week has been really tough for me. I have felt a lot of discouragement and loss of motivation.

(I encourage you all to not skip past the spiritual thought to the pictures this week.🙂 I may as well have not sent an email this week without it.🙃)

My bright spot in every day has been my personal study time. I have studied so much good stuff this week that has given me hope that things will get better and that I can rely on Jesus Christ for strength. My best study of the week is when I listened to Elder Holland's talk "An High Priest of Good Things to Come". I strongly encourage everyone to go listen to this talk on their own, but I'm just going to share a few excerpts from it and you will be able to see why I liked it so much. "To any who may be struggling to see that light and find that hope, I say: Hold on. Keep trying. God loves you. Things will improve. Christ comes to you in His "more excellent ministry" with a future of "better promises." He is your "high priest of good things to come" … Even if you cannot always see that silver lining on your clouds, God can, for He is the very source of the light you seek. He does love you, and He knows your fears. He hears your prayers. He is your Heavenly Father, and surely He matches with His own the tears His children shed… [Jesus Christ] was misunderstood or misrepresented, even hated from the beginning. No matter what He said or did, His statements were twisted, His actions suspected, His motives impugned. In the entire history of the world no one has ever loved so purely or served so selflessly—and been treated so diabolically for His effort. Yet nothing could break His faith in His Father's plan or His Father's promises. Even in those darkest hours at Gethsemane and Calvary, He pressed on, continuing to trust in the very God whom He momentarily feared had forsaken Him." I know that what Elder Holland says here is true. God and Jesus Christ know us, love us, and understand what we are going through, even though it may not feel like it. Rely on Them in your times of need, and know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that there is a brighter future ahead, with and through Jesus Christ. 

I'm sorry if this email was so negative. Just saying it how it is I'm not gonna sugar coat anything. The bit of good news to share from the week is that we finished teaching our friend Jessica all of the lessons, and now we just need to talk to her husband (who hates religion) about baptism and get his permission. If all goes according to plan she should be getting baptized in the near future. A huge miracle and blessing for sure. 

Pics:

Mission Week 13

Monday, October 9, 2023