Hope you all doing well and had a good week. Mine was pretty decent. Here's some of the interesting stuff that happened.
Biggest event of the week was definitely on Friday which was the Swedish holiday Midsommar which is celebrated on the summer solstice every year. The traditions behind it are honestly pretty weird and revolve mostly around dancing around a tall pole (see pictures) and singing weird songs. People just have large gatherings with these types of festivities. We went to 2 separate ones because we were late to the first one so missed all of the main traditional dancing and stuff. Honestly mostly weird like I said but it was cool to be able to see the Swedish traditions. We had the whole day to do whatever we wanted after finishing some stuff in the morning so after the two pole gathering things we had a barbeque with a bunch of latinos that one of our members from Chile invited us to. We just sat and talked and played some games and the food was so so good. Even with all the festivities my favorite part of the day was definitely talking to this senior age lady from Chile who was there. She has had such a hard life with many unique trials but she still has such a strong faith and positivity. Really inspirational.
Besides that the week was just what you would expect a missionary week to look like. We had a lot of street contacting but had some lessons trickling in each day as well which was nice. Here is a short summary about each of the lessons:
-Our friend Michel who has been taught by the missionaries for a couple of months. His parents are Syrian, but he is agnostic. Also trying to become a comedian so is a pretty funny guy. We talked about the spirit and helped him recognize that he has felt the spirit more in his life from meeting the missionaries. These are the best moments as a missionary.
-Our friend Daniel whose parents are latino but he is also agnostic. We had a similar lesson with him but he was more resistant and it seems like he's not really willing to put in the spiritual work to grow his faith.
-A 16 year old named King who is from Africa that I met on the street last week so this was our first lesson. He is a chill dude but had some doubts about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith because he said when he was in Africa someone gave him a book and said it would help him come closer to Christ and then he took it home and started having bad dreams. He also said a lot of the preachers in Africa perform miracles of some sort but then really are corrupted so it can be hard to know truth. He said he would need to ask his mom before he could take a Book of Mormon.
-A lady named Dina whose parents are from Kosovo but she has grown up in Sweden. She seemed pretty interested in our church so we just explained about the Restoration but her dog who was with her was super restless and kept distracting her and she stopped the lesson midway through saying she couldn't focus and wanted to continue tomorrow. We said sure but she texted later that night saying she had already chosen her Orthodox church.
-Met with a Muslim guy named Fullah who was super super nice. He didn't seem to be super educated on the Muslim faith but he went to a Christian school growing up so knew a good amount about Christianity. We just explained the laws of justice and mercy and why Jesus is necessary (according to our faith). He is just really respectful and nice so hard to determine what he is thinking.
As you can see we had a good amount of lessons which meant less street contacting but we still had quite a few hours of street contacting. But this week, thankfully, the street contacting felt lighter, in a sense that it felt like less of a burden. If you've been reading my emails you know I've had a difficult past couple of transfers (like 3-4 months) because of many things (hard companion, difficult area being among them). In general I haven't had the most joyful experience as a missionary and these past couple months seemed to take a toll on my mental state, putting me at mental low in terms of motivation and joy coming into this new transfer. After talking to some family and friends about my struggles last pday they all told me that they would keep me in their prayers. Throughout the week I felt a very noticeable difference in everything that I did and can credit it to nothing else than the prayers of these people (as well as the many others who pray for me). I'm not really sure how to put it into words but like I said everything seemed to just feel lighter like there was a weight lifted and I knew that this was from the power of prayer. I haven't really had many strong experiences with prayer in my life but this week was definitely a testament to me of the power of prayer and God's perfect timing. In the last general conference President Holland gave a talk on the similar topic but with much more extreme experiences that he has had. Here's a piece of it that I like and think is applicable: "Brothers and sisters, I testify that God hears every prayer we offer and responds to each of them according to the path He has outlined for our perfection ... It is for reasons known only to God why prayers are answered differently than we hope—but I promise you they are heard and they are answered according to His unfailing love and cosmic timetable." Thank you to all of you who keep me and other missionaries in your prayers. It really does make a difference even if you don't think it does.❤️
