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
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