What's good everyone hope you all doing well
This week for me was the week of visiting members. In Sweden advent calendars are really big and the church provides some for us missionaries to give out to members and just random people. We were supposed to have them the last Sunday in November at church but for some reason we didn't so we spent like 3 hours texting every member that was on the list that we have. We had a total of 14 member visits which may not seem like a lot but that is definitely more than the rest of my mission combined all in one week.
Obviously you all don't want to hear about every member visit so I will just give some of the highlights:
We visited a dude with a really bad speech problem, but that did not stop him from talking NBA with us which was awesome. He and his wife also have a Book of Mormon reading streak of over 1600 days which is nearly 5 years so major respect to them.
We visited the relief society president and her family. They had us for dinner and were super nice, and afterwards they let us try a type of ice cream bar that everyone in Sweden likes and I do not know how. It is literally black licorice flavored and yeah it was disgusting.
We visited an older lady who is a convert from Ukraine. She cooked us a traditional Ukrainian soup with garlic rolls. She was really really nice and told us her really powerful conversion story.
We visited a really really old lady who looked like she was over 100 years old lol. Her hair was just patches and her eye sockets were so sunk it looked like a skull. This may sound mean but I am only saying this to praise her because she is that old but she talks with all her neighbors about the gospel and also went up and bore her testimony in church this week.
Our last visit of the week was dinner with another family who had a teenage boy that it was good to talk with. The most interesting thing from this visit though was that my companion broke one of the glass cups literally less than 10 seconds into dinner lol.
Besides the member visits we didn't have a lot else. We did have an interesting lesson with our friend Angeliné (lady from Africa we met on the bus last week) and her daughter Emily who lives in Norway. Despite the weird lesson they came with us to a member dinner the next day and also came to church on Sunday so that was good. It just puts a smile on my face to be around Angeliné and she always answers our phone calls by enthusiastically saying "Hejjj mina vänner!!" (Hello my friends!) She is the lady with the glasses in the picture included.
We had a few others lessons besides her. One with a guy named Richard who has explored a lot of religions but wants to know how to find out if a single one is true, one crazy lady named Puck that we will not be going back to because she said she doesn't plan on becoming a member in the first 5 minutes (we'll probably go back for service), and a dude named Claes who wanted to go on a walk in the freezing cold for the lesson because his wife isn't religious (only lasted about 10 minutes and didn't get to teach anything).
That was basically it for the week. Sorry for the more boring email, I've been trying to make them more interesting but not a lot of crazy interesting stuff happens to us throughout the week usually besides regular missionary work.
As for the spiritual thought, a scripture that really stood out to me in my studies this week was Matthew 16:25-26 "25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. 26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Something about this scripture is just really powerful to me. It just gives me peace and motivation to keep moving forward, even when the majority of the world doesn't agree with the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is so true that as we give our lives to Jesus Christ, that is when we find them. That is when we experience satisfaction, joy, peace, and comfort, even in the difficult times. I think this quote from Elder Holland in his talk "Lifted Up upon the Cross" goes together with this. "To be a follower of Jesus Christ, one must sometimes carry a burden—your own or someone else's—and go where sacrifice is required and suffering is inevitable. A true Christian cannot follow the Master only in those matters with which he or she agrees. No. We follow Him everywhere, including, if necessary, into arenas filled with tears and trouble, where sometimes we may stand very much alone." Being a follower of Jesus Christ is not always the easiest thing, and not always the most popular thing, but it is the right thing to do. And as we devote our time, efforts, and even our lives to Him, we truly will "find" so much more in return.
Have a great week🙏
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