Tjena,
Hope you all had a good week and a good New Years Eve. Decent week for me.
First half of the week was just getting the last things in before I left Utby. We had a couple member meals and some other visits to members/people we are teaching. One of the meals was another classic Swedish Christmas meal which consisted of meatballs, potatoes, salmon, purple cabbage, pork, and some dish with potatoes and anchovies that was actually really good. The members in Utby are really really awesome, going to miss them for sure.
Thursday was transfer day so all the missionaries met at the train station in Stockholm like usual so it was good to see everybody. After that me and my new companion drove the 4hr drive up to Borlänge. The drive was during a snow storm so it took a little longer than usual. There is so much snow up here, and it's so much colder than Göteborg. It's been in the low 20s/ high teens so far, but is supposed to drop like 10 more degrees later this week.
My new companion likes to play piano and is an extremely positive guy. Very different from my personality but things are going decent so far. His Swedish is alright, but he has only been out for 2 transfers so he is still learning. I've been having to talk a lot more than I'm used to which should be good for me.
On Friday one of the members called us and asked if we could help with service, so we helped her and her husband take wood from big piles and load it into their trailer. A lot of people use wood/fire to heat their houses in Sweden, so they just have stacks and stacks of wood that they cut during the summer and then use up in the winter.
Saturday was literally just an entire day of finding. Knocking neighborhoods, knocking apartments, talking on the street, talking in the mall, and facebook.
Sunday was church in the new ward. I don't know if I already mentioned this, but the area I am now serving in was closed last transfer because a lot of our missionaries in the mission are newer so many of them had to be trained in a trio, making it so there were less missionaries available to put in other areas. Anyways, the members here are super excited to have missionaries back. One lady even came up and said that she had prayed to God that morning and said "Ok Heavenly Father, it's about time we have missionaries back" 😂. Everyone there was really nice to us. There are probably about 30 people in the ward who come, so a bit smaller. But as one of the members made sure to mention, they are small in size but big in heart. Sunday night the same member who had us do service on Friday, invited us over to celebrate new years with her and her family. This lady has celebrated Christmas with missionaries literally her entire life, but this year she couldn't because the area was closed. It was her first Christmas celebrating without missionaries, so she made sure to invite us for new years. The night was pretty simple, just ate dinner and played some games. We weren't allowed to stay out past our regular time, but could stay up to midnight inside our apartment. We have a little balcony so we just went out and watched all the fireworks.
That's mostly it for the week. Just been doing a lot of contacting and finding since we are both new to the area and it was closed last transfer. The apartment is really nice here and is honestly the only thing keeping spirits up right now.
I feel like I have talked about joy for a lot of my spiritual thoughts but I am going to talk about it again today because it is something that is constantly on my mind. I hear a lot of missionaries say that they feel more joy on their mission than they have ever felt, or return missionaries saying that their mission was the happiest and most joyful time of their life. For me it has not been like that up to this point. There are definitely joyful moments, but I often find myself getting caught up in other things that prevent me from feeling the fullness of joy that the gospel offers. I know I have already quoted this talk before, but "Joy and Spiritual Survival" by President Nelson is a great talk that talks about joy. He explains how our purpose on earth is to have joy. "Life is filled with detours and dead ends, trials and challenges of every kind. Each of us has likely had times when distress, anguish, and despair almost consumed us. Yet we are here to have joy? Yes! The answer is a resounding yes! But how is that possible? And what must we do to claim the joy that Heavenly Father has in store for us? … My dear brothers and sisters, the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives. When the focus of our lives is on God's plan of salvation, Jesus Christ and His gospel, we can feel joy regardless of what is happening—or not happening—in our lives. Joy comes from and because of Him. He is the source of all joy." Joy comes from changing the focus of our lives. There will always be reasons to be angry, sad, or disappointed in life, and there will always be reasons to be happy and joyful. As we choose to change our focus and focus on Jesus Christ instead of the things of the world, we can experience true, lasting joy. President Nelson also explains how we can begin to feel the joy that comes from Jesus Christ. "How, then, can we claim that joy? We can start by "looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith" "in every thought." We can give thanks for Him in our prayers and by keeping covenants we've made with Him and our Heavenly Father. As our Savior becomes more and more real to us and as we plead for His joy to be given to us, our joy will increase." I have come to learn that experiencing joy takes effort! We can't just go through the motions, even if we are doing good things, and expect to just experience joy. I'm not a big person on goals or New Years resolutions, but as I was pondering I was thinking that this year (or at least the next little bit) I am going to focus on joy. I encourage you all to ponder on something you can do this year to draw closer to our Savior, whether it's broad and general like mine, or something small and simple. As we put in effort to draw closer to the Savior, we will experience joy.
Gott nytt år!🎆🎊
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