Tjena,
If I am honest this was one of the worst if not the worst week of my mission so far. It is rough to have 2 new missionaries open up a previously closed area. Even though I whitewashed my last area too, experience doesn't really help me in this situation. I could make a long list of reasons why whitewashing sucks or why this week has been bad but that is just negative so I'll just name the three main reasons this week hasn't been that good (I am sorry if it's still really negative 😂).
First happened last Monday and would have been completely avoidable if we had someone here who had previously lived here. Basically almost every missionary apartment in the mission has like a community laundry room that you can sign up for once a week for like a 3-4 hour slot to do laundry. In my first area it was just a physical calendar we stuck a peg into with our key. In this area we sign up electronically using a fob on our keys and use that same fob to get into the laundry room. What we didn't realize is that after our reserved time slot, the fob does not work to get us into the laundry room (in my first area we usually had a dryer load go past our time slot and just pick up the clothes when it was done). Basically my clothes spent about 10 hours locked in the laundry room on Monday which was pretty stressful for me haha.
Second was we got in a car crash. Don't know how many details I should give because I don't know if everything is legally resolved yet but basically I could not see because the sun was directly in my line of sight as well as the sunlight reflecting off the snow. So I basically could not see at all and you can guess what happened from there. No one was hurt and the cars took pretty minimal damage which is a blessing, but kinda was just another thing on top of everything else.
Third was just that a lot of lessons and people canceled on us so we just spent a lot of time finding (door knocking, talking to people on the street, talking to people in the mall). If you remember in my last area I was spending hours at a time in a giant mall talking to people, which I eventually got the hang of pretty well. The problem for me this week was honestly just finding a desire to talk to people. It's not that I am scared or lazy I just don't really feel it in my heart to talk to people. This just made all of the hour long finding periods we had just kinda drag on. Also it was FREEZING this week, I think the coldest it got was -5 F with a feels like temperature of -17 F. I don't know if any of you have experienced it before but my nose hairs were freezing within 10 seconds of walking outside lol. You know it's cold when the 19 F temperature yesterday felt really really nice.
We were blessed to have a few lessons this week though. Some were pretty crazy and unproductive (people bashing us, and people with very wild claims from the Bible that I won't be getting in to), but some were really good too. One was with a guy named Anders that the missionaries had only taught like 2 times before we came. After just talking with him about his religious background at the start of the lesson and what he thinks about what the missionaries have taught so far, me and my companion were both pretty lost from where to go from there. Then though, the word "förbund" very clearly popped into my head, which is the Swedish word for covenant. My first reaction to that was confusion because he was so new to meeting with the missionaries and I thought it would be too early to talk about baptism and other covenants. But I trusted the prompting and explained what a covenant was to him, and how we can gain a stronger covenant relationship/connection with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ through covenants. After I explained it, he stared down at the table for a good five minutes, and then looked me straight in the eyes and asked me if I could please explain more. We went into a long explanation of covenants, the doctrine of Christ, and then priesthood authority and Joseph Smith. He wanted to know how he could know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God so we read Moroni 10:3-5 with him. He gave some very profound answers to the questions we asked him about those scriptures but unfortunately he said he wanted to feel the calling we were giving him to pray about the Book of Mormon but he couldn't feel it. Was a really good lesson for me though, definitely the most I've been directly led by the spirit in a lesson before.
Other good lesson was with this African lady named Hariet who I gave a Book of Mormon to on like my first day in this area. We talked about the Book of Mormon with her and probably had to say 15+ times that the Book of Mormon and the Bible are not the same book, and I think she understood at least that by the end haha. She is really nice though and said she wants to try and be more spiritual again for her New Years resolution this year so I hope we can help her out.
Considering we had a baptism (of an 8 year old) in church this week, and my conversation about covenants with Anders, I thought to just share a quick quote about covenants (don't have a lot more time to write). Elder Bednar said this on covenants "We take the Savior's yoke upon us as we learn about, worthily receive, and honor sacred covenants and ordinances. We are bound securely to and with the Savior as we faithfully remember and do our best to live in accordance with the obligations we have accepted. And that bond with Him is the source of spiritual strength in every season of our lives." As we enter covenants with God and Jesus Christ, and continue to focus on them, we truly are blessed with spiritual strength and extra help from Jesus Christ in our lives. Even though this week was really hard for me, I felt a renewal of hope and strength as I renewed my covenants with the sacrament on Sunday. Covenants are such a blessing if we focus on keeping them to the best of our imperfect abilities. We don't have to be perfect, we just have to keep trying.
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