What's up,
Hope everyone is doing well. Pretty good week for me. We were traveling a lot (13 hours of driving plus 5 hours on the train) with only 2 days in Borlänge.
On Tuesday we had splits with the Gubbängen elders, which is one of the areas in Stockholm. So we decided to drive down Sunday night and take the pday in Stockholm because there is basically nothing to do in Borlänge. The pday was awesome to go around Stockholm and see a lot of other missionaries and felt like we got so much done.
For the splits on Tuesday the main thing we did was just teach 3 lessons with 3 very different people. Simply put, one was a drunk guy who basically forced us to let him buy us food, one was a Jewish guy where we respectfully learned about each other's beliefs, and one was a lady who has had a past of some pretty big mistakes and thinks that God hates her and was crying the whole lesson. It was an entertaining variety and made for a pretty good splits. Again just felt good to be in Stockholm.
Wednesday was one of our only 2 days in Borlänge. We drove the hour out to Tommy (quiet guy on baptismal date) and continued to teach him the commandments and lifestyles of the church to prepare him for baptism. Wednesday night we had a member meal with a lady and her son who are from Mexico, and she made us some very good tacos and chocolate cake. I may or may not have thrown up after drinking a cup of soda after having ate way too much food. We stayed and talked with the lady pretty lady and she told us the dark history of everyone in the ward lol.
Thursday we had a tri-zone zone conference because our Area President 70 came and spoke to us. His name is Elder Boom (pronounced Bome) and he is from the Netherlands. He gave a really good presentation and it was good to see a lot of the missionaries that I haven't seen in a while. Only bad part of the day was that we had to wake up at 5 to catch the train.
Friday was basically the same as Wednesday and Saturday we had splits with the elders in Gävle where the most exciting thing was playing innebandy (floor hockey) with some guys from their branch.
The trend of last week with our friends kind of continued this week and we had to drop several more promising people because of inability to contact or loss of interest from them. The most disappointing was probably our friend Liam. Most of you will probably will not remember him but he is a new Christian and we have only taught him twice, and after the first lesson he asked us where he could buy a Book of Mormon and the second lesson (a month later) he told us he had been carrying around the Book of Mormon with him everywhere. Well our calls to him had been going straight to voicemail for a couple weeks and we figured that his phone was broken because our lessons with him were so good. Well when we were on splits we tried to call him from another phone, and when he answered I said "this is the missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ" and he instantly hung up :((. Absolutely no idea what happened but very sad.
This is kind of a random thought for my spiritual thought but here we go. Basically, if you know me and my brother, you know that we love representing the things that we love. Mainly I am talking about with sports teams, always representing our fandom whether it be clothing, in conversation, or a sticker on our car. Being on my mission I have realized that the thing that I am the most proud of about myself is that I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, and that is the first thing that I would want people to know about me. I have thought how it is a little unfortunate that our church doesn't use the cross as a sign of our faith, which means that I will probably not be wearing a cross necklace or putting a cross keychain on my backpack anytime soon. But Elder Boom this week reminded me of the real way that we should show our faith in Jesus Christ. He had a short phrase that he repeated many times: "Become the message". He was referring to us as missionaries, that we need to become the message of Jesus Christ by the way we act and live, rather than just trying to spread it. Of course this is referring to missionary work, but I think it applies to us all. We all should live in a way that represents our faith in Jesus Christ. The people around us should be able to tell that we are a disciple of Jesus Christ by the way that we act and treat people, rather than by something we are wearing. We should all be more empathetic and understanding of other people's circumstances, rather than taking the natural reaction of being quick to judge. Elder Uchtdorf said something along the same lines: "In truth, we 'all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.' We are all in need of mercy. In that last day when we are called to the judgment bar of God, do we not hope that our many imperfections will be forgiven? Do we not yearn to feel the Savior's embrace? It seems only right and proper that we extend to others that which we so earnestly desire for ourselves." So just a little reminder to you all to continue in trying to live in a way that reflects your faith in Jesus Christ. And if you don't have faith in Jesus Christ, trying to live like He did is a pretty good way to live anyways :)
Sidenote: If any of you are wondering (members or nonmembers) why our church does not use the cross as a symbol of our faith, Elder Holland gave a talk titled "Lifted Up upon the Cross" in October 2022 that explains it perfectly. But because I know most of you who are wondering won't read it 🙃 , I will echo what Elder Holland said by saying that though we don't use the cross as a symbol of our faith, we have "deep respect and profound admiration for the faith-filled motives and devoted lives of those who do." ❤️
Have a great week 🙏
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