Hej,
Hope everyone is doing well.
Pretty uneventful week for me. Here is a rundown.
Tuesday and Wednesday was just spent saying goodbye to people in Linköping like it usually is when a missionary leaves an area. We met with a few members, the most notable being our new member from Congo who made us fufu, fumbwa, and fish (Congolese food) that was super good. Linköping is a cool city but unfortunately I don't feel that I made any strong connections being there only 6 weeks unfortunately.
Tuesday and Wednesday night was spent packing up all of my stuff for the 4th time already. Let's just say I was sick of packing the first time I moved🙃. My bags basically have no room to spare so travel day on Thursday I had to wear a fleece jacket as well as two coats in 70 degree weather. One of my suitcases also broke so I had to drag it on the cement for like half of the journey. Unpleasant but did the best I could haha.
Another thing that happened on Tuesday night was a random lady walking around in our apartment at 3:30 am😃. I slept through most of it but woke up as she was walking out by my companion said he just woke up and saw someone walking around with a flashlight and then just got up and asked her what she was doing and she claimed that she was just trying to find her friends apartment but walked into the wrong one. Not sure why she would be doing that in the middle of the night but made for an interesting experience haha. And yes we normally lock our door it just happened to be on the one night we forgot.
I kind of mentioned this last week but my new area is one of the smallest in our mission and I learned this week actually the second smallest in the entire Northern Europe Area of missions. The only one smaller is the one right next to our area but the thing is that our area is like ⅔ natural forests so with the places we can actually work with ours is by far the smallest. And what that means for missionary work is that there is basically no sort of city center or square that we can go to talk to people, besides this little area next to some apartment buildings where there is people walking here and there. There is a tiny mall with like one strip of stores that takes like 2 minutes to walk from one end to the other but that is also not technically in our area either. There also isn't really anyone promising that we are actively teaching right now so we are kind of just doing the best we can with our area. Trying to talk to people on the bus, a little bit of door knocking, and talking to whoever we can in those smaller areas I talked about. We did have a miracle already though with that. I met a girl in the mall on Friday and she said her family has been looking for a church to go to. They just moved to the area at the end of last year and haven't found anything yet. Apparently they got invited to church by some sister missionaries a couple of months ago and tried to come to church but ended up getting lost. They ended up coming to church this Sunday which was awesome. We haven't taught them anything yet so I was sure they were probably confused about the talk about the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and prophets during church, but when I asked if they had any questions they just asked if it is the same time next week haha. The mom said that she felt the presence of God during the meeting so I think they enjoyed it. Just the mom and the teenage daughter came this week but I think they are planning on bringing the younger children next week. (They technically don't even live in our area but since it is rough to find people in our area we are starting to work with the elders in the area next to us to kind of work together so we will thankfully be able to teach this family).
Other than doing what I described above we just had a few other random things that we did. A few member meals, a primary activity (a race by a lake), and a language cafe at the library where we painted. Needless to say things are going pretty slow so far but like I said before we are just doing the best we can haha.
Don't really feel up to writing a spiritual thought this week so I will keep it simple. I'm sure many of you you are familiar with 2Nephi 28:30 " For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have." This scripture is talking about our wisdom and reception of the word of God, how it won't come all at once but the Lord will give us a little at a time. However I was thinking of this scripture in a different way, in that our progression or improvement in life comes in the same way. Which I think we all already know. But I can say that I've been getting a bit frustrated the past couple weeks that I have been on my mission for 10 months and still struggle with feeling joy and satisfaction. But of course if I look back I have improved immensely from the beginning of my mission. So we really all have a choice to feel like we aren't improving and being frustrated or mad about it, or we can look back at how much the Lord has gradually helped us improve and blessed us. The Lord has greatly blessed us all and really does help us improve gradually as we go through life and learn from our mistakes and trials.
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