What's up everybody, hope you all had a good week.
This week was pretty busy for me, so I'll talk about the most notable things that happened that were good.
The lady that we door knocked from Iran who came to church 5 weeks in a row always tells us that she is busy during the week so to try and be able to teach her we just went and tried to knock her door on Tuesday. She wasn't there but her son (around 20) answered the door and he let us in and we were able to have a good conversation with him and read from the Book of Mormon. Last time we met with him and his mom together he kind of made it seem like it was more his mom that was interested but he told us on Tuesday that he wants to become Christian as well and that it was good we came and started the Book of Mormon with him so that it is less daunting for him to get started reading.
On Friday we met with this Swedish (!) guy Johannes who I met in town last week and gave him a Book of Mormon. He told us that for most of his life he hasn't believed in God but a couple years back he had a spiritual experience where he was at a really depressed stage in his life and he prayed and then just saw a super bright light in front of him that was just radiating towards him. And that there was movement behind the light but he couldn't make out what it was because it was so bright. And since then he has believed in God. So naturally he was pretty open to our message, especially with his experience being pretty similar to what Joseph Smith experienced. It was one of the better lessons I have had teaching the Restoration through Joseph Smith, everything seemed to be pretty clear for this guy so that was good.
After Johannes, we had a lesson with this Ethiopian guy Efrem who I also met and gave a Book of Mormon to last week. He doesn't speak very good Swedish or English so I just pulled up the outline of all the basic principles of the Restoration lesson in our missionary book but in his language Ahmaric and then copied and pasted it and had him read it during the lesson. He said he had many questions but couldn't express in Swedish so would write questions later and send them to us. I pulled out google translate and let him speak into it and he just said "It is very different" and that he would write up the questions later. It's hard with the language barrier for sure.
That night we went and visited this couple from Peru that some sister missionaries met in Stockholm but they live in our area. They only spoke Spanish so we brought one of our members with us that spoke Spanish. It ended up being mostly them talking, telling us about all their spiritual experiences in life. They were really really nice and it was interesting to hear for sure. They have had problems with other churches and seem excited to try our church.
We always have a bunch of lessons planned for Saturday and most of the time almost all of them get canceled the day of or the people just don't show up. This week was no different but 2 of the lessons we had planned did still happen and they were both pretty good.
One of them was with 2 older Syrian guys that we had a lesson with a few weeks ago. One has lived in Sweden for like 30+ years (Afram) so can speak decent Swedish and the other one (Jobram) is new in Sweden so Afram just translates for him the whole time. Last time we taught them we didn't really get a chance to explain what was unique about our church, so this time we made it a point to talk about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Right when we talked about Joseph Smith restoring Christ's church and authority, before we even mentioned his experience praying in the forest, Afram just pointed at Joseph's picture in the Book of Mormon and started going on about how he was a prophet and was doing the right thing in bringing back Christ's church. I don't know if I've mentioned that the city I'm in has many Syrians who are all Orthodox Christian, and very strong in their faith in a way that is borderline aggressive haha. But Afram left the Orthodox church a couple years ago because he thought there was things they practice that don't match with what is taught in the Bible, so that's part of the reason why he thought Joseph Smith was so awesome because he restored Jesus Christ's church rather than making his own. Also he is literally the nicest guy every just always smiling and being super nice and super positive so that lesson was definitely a highlight of the week.
I know it may be boring for some of you that my emails are mainly going through the good lessons that I had the most of the time, but the reality is that the majority of what we do is teaching lessons or we are out on the street talking to people, so for me the most significant things happening is when there is positive reactions to the gospel during lessons, as most of the interactions on the street are pretty surface level.
That being said, some of my favorite moments as a missionary are just sitting and talking with a random person that I have literally just met and hearing about their life experience. These past couple weeks and this past week especially I have been feeling a lot more love for the people here in Sweden, so it just brings me a lot of joy to connect with them in any way I can even if it is in small ways.
Same thing with the members here as well. It's not very often, but getting to just sit and talk with a member in a genuine way also brings me great joy. We had a missionary in the ward that I am serving in come home this week, so there was an open house at his house for the ward to come and welcome him home. I got to talk to him about his mission which was great, and I also got to talk with a member that got baptized only a few years ago, about his conversion story and what the gospel means for him in his life. It is always interesting to hear different perspectives for what the main factors were that made someone want to get baptized, but no matter who it is there is always an expression of gratitude for how the gospel has positively changed their life.
Another conversation like this I had was on Sunday with a different member named Daniel. He is a man in his 50s from Ghana who got baptized when he was 23. He has been in Sweden some years but his wife and 3 kids are all back in Ghana as he is working trying to be able to get them here. I asked him if he calls them every week and he replied baffled "of course, I call them every day, sometimes more than once a day". He said that when he gets paid he pays his apartment bills and buys food and the rest of his money he sends to Ghana to support his family. If all this wasn't challenging enough, his 27 year old son passed away only a couple of months ago. Yet if you talked to him you would never be able to tell that he is going through all of these things by the way he acts and treats other people. He can't speak much Swedish, so although he has been a bishop when living in Italy, his calling is simply to prepare the sacrament and find people to bless it, and pass it out every week. Though this may seem something small, he takes his calling very seriously, and always comes up to me as he is trying to find people to bless the sacrament and says "Elduh, prepare yoself" hahaha. He is one of my favorite people I have met here.
When we were sitting talking after church he was just emphasizing how important the gospel is. Despite all the work he does, he is still able to sit there and emphasize to me the importance of daily scripture study, saying that some days he will fall asleep with his glasses on reading the scriptures. He was also emphasizing how life changing the gospel is. Saying that it changes everything in life, not just spiritually, but every aspect of life is improved. Our friend Afram was giving similar comments in our lesson. When we were talking about Jesus he just kept saying "Hallelujah!" and then said something along the lines of "Jesus is everything. Life without Jesus is nothing." Though these comments from these men may seem simple, to me that had a deep impact and had me just pondering how important and beneficial Jesus Christ and His gospel are in our lives. He really does change every part of our lives for the better, and I, with Afram, can say that my life without Jesus would be nothing. I'm sure I've shared this quote from President Ezra Taft Benson in and email before, but I will use it again because it is true and applicable. "Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, … lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace." Jesus Christ lives! He is always the answer.
Have a great week🙌
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