SOCIAL MEDIA

Mission Week 58

Sunday, August 18, 2024

Yo, 


Hope everyone had a nice week. 


Mine was pretty busy. Did the least amount of street contacting and door knocking than probably any other week on my mission, which was nice in a way but those are definitely needed parts of missionary work so it will be good to get back at it this week. 


On Tuesday we had splits (switch companions for a day) again, this week in Handen. If any of you remember the area Vendelsö that I was in before I came to my current area, Handen and Vendelsö are literally right next to each other, share a ward building, and now are sharing the Handen missionaries. So it was nice to go back to a familiar area and see some people that I knew during my time there. 


On Wednesday we had a lesson with Afram and Jobram, the older Syrian guys that I mentioned a couple weeks back. We were finally able to get some Arabic Book of Mormons to give to them, which they were pretty excited about. The lesson was mostly just them asking a bunch of questions about the Book of Mormon, as well as helping them talk to an insurance company on the phone midway through the lesson haha. 


 Thursday morning the Elders who are in charge of Social Media/Technology in the mission texted and asked if they could come to our area and we would go to a cool place to film some videos that the church uses as facebook "ads". Basically just us saying a couple sentences about how the Book of Mormon or church has helped us in our lives and then telling the viewer to reach out if they are interested. It was a bit of a struggle for me to put on a smile and be enthusiastic haha, but besides that it was pretty chill and the place we filmed it at had some really pretty areas (pictures included). 


That night, we had a lesson with Michel, the funny guy from Iraq. Like I mentioned in my email last week our member Philip who just got back from his mission helped Michel get more committed, so the lesson was more of a follow up to see how things had been going. He unfortunately had not done any reading or praying, but after talking to him we helped him realize that it is just about priorities and that in order for him to get the answers he is looking for he needs to actually do these things. It sounds like a negative lesson, but I actually left feeling really positive. Michel is starting to recognize things for himself, especially the positive impact that meeting with us has made on his life. And the increased spirit he felt when he used to actually come to church, read, and pray. He admits that in his mind he wants to rationalize that these positive feelings aren't the spirit, but the more we talked about it the more sure he seemed to be, and he started pointing out things in his life that connected to what we were talking about, which seems small but was a really big step for him and made me happy to see. He came to church again this Sunday as well, which makes 2 weeks in a row after not coming for over 2 months.  


Friday we had 2 hours of helping an older member move, then 2 hours of picking and sorting blueberries with the members that live in the middle of the forest. You can see in the pictures but basically to pick blueberries you use this plastic tool that catches the berries and not a lot of leaves. But if you are imagining bushes just full of blueberries, it was not like that, which made it a little tedious. It was nice to be in nature though and they sent us home with some blueberries as well. That night we went to Stockholm for the game night there because our friend Adriana (Peruvian/American girl) wanted to go. 


Saturday there was a ward barbecue for anyone who wanted to come. It was at this nice place by a lake with some activities in the beginning and then some grilling afterwards. It was pretty nice and there was a pretty good turnout. Adriana came to the barbecue as well in addition to Daniel and Rania, the Peruvian couple who only speaks Spanish. They brought there son also and he (and them) seemed to really enjoy it which was awesome. 


On Sunday someone in the bishopric texted and asked me or my companion to speak in church 10 minutes before we left home so I threw together some thoughts of things that I have been studying/thinking about as of late. I talked about how in our church we focus a lot on the things that are unique, like the Book of Mormon, or the fact that we have a living prophet. Which are amazing wonderful things but in my opinion the most important thing that we have unique in our church is our ability to make covenants with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. President Nelson has talked about covenants a lot but he says pretty simply here what covenants can do for us: "entering into a covenant relationship with God binds us to Him in a way that makes everything about life easier." It's pretty simple. Covenants bring us closer to God, which makes our life easier. But, in order to gain the power from our covenants, we need to actually keep them. I listen to church related podcasts a lot while I am eating or cooking, and I was listening to one this week where the woman says she feels like there is 2 types of members in the church: "covenant makers" and "covenant keepers". How it seems there are a lot of members who enter into covenant through baptism, and then kind of forget about that covenant, or don't really focus on it. When we are baptized, we all covenant to be willing to take upon us Christ's name, always remember Him, keep His commandments, and bear one another burdens that they may be light. All of these things require a conscious effort if we want to fulfill them in a good way. We shouldn't be going through the motions, but rather following President Nelson's counsel to "Cherish and honor your covenants above all other commitments."

Sorry if that seemed like a bunch of spewed thoughts. Simply put, our holy covenants with God are important. Important enough that we should prioritize them and do our best to continually improve in how we keep them. And as we do that, everything about life will be easier. 


Pics (My haircut went a bit wrong so my hair is only slightly longer than a buzz cut. I honestly don't mind it just quite different):



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