Hejsan,
Hope you all doing well. Another busy week for me, here's a recap:
Like I mentioned in my email last week we took a boat to an island (Gotland) to spend a couple days with some other missionaries. It is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Sweden, so it was really cool to be able to go there. We got to go around and see some cool rocks by the ocean and then we walked around the main city on the island called Visby, where there is a castle, a bunch of old church ruins, and the streets are all cobblestone. It was probably my favorite pday of my mission so far.
As far as missionary work goes, life on Gotland isn't too great, they don't see much success in their work there. So besides sightseeing most of our time was spent door knocking or talking to people on the streets when we were there.
On Thursday we were back with those people in the forest and helped them chop some wood. That night we had a member meal with some other members where they fed us a classic Swedish dish that is eaten mostly in Norrland (the north of Sweden). It is called palt. It is potatoes mixed with flour that turns into almost like a play dough texture, served with butter, ligon berry jam, and diced pork and a glass of milk. Picture included. Sorry if you don't care about Swedish food but anytime I get letters from home people ask about the food.
On Friday our car was at the shop getting serviced so we had to take an hour bus ride to the city for a lesson we were going to have. Right when we arrived outside of the man's apartment, he texted us saying he couldn't meet anymore, so we had basically traveled all the way there for nothing. My companion suggested we door knock in the area even though it was noon, so we started knocking some apartments. On the second door we knocked the man who lived there swung open the door and told us to come in before we even said anything (never happens here). He proceeded to show us around his apartment, pointing out all of the crosses and pictures of Jesus he had up, and then we sat down and he told us about certain Bible chapters he has memorized that he recites every day when he prays for 5 hours. After he talked for a good amount of time it went quiet so I asked him if he had heard of the Book of Mormon. He just put his head in his hands and started shaking his head, and then got all mad saying that our church is the worst Christian church of them all, that we are even worse than Jehovah's Witnesses, and that he won't talk to us until we put crosses on our church. We tried to explain a bit but then he just kept interrupting so I told him we could just leave and he said sure. Interesting experience for sure haha.
Friday and Saturday we had quite a few other lessons, but I won't talk about them all because most of them weren't that interesting. But one of them was with our friend Christos (Greek guy who is basically a member but can't get baptized yet for a few reasons) while eating Greek gyros for lunch. He is such an awesome guy, and we even encouraged him to bear his testimony on Sunday, which he did for the first time ever. It was so inspirational, I couldn't stop smiling.
We also had another lesson with Michel (Iraq, funny) where we answered more questions from his reading and then had a really deep lesson about temples and many other things that stem from that. He is continuing to do great.
Probably the best thing that happened this week though started on Tuesday when we were on the 4 hour boat ride back from Gotland. The boat is like as big as a cruise ship so there are restaurants on it and stuff, so me and my companion got up to get dinner a couple hours into the ride. My companion ordered a sandwich that had to get warmed up in the oven, and we were the only ones there at the specific cafe he ordered it from. The woman working seemed to be staring at our badges and eventually asked about them, so we got into a conversation and figured out she has recently become Christian, and that she lives in our same city. Which is very unlikely considering Gotland is one of the biggest tourist destinations and not close to our city (which doesn't have too many people). So the fact that she lives in our same city is crazy. Anyways she ended up coming to church on Sunday and we had a lesson with her after church where she told us her crazy story of becoming a believer. It would take too long to explain but basically God has repeatedly shown her a lot of different signs as she has been increasing in her faith. After the lesson she came with us to our member meal that we had right after, where we got to answer a lot more of her questions and get to know her better. Her name is Donia and she is from Syria. Was definitely a miracle the way that we met her.
Besides her we also had quite a few other friends come to church as well, including a lady with a 5 year old boy who was crawling all over me during the meeting and running around the chapel haha. It was a great Sunday though overall.
Almost forgot to mention as well that transfers will be this coming week. I will be staying in this area and getting a greenie (new missionary straight from the states). I don't know which one yet though, they assign them on Thursday after they have met them all.
This week I was having a conversation with some other missionaries and I was telling them that I feel like often missionaries seem to forget about really important aspects of missionary work, just because those aspects aren't the ones that directly generate "success", or don't produce results that will make them look better in other people's eyes. Going along with what I said last week, this is definitely a form of pride, but when I was having this conversation I thought about something Elder Uchtdorf said in a talk that I had listened to earlier in the week, where he was actually quoting Albert Einstein. He said "many of the things you can count, do not count. Many of the things you cannot count, really do count." I think the quote speaks for itself but this is something that I have thought a lot about my whole mission and I think the quote sums it up perfectly. There is a lot of things in life that we can't measure or count, that are still of great importance and meaning. Though our intentions and desires can't be seen by other people, they are seen and understood by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Elder Uchtdorf continued - "My dear friends, if Jesus Christ were to sit down with us and ask for an accounting of our stewardship, I am not sure He would focus much on programs and statistics. What the Savior would want to know is the condition of our heart. He would want to know how we love and minister to those in our care…the Savior would want to know how you and I grow closer to Him and to our Heavenly Father." It is important for us to think about our own intentions for the things that we do, as it can be easy for us all to begin going through the motions in all aspects of our lives without actually doing things for the right reasons. Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want to see us loving and serving other people. That comes before anything. Our love for God and others should motivate everything we do, rather than being motivated by how other people will praise or condemn our actions.
1 Samuel 16:7 - "...for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."
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