What's up everybody,
This week was absolutely full of miracles. I already know this email is about to be pretty long so just a pre-warning lol.
In our mission we focus on 2 specific Preach My Gospel chapters every transfer. This transfer we are focusing on chapter 7 and chapter 8. Chapter 8 is about planning and setting goals. While I am a person who doesn't like goals that much, something we have been focusing on is trying to be more prayerful and specific when we plan for our day. Our efforts in doing this were quickly blessed with a miracle. On Monday night we were planning for our day (we plan our days the night before) and we had put it in about an hour near the end of the day where we would be knocking doors. Parking is really annoying in Sweden so we can't really say we are just going to go to a random apartment complex or neighborhood because it is more likely than not that there will be nowhere for us to park where we won't get ticketed. We have a few apartment complexes we have already knocked at before and we know we can park there, so when we were planning our day we just said we would go and knock there. We thought maybe we should just try and find somewhere else to knock though so that we could mix things up. We both went to google maps on our phones and looked in like a 10 minute vicinity from us for an apartment complex we could knock that also had parking. We didn't find anything so we just decided to call it there and go to our usual spot. As we were about to be done for the night and go eat dinner, my companion said that he thought we should just pray again to confirm our plans with the Lord, if it was what He really wanted us to do the next day (we had already prayed into our daily planning session). I agreed, so we got on our knees and prayed again, asking for an assurance to know what we had planned was right, or guidance for another thing we should do. We sat back down and kinda just sat for a second waiting to see if we felt anything. We technically had 3 minutes left until dinner time, so I just said we would look for 3 more minutes if we could find an apartment complex with parking. Within 30 seconds of going onto google maps I found an apartment complex with acceptable parking. Feeling confident this was what the Lord wanted us to do, we put it in our schedule to knock there the next day. Well, the next day we went there, only to find that all of the apartments had port codes (need a code to get into). But miraculously, like 4 of the apartments in a row that we went into were just cracked open. We knocked all of them but didn't find anyone interested. As we walked out of probably the 4th one, we saw one person in the distance walking on the sidewalk. Right when we saw him, my companion said "well, there's someone for us to talk to". As we approached I asked my companion if he wanted me to talk and he said yes, so I just went up and said we are going around asking people if they are faithful/religious (what we usually say). The guy replied that he was Christian and then I began to try and get to know more about it from there. I asked him how long he had been Christian. After he answered, my companion started speaking before I had the chance to say anything else, and he just said that we are missionaries and asked the guy if he wanted to meet up sometime and talk more. In my head I was thinking "what is he doing??" because it almost always fails if you don't get to know them and have a little conversation first. But to my surprise the guy said "definitivt" (definitely) in a very sure tone. He then proceeded to give us his number so we could schedule a time to meet. We haven't met with him yet but plan to tomorrow. Just so cool to see when we trusted the Lord to plan our day, he led us to someone who was prepared.
The next miracle was honestly even more cool in my opinion. Basically we were knocking doors on Wednesday and we knocked on this one lady's door and we started talking but then she just walked back into her apartment but left the door open. She yelled from the kitchen for us to come in and talk to her in the hallway because she was cooking. Me and my companion didn't know how to react because literally no one invites us in when we knock doors but we went in and we got talking to her about religion. She has a little bit of Christian background but doesn't know much, and even said she didn't know that there was a difference between Christian churches. I explained for her about priesthood authority, the apostasy, and the restoration of priesthood to the earth through prophets, as well as a small explanation of the Book of Mormon. She was nice and listened to everything but at the end just thanked us for coming in to talk. I was a little disappointed she wasn't interested to learn more so I asked if we could come back another time and talk more. She said that we could come back and just knock on the door again if we wanted. Well flash forward to friday, we walk into the mall to go finding but there is like nobody there. My companion says we should just try for a little bit but if it doesn't feel right we can go somewhere else. Before I started approaching people I sat down and said a prayer, and then I got up and just felt like we should leave and go back and visit the same lady. I walked up to my companion and told him that, and he agreed we could leave and visit her but was a little surprised because it had only been a couple days since we met her. As we were walking out to the car though, I remembered that we only had 1 Book of Mormon left, and we had 3 people in the coming two days we needed to give them out to. I told my comp that maybe we should try and find more Book of Mormons instead, but he reminded me that I had the impression to go back to that lady. Anyways we get in the car and pray and ask for guidance, and I get a strong feeling of reassurance that we should go back to this lady and also give out our last Book of Mormon to her even though that would make our problem worse. Well we go back and knock and she wasn't there. I started to get frustrated and question why I would get a prompting to go there if she wasn't going to be home, but then I thought "where is your faith?". We decided to knock the rest of the doors in those apartments and on the second to last door we met a dude who was Christian. We explained the Book of Mormon and asked if he would be interested, and he thought for a second and said no. Normally we would just give up here, but I had a feeling I should keep pushing with this guy, so I gave a simple testimony of the Book of Mormon and promised him that it could change his life, and after that he accepted the book and said we could try and come back another time. I had a good feeling that that specific guy was meant to get that book. The miracle doesn't end there though. We still had our other problem of 0 Book of Mormons left to solve. The only thing is the closest area with other missionaries to us is a 1.5 hour drive and they only had 3 Book of Mormons left. We decided to just start at the church before doing anything else. Well we went in and started looking, and after we found one my companion said we could probably make do with just 1 book, but I replied saying if God wanted us to find more we would. And well we ended up finding 3 Book of Mormons (the exact number we needed) and were able to use them the next couple of days. Another powerful example strengthening my testimony of the Spirit. We trusted God the whole way when we didn't know what to do, and he led us where we needed to go.
The last miracle seems more simple but if you think more you can see God's hands in it. It started off a week ago from Saturday, when we somehow found parking at a new apartment complex. We knocked 1 complex, where there was a guy who said he was busy but we could come back next weekend. After we knocked that one we came to realize all the rest of the apartments around were locked. Well we came back this Saturday to try and follow back up with this guy, but to our disappointment the complex was locked this time. We said a prayer for what we should do next, and I said we would just wait 30 seconds outside to see if someone would come out. After waiting 30 seconds with nothing, we decided to walk a little bit to some apartments that are pretty close by that we knew wouldn't be locked. We start from the top so we went up and knocked the first door with no answer, and as we were about to knock the second we heard somebody come into the apartment building from the bottom, so we waited to see if they would come up to where we were so we weren't just talking to someone else when they came up. A lady came up and we told her we were missionaries giving a message about Jesus Christ. She said that she was Christian too so I asked her if she had heard of our church before, and she said she had heard of it but didn't know much about it. This would normally be a perfect opportunity to tell more, but I followed the spirit and just asked if we come back another time. In a tone just as sure as the other guy we met earlier in the week she said "absolut" (absolutely). I was so shocked but she gave us her number and we are gonna try and go back soon. This one seems simple but if you think about it the fact that the apartment was randomly open the week before just so the guy could tell us to come back next weekend, and then we waited outside for the right amount of time so we could be at the top of the stairs waiting for her. Seems like coincidences, but there's no such thing as coincidences with God 🙂.
Those were the miracles that we had. The rest of the week consisted of member meals (one with a mexican lady that was sooooo good), going to the Dala häst factory here (factory for the Swedish wooden horses), a lot of finding, a few lessons, and a ward talent show where I was basically forced to wear a towel on my head and pretend to be my companions wife lol.
Again I am sorry for the long email!! If you made it to this point I hope it was worth the read and I appreciate you🙏🙏
Have a blessed week❤️
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