Jakobsberg Week 28 - August 27, 2018

Hello!

We had zone conference on Tuesday! It was a great training, so many great things were talked about and discussed and I felt like each one was directed to me! One of the focuses this transfer will be the Restoration, and President Youngberg had part of the zone conference be about the Prophet Joseph Smith and his role in the restoration of Jesus Christ's original church. I feel like my testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet has really been strengthened the past few months!! One thing I have been doing that has strengthened that testimony is reading from the new book being published by the Church called Saints. There has been a new chapter from the book in the Liahona each month, and I have loved reading the story of the restoration in the way presented by the new book. It is incredible! I encourage you all to go through it, you can learn more and read it on this link. 

Elder Gordon came to Jakobsberg for splits! It was great to be together again. One cool thing that happened was that on the last house we knocked at the end of the day on Tuesday, we had a super good conversation with a man and his daughter and they said that we could come back sometime! We also got to eat dinner at Ikea with Antonio and Alejandra, it felt just like the good ole days! 

One success story from this week happened as we taught Nathalie, one of the people we teach. We had given her a Plan of Salvation pamphlet at the end of our last lesson, and this time as we were asking her about what she thought about it she mentioned that some of the parts of the plan really made sense to her. That was cool to hear. We showed her one of the Mormon messages, "The Hope of God's Light,"  (see it here) and she was amazed by it. She was able to relate to the man in the story, she had similar questions and thoughts as he did. Nathalie came to church for the third time in a row yesterday, we keep praying that she will continue to progress and that we can do what we need to do to help her with that!

Hello Family!

First of all, how are two of my siblings Cougars???? I am so happy for Ben and Emma! I hope that they have a great week.

Mark and Tommy currently live in our area, but because they are moving to a new house they will be getting baptized in the Västerås branch this week. Elder Barney and I are really happy for them, they seemed to get along really well with the branch in Västerås. We only ever taught them the one time over Skype, it was mostly the Skövde elders who taught them. President asked me to interview them to be baptized, though, and I did that on Thursday. They are both so prepared for the Gospel! We should have gotten a picture at the interview. I thought that we would be able to get one at the baptism, but we don't have permission to go /: Västerås isn't in our area, plus the sister's friend Sandra is also getting baptized on Saturday. We will definitly see them again, though, they said that they wanted to go to lunch with Elder Barney and I, so we can get a picture then.

Nathalie is doing pretty well, she has come to church for the past 3 weeks and we have met her about 7 times. She is learning slowly, and every lesson she says something that makes me think that she really is prepared. Last lesson, she mentioned that there were a lot of things in the Plan of Salvation pamplet that she really liked. She has also mentioned before that she feels a draw to the church. 

Elder Barney is awesome. We probably talked a total of 2 times at the MTC, I was unsure of what to think when we became companions but the past month has really been great.  I love him a ton! As district leader, I do manage splits. But the only people we go on splits with are the assistants. They go on splits with zone leaders and Jakobsberg elders :) We have district council each week on Thursday.  I am constantly praying about what to have the topic of the council be. I usually call once a week to each companionship, moslty to discern needs. Numbers are reported through the app, so my only responsibility there is to make sure that everyone's actual numbers match those within the app.

I loved getting the email about the cruise! We are able to read emails whenever we receive them so it was fun to hear all about it. Grandpa and Grandma must have been shocked! I am so happy that you saw the Northern Lights! I also loved the quote about being as happy as kings, we really do have incredibly blessed lives!

Have a great first week of another year of school! Seeing the picture of all of us lined up in front of the Hunsaker Homestead made me cry... Why do we all have to grow up?? 

Love,

Sam

Äldste Francis

It has been a little rainy this week, see the rainbow below!