Beautiful week! We went running and found a cool trail through a forest close to our house. The municipality we live in, Haninge, is quite close to central Stockholm yet there are forest and nature reserves everywhere. This area was used by the Swedish military for practice exercises, thus much of the forest was left untouched and is still here in Haninge today.
We had our one District Council of the transfer where all three areas come together in person! It is so fun to be with the district. A large part of our council this week was learning more about the #ettLjusförvärlden (#LightTheWorld) initiative from the Church which begins in December. It will be so exciting to participate in and especially helpful in missionary work, there are some really great resources coming out for us to use. After the council, I was on splits with Elder Shwitters! He is from California/Idaho. This is his last transfer here in Sweden. (That is so strange because that means that a previous companion of mine, Elder Petersen, is also leaving in a few short weeks). It was fun to talk to Elder Shwitters and to do missionary work together.
We had a lot of unique experiences this week tracting! In America, children often go "trick-or-treating on the 31st of October, and Sweden has begun to replicate that tradition. Äldste Burns and I were surprised to see trick-or-treaters out not only in the 31st of October but on the 1st and 2nd of November as well. Sweden has taken the tradition and enhanced it! It was fun because many of the people we tracted in to initially believed that the knock on their door was for 🍬🍭godis🍬🍫 but were surprised to see two young adults on their porch ready to talk about the Gospel. We had great conversations and even got a few pieces of candy. We were also pleased to arrive at a house with a bowl of candy sitting on the doorsteps with the "varsågod, ta 2!" sign. Two other interesting experiences from tracting this week included tracting into a member and tracting into the man who took the Google Maps pictures of the Stockholm Sweden Temple. He used his drone to get some great views of Angel Moroni.
We were blessed to have interviews with President Youngberg on Friday! The transferly interview is something that I think most missionaries look forward to, it is such a relief to be able to talk to president and to receive advice, council, and encouragement.
Elder Burns and I had a series of small interactions with people this week that we pray will turn into a few more people to teach! We served a sweet lady named Ingrid at her house by helping her organize some apples into bins. We gave her a copy of Mormons Bok at the beginning of the project and she said she would read! We also had dinner at a member's home and they invited their friend to come with her son and daughter. We had a great conversation with them and then left a message about how the Bible and the Book of Mormon work together to give us a greater perspective, just as our two eyes work together to enhance our 3D vision. We have contact with the friend and hope to teach her soon! We tracted into a cute family last week who we were able to teach on Monday. The mother, Valentina, comes from Ukraine and I was shocked to find out that the father, Jens, grew up in Boden! They have a 4 year old son named Elias. There is an amazing feeling with this family, please pray for them!
Today was the most intense preparation days I've had in a while, Äldste Burns and I saw so many sites in downtown Stockholm! One cool thing we did was take a ferry from Gamla Stan to a point across the bay called Djurparken. Stockholm is beautiful!
I hope that you have all had happy weeks!
Love,
No comments:
Post a Comment