Jakobsberg Week 10 - April 23, 2018

Hello again!

I usually bring my journal or planner with me so that I can remember what happened during the week, but I forgot both of those today! It has been a great week and I will share a few experiences that I can remember. 

On one day this week, I got onto a bus and a guy said 'hey missionary! How ya doin!?' It was an investigator that came to church a few times in Boden, and we met in Stockholm! It was good to see him again, there is a picture of us below.

Stake Conference was this week, and the same Area 70 that spoke at the district conference in Umeå when I was there a few months ago came to the Stockholm Stake. He is from France, and he spoke about the necessity of being able to receive personal revelation. The four steps he talked about were to pray, ponder, write down promptings, and then to act. This is similar to President Nelson's message from General Confrerence!

Elder Petersen felt prompted to visit an area that we hadn't been to before. We got there and began knocking on some doors. After the tracting session was coming to an end, we began talking to a lady who was pushing her two daughters in a stroller. It turned out that her husband, who is from Australia, grew up in an LDS family. She accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon in Swedish and even took a picture of me and Elder Petersen to send to her inlaws! It was a cool experience for us because Elder Petersen and I had specifically prayed that we would be able to find a family and had felt prompted to visit that area. 

We will be receiving our smartphones on Thursday! Basically what will change is that we will have 2 Samsungs instead of one iPhone, we will be be allowed to access social media, and we will begin using the phone as an area book and as a daily planner. Hello Facebook!

Have a great week!

Love,

Äldste Francis

Jakobsberg Week 9 - April 16, 2018

Hello!

This week was so cool!

On Tuesday, we visited the Stockholm Sweden Temple! It was amazing! It is in Västerhanige so we just have to get on the train in Kallhäll and ride about an hour. A companionship is allowed to attend if one of the companions has not been in 6 months, so we switched our p day from Monday to Tuesday and visited then. The session was in Norwegian because a stake from Norway was attending, so we listened with headsets to the Swedish translation.  I turned mine off a few times and the Norwegian was super similar to the Swedish. We have some good pictures!

It also happened to be Elder Petersen's 20th birthday on Tuesday! After visiting the temple, we went and had Pizza Hut buffet! It was super good. Grattis på födelsedag, Äldste Petersen!!!

This week has been full of miracles! Here are a few of them:

Elder Craun and I on splits (on the dock outside our house after a morning run)

Jakobsberg Week 8 - April 9, 2018

Hello!

Another good week full of finding and teaching!

One cool experience from this week happened on splits with Elder Harden! We were at the Kallhäll train station and began talking to a man. He got on the train one car ahead of us, so the conversation ended. Elder Harden and I could tell that he was pretty interested, and we knew that he was getting off at Jakobsberg like we were, so we decided to try to find him again when the train stopped. We got off at Jakobsberg and waited inside the station then stopped him as he walked by. In the end, we switched numbers with him and planned to meet the next morning. He, Markus, came the next morning to the planned meeting at the church! We taught him about prayer and asked him to pray before our next meeting, which will be this Wednesday. Elder Harden and I felt like we had seen a little miracle: we had begun talking to someone that became a pretty positive investigator the next day!

Also on splits with Elder Harden, we had dinner at Antonio's house. He is a member in the ward from Chile. He made SO MUCH chicken and potatis gretang. Being a missionary is so fun!

Jakobsberg Week 7 - April 2, 2018

Glad Påsk!

What an amazing weekend! General conference was great, we have seen all of the sessions except for the Sunday Afternoon. But I found out from others about the new 'ministering' and the temple in Layton, Utah! Wow! I really enjoyed listening to our new prophet and I look forward to studying his words and all of the other talks. 

We moved this week and I just thought of Grandpa and Grandma Hunsaker as the apartment couple in Germany the whole time! My job was to pull out the oven and clean where it had stood. I don't think that behind the oven had been cleaned for a few years! Thank you to them for always having a clean home where the Spirit can abide. I sure look up to my grandparents! 

Jakobsberg Week 6 - March 26, 2018

In our new apartment area, Kallhäll, where we will be moving tomorrow

Hello!

Another awesome week.

The snow is melting away here in Stockholm! I have seen green grass twice over the past week, and I almost wore my smaller coat! Våren är här.

Elder Lee is on the right, in the brown coat

I went on splits with Elder Lee, one of President's assistants! He will be going home this week. I learned a ton from the day we had together! Elder Lee is really great at asking questions. As we tracted and contacted, we were able to have some really great conversations. Elder Lee is also super friendly and able to make those he talks to feel comfortable. These are all skills I want to better develop! One family we tracted in to let us in and we had great conversation. The APs went back to the family's house a few days later and the mom committed to come to church! It is always so cool to find people who are willing to 'prova budskapet.'

Jakobsberg Week 5 - March 19, 2018

Hello!

A great week!  

On the bus home from district meeting, a whole class of school kids got on and they were speaking American English! You have no idea how funny it sounds to hear little kids speaking perfect English until you haven't heard it for a while! Anyways, I asked the little girl who sat next to me where they were all from. She said that they were with the international school in Stockholm on their way to go swimming, and she said she was from Colorado! I said that I was from Utah, and she said, "Wow! That's where my grandparents and cousins live!" I somehow knew right away that she was LDS, and I showed her my nametag She got so excited and said, "I go to that church, too!" She goes to a different ward in Stockholm. 

I was on splits AGAIN in the office! There are 3 missionaries there right now, and since Elder Petersen is the district leader he has been taking each one on splits in our area which means that I go to the office! It was fun to be there again and to be part of a tri-pan. Tracting was fun, too, I don't think that most people realized that there was a third person standing behind the door. 

We are moving next week on Tuesday! The contract on our current apartment will run out in a few days. The new apartment will be in Kallhäll, closer to our church. I havn't seen it yet but Elder Petersen and I are both so excited! 

Jakobsberg Week 4 - March 12, 2018

Hello!

This week was rather busy! It started off with a great zone conference in Gubbängen! We learned that our mission will be becoming a "technology mission" which means that each missionary will have their own Samsung phone and we will be able to use apps like Facebook, AreaBook, and others to help with missionary work! Each companionship in the mission shares an iPhone right now, so those will be replaced by the Samsungs. The first half of zone conference was watching training videos on how to use the phones for missionary work. It was by President Bednar and everything he said was absolutly amazing! The work of the Lord is continuing to progress and we will be able to reach so many more people now! Our mission is excited for the change! The new phones will come next zone conference. 

After zone conference, I started splits with one of the zone leaders, Äldste Martineau! He is from Kaysville, too, and loves Davis High. We had a great time talking about teachers, classes, and people that we remembered. We also met a great man from Croatia on the tunnelbana. We talked to him for a long time about families and even passed up our stop so that we could keep talking to im. Hopefully we can meet him again soon!

Thursday was weekly planning! We also met with a man who called us and asked if he could learn more about our church. It was cool to teach him, he already knew a ton from what he had read on the Church's website. He also had some interesting questions that stemmed from his research on non-Church web pages. 

Splits happened again on Saturday! I went to the office to be with Äldste Liljenquist and Äldste Jarmin. The third companon in their trio, Äldste Harper, came to Jakobsberg. It was fun to be in the office and to get some of the "inside knowledge" on the new phones. 

We handed out copies of Mormons Bok at The Book of Mormon Musical again! It was fun for people to realize that we were real missionaries. Elder Petersen and I talked to two ladies that came to Stockholm specifically to see the musical again, they had seen it together in England. One was from France and the other from west Sweden. They were happy to receive the real book and to talk to us about being missionaries! 

Elder Petersen and I got to teach Gospel Principles yesterday at church!. We taught the first lesson, "Our Heavenly Father." It was so great to prepare for the lesson and to ponder on the amazing knowledge that we have a Father in Heaven who loves us, who we can trust, who reveals his will to prophets and to us personally, who is perfect, who does answer prayers, and who wants us to come back to Him someday! I am grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ who makes that possible!

Ha det så jättebra!

Äldste Francis

These library computers are strange... I can't figure out how to send pictures as an attachment but you can open this and see them with Word! Hopefully.