Vaxjo again!

Hi Everyone!

  Things have been going well here in Växjö! This week hasn't been quite as busy as last week (or the week before), which has been kind of nice. No conferences in Malmö or other meetings three hours away. We did have district meeting which took a few hours to get to because it was in Karlskrona (which is a really cool city), but nothing quite as far away. Although this next week we have a zone conference in Malmö, so we'll be heading down again, but then it should settle down again.

  Things are going good but it hasn't been too exciting. Earlier in the week we met with M, who's one of our investigators. She's really very positive, it looks like she's had almost all of the lessons and she has a baptismal date for early-ish next month (the 8th), which is pretty exciting. And she seems genuinely excited for it, and just sort of generally engaged in trying to live the Gospel. She came to church and institute this week. And she seems like a pretty cool person; she's from Bosnia (I think?) and she's pretty into games and such.

  Aside from that... We did have district meeting on Thursday, which focused on prayer, followed by institute that evening. I thought that J, the institute teacher, really did a good job with the lesson, which focused on setting a good example as leaders. It was all in all an enjoyable day.

  In other news, on Sunday I had the great chance to a) meet with all of the members in the ward and everything and b) talk in sacrament meeting. I was asked to give a talk on willingness. I sort of talked about agency and sacrifice and how we can follow the Saviors example. It was nice being able to meet the old branch members as well as some of the newer ones. The branch is largely the same, but right before I left a family moved in, and I had a chance to talk with them some (at least the kids), which was fun. They invited us over for dinner on Wednesday.

  I hope everything is going well back home!

Many Meetings

Hi Everyone!

  So the last week has been kind of crazy / busy. But it's all been good. I guess that my last couple days in Hägersten were all in all pretty good, but a lot of it felt kind of busy. We just had a lot of ends to tie up to get ready to double out of the area, like writing transfer reports and cleaning the apartment, and such. And then on Wednesday I took a train down to Växjö. We were just kind of busy trying to get everything together.

 Since I have gotten here we've actually been pretty busy with a variety of conferences and meetings and whatnot. On Wednesday evening we met and had dinner with the D's, the senior couple here. They're really nice, and really funny people. They seem cool. On Thursday we headed down to Malmö for a zone training meeting (the zone now is pretty much all of southern Sweden (not the southern half, but a good chunk of it), so it was a pretty far away and there were a lot of people there). It went well, the zone leaders had some good thoughts about kind of keeping everything balanced in the missionary work.

  On Friday we had open church and did some contacting, which isn't too exciting. But we also met some of the branch members, which was kind of funny, because most of them remembered me, but maybe had some trouble placing me at first.

  And then on Saturday we packed back up and went back down to Malmö for Stake Conference, which took the rest of the weekend. We attended the Saturday session, stayed the night with the Zone Leaders in Malmö, and then had the Sunday session in Lund, with interviews with President Beckstrand afterward. All in all I liked the meetings. We had a area authority speak, and he made some good points. One thing that I took from it was that we should try to help people embrace the gospel, but we should do it lovingly and understandingly, and try to help them out of a genuine desire to help them. I liked it.

  Anyways, that's pretty much the week. It's been kind of busy, but it's been good.

  Hope everything's good with you guys!

Transfers v15.0

Hi Everybody!

  So this week has been kind of interesting. First and foremost is this week we'll be having transfers. As it turns out, Elder B will be training a greenie and will head over to Göteborg, and I'll be heading back down to Växjö, and our place is being taken by Elder F and someone he'll be training. I think that a lot of areas in the mission are doubling out and such. So that's all pretty interesting.

  But this week's all in all been good. Last Monday we met up with some other missionaries and ate surströmming (I think I sent pictures from that last week). I ended up eating it in a bit of a larger dose than the first time (just a fillet of fish on a cracker), but it wasn't too bad. It wasn't exactly good, but it wasn't too bad. And then afterwards we went shopping around Stockholm some more. It wasn't all that exciting.

  The rest of the week went well. I think on Wednesday, we went to visit M, one of the ward members, because she was pretty sick and wanted a blessing. She didn't hear us ring the doorbell when we came (she pretty soundly asleep), so we waited for a little while and rang the bell a few more times, and eventually she opened the door. She invited us in, we gave her the blessing, and then afterwards she asked if we could help pick some grapes from a vine in her yard. While we were doing that, she went to lie down some more. And it was good to be able to give her the blessing and serve in that way. We ended up meeting her again quickly on Saturday (to give another blessing because she still wasn't feeling great), and she looked a lot better than she did before, which is good.

  In other news, we've been meeting with a somewhat new investigator named D over the last couple of weeks. We met him on Thursday, and he came to church last Sunday. I've enjoyed meeting with him; he's a nice guy. He tends to ask pretty deep questions (as in thought out and deep doctrine), which have been kind of interesting to try to answer, but he seems to enjoy meeting with us and I think that all in all he likes the message. So it will be interesting to see what happens.

  Anyways, I hope all is going well back home!

Referral Crazy

Hi Everyone!

  This last week has been good. It's been a bit less awkwardly-scheduled than last week, so we've been able to meet a few more people and such. A lot of the people we've been able to teach have been people we talked to on the street, but it's still been really good.

  Last Monday we went in to downtown Stockholm and sort of old-town Stockholm and looked around some of the shops and such. It was pretty cool; there was one store in particular called the SciFi store or something like that (maybe scifi bookstore?) that just had a whole bunch of (unsurprisingly) science fiction and fantasy books, magazines, etc., but also a very impressive collection of board games, roleplaying stuff, etc. It was pretty fun looking around it. And then we also looked some at another store selling a bunch of "viking" souvenirs. It was pretty neat as well; I may head back there. And then we also looked at less interesting things like shoes and suits.

   There hasn't been too much out-of-the ordinary in general, but a few things have been fairly interesting. On Tuesday we went on exchanges with the other Hägersten Elders, and I went with Elder Steen. It was good, we did some contacting and then had open church. In the evening we visited this Palestinian guy and his family. He was super nice and very friendly. He tried to serve us some tea, which was very kind of him, and he seemed a little confused when we had to decline, but we tried to explain why we don't drink tea as best we could with the language barrier. He seemed a bit disappointed. Anyways, we ended up getting home kind of late because the lesson went kind of long (and started later than we meant it to; we missed a train stop on the way there), and then we had to wait for a bunch of trains back to Handen. But it was all in all a good day.

  The rest of the week has gone well. We've done a lot of contacting and actually got a kind of weird number of referrals. I think all in all there were 7 or something like that. They were all from other missionaries who were just having investigators, old investigators, or less actives moving into our area, but we still had a lot of people move in. So far we've contacted two of them, and they've both been pretty positive, so we have our fingers crossed with the others. We'll see what happens.

We'll be watching conference this weekend at Gubbängen or Västerhaninge chapels. I think they're at about noon and four, but I don't really remember. Some weird times. But we'll probably be watching it in English.

  You asked how living by the spirit has kept me safe? I guess you could say living by the spirit and by mission rules and such keeps me safe in a variety of ways. Trying to follow the rules and the guidance of the spirit helps me (and missionaries generally) to avoid situations that could lead to physical or spiritual harm, like bad situations with other people or potentially physically dangerous situations. And then, of course, the spirit can help to warn us of other dangers and tell us things we can do. I don't know if I can think of any specific examples right now, but I'm sure that the spirit and mission rules do help.

  Ward or Branch? I'm in a ward. The building is bigger than most of the other buildings I've been in, though it may still be a tad smaller than typical church buildings in the States. Maybe. It's big for a Swedish church, at any rate, which seem to be smaller than American ones. I'll send some pics as soon as I can, but it's sort of set up in a T shape, with the chapel and gym down one hall with classrooms across from them and then another hall (the top of the 'T') with some more classes and offices.

Miss you guys!

Service!

Hi Everyone!

 This last week has all-in-all been pretty good. Last Monday we went and just did some shopping and looking-around in central Stockholm, which was pretty cool. I had a coupon for a clothing store, so I bought a new suit (which I don't think I actually have pictures of yet, but I will soon!). And  apparently on the day that I bought it they were having a deal where I could buy a shirt for half price with a suit. Maybe it was just some sort of marketing trick, but I did it anyways, so now I have a reasonably nice suit and a pretty nice shirt to wear with it. It's pretty snazzy, I'd say. 

  Anyways, on Tuesday we had the chance to do a service project at the Västerhaninge Temple, which was really cool. We essentially planted flowers in the planters around the temple. It took quite a while, but it ended up looking rather nice. And it was good to be able to do some service and have something different to do. I enjoyed it.

  The week generally continued like normal. Our apartment has a balcony-type thing on the top floor that people can use whenever, so on Wednesday we ended up having district meeting on top of the building. We also have a small grill up there, so we barbecued some hotdogs to eat. It was pretty cool. Probably the coolest place I've had a district meeting, anyways.

  On Saturday we were making our usual morning preparations and studies when we got a call at about 8:30 from the other Elders asking if we could help "move some things" at one of the member family's homes in Huddinge as soon as we could get there. It was kind of funny, but when we finally got out there (at about 9:15 or so), we found out that they wanted some help trimming the hedge at their house. And, after a little while, we were asked if we could help with some other things around the yard. I ended up helping them with their compost pile, which was actually pretty fun. I moved a lot of dirt (and other stuff) around, and then moved a giant pile of dirt on top of that dirt. Pretty cool. It was actually all-in-all a pretty good time, and the family, the L's, are super nice. It was good.

  Anyways, after we were done, we ran home, ran back out to Västerhaninge, had dinner at a member's house (the C's, I think), and then headed to the church there to watch conference! All in all, I really enjoyed the meetings. I really liked a lot of the speakers from the first session. It seems like a lot of people focused on sort of staying true to our testimonies and trying to help the poor and others. I'm sure there were other themes, but those were two that I noticed. All in all, though, I really enjoyed the conference.

  Hope you all have a great week!

 

                                                  View from our rooftop district meeting

                                                   Some sort of outdoor restroom

                                                                       Eli + rocks

                                                Gardens at the Stockholm Temple