Sorry, no pictures this week. We didn't really do too much that was new and picture worthy, haha. But it was an awesome week. Last Thursday for TRC (where we teach member volunteers), I taught a woman named Sister Smith, who is originally from Lakeridge! It was really cool to talk to her about the ward. I think she has not lived there for a while though. She was super nice and told us all about her mission. She served when there were only 88 missionaries in Sweden, and only 6 were sisters. She also told us a lot about getting used to the language and stuff.
Something exciting this week was that I finished reading the dictionary!! Haha. I went through and wrote down all the words I wanted to know, within reason. So, now I have a list of 1,480 vocab words. When I finished I thought "what will I do with my time now?", so now I am going back through and writing down which verb and noun conjugation groups they go to. So now everyone thinks I understand Swedish, but I still don't, haha. But I learned a lot of interesting words.
Either today or tomorrow my district gets our travel plans! I am super excited to find out what our flight will be, whether we will all be on the same flights, etc. I had a funny dream where everyone got to leave at around 5 in the morning, but I had to wait til 2 for my flight and I got really anxious to go. But that won't happen in real life. Another exciting thing that happened was that Aldste Heiner and I finished our weight loss challenge. We started last Saturday and finished this Saturday. Aldste Heiner lost 6 pounds, and I lost 5. But I wasn't as dedicated to eating only salads as he was, so most people have agreed that I won in reality, haha. When we did the final weigh-in we took off our watches, CTR rings, meal cards, and name tags (just for a second), haha.
For Sunday devotional we had Jenny Oaks Baker, who is Elder Oaks' daughter, and is a super good violin player. She and her kids played a bunch of songs in between experiences that she shared from her life of how she learned to listen to the Holy Ghost and find answers in the scriptures to present day challenges she had. So that was pretty cool. And last night for devotional we had Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson, who is the General Young Women's President. She and her husband have served as Temple President and Wife for the Stockholm Sweden Temple, and possibly as the Mission President and Wife for the Sweden Stockholm Mission (I don't remember if that's what she said for sure, but they were at least the Temple President and Wife). So she asked all the Swedish Missionaries to stand up, so that was kind of cool. She shared a ton of mission experiences of her children and their spouses. They have all served missions in really cool places, like Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, Italy, and stuff like that. It was probably my favorite devotional, besides the one from John H. Groberg.
Something else cool this week was that we looked up some of our family history during free time. Me and Aldste Heiner found out we are both related to Sister Allred through our Allred lines to a man born in 1788, so that was cool. Also Aldste Heiner is related to Aldste Hemmingsen through an ancestor even earlier than that. Aldste Heiner was able to find a line that went back to Adam, so that was cool to see. And I found a lot of French and some Roman/Italian on the Smith side of our family that I didn't know about before, so that was pretty fun to learn about.
It has rained a few times here the last few days, but it isn't too bad. For gym time everyday we have been playing volleyball with almost the whole district, which is fun. This week me and Aldste Heiner were teaching a lesson to an investigator named Johannes, and it was very hard for us. He is very busy with work, and we haven't been able to figure out how to show very well how important scripture study and prayer are for us. He believes a lot in Christ, so we have been trying to focus on how God the Father is the most important, but that Christ is also extremely important to us. It has just been hard for us to bring the Spirit too. So we taught him the Plan of Salvation, then asked if he would be baptized. He said sure, so we told him we would help him prepare to be baptized. We invited him to come to church, and explained that this is important to show God we are following Him and trying to follow His commandments, but he said he has work so we attempted to help him know that through prayer he can find a way to come. But it was weird. After the lesson we both just didn't feel good about it, even though he is going to work towards baptism. Afterwards our teacher took us aside and tried to help us out. Also our lesson in class that day was about having the Holy Ghost in lessons and helping the investigator be converted through the Holy Ghost. So that was a very good learning experience for me, and has helped me strive more to have the Holy Ghost in lessons.
I hope you all have a great week! Thank you to everyone that has sent me letters!
---Aldste Smith
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