This week has been kind of crazy, but also really fun. Last Monday we went winter clothes shopping. I couldn´t decide on a winter coat yet, but I got some scarves and a hat and a shirt from H&M, which is a Swedish company. When me and the other elders got home, we put on some of our new stuff and realized we looked like hipsters, so we took some pictures, haha. I also got this super warm, but cheesy looking sweater from a second hand store. That night me and Elder Stafford taught one of our investigators, and he wants to be baptized! He will be baptized on January 3rd, but we are hoping he will be willing to move it up, since he is almost ready right now. He had to quit coffee and snus (snus is like chewing tobacco but comes in packets and is more addictive I think). So we have been working with him on that. We made a plan with him and asked him to get down to just a little a day by Friday, but he just went and threw out the last of his snus and has been going cold turkey the last 5 days! He is awesome.
Also this week we taught one of our investigators who is from Uritria, which is in Africa I think. She is Christian and has always been saying how the things we tell her are exactly what her church believes, so we went into this lesson with the goal of helping her see this church is the only true church, and help her see it´s different. So we watched the Restoration video with her, which basically goes over Joseph Smith´s first vision and a little about the early church. So afterwards our investigator was confused about how only two personages appeared to Joseph Smith, so we got into a discussion about the trinity, which led to how the Bible is imperfect. She showed us a verse to prove the trinity, and we noticed there was a Joseph Smith Translation there, so we were just like "actually, we believe that part is translated wrong". She was very surprised. She knew the bible wasn´t 100% translated right, but she said this verse had to be right. It was a strange lesson. We are glad she sees that her church is not exactly the same, but it is sad that it happened that way. So hopefully she will want to keep meeting with us and read the Book of Mormon.
This week I did some more roof work! First a man in the ward needed help working on the chimney of a house he´s fixing up. We had been at open church, so we were in church clothes. So he gave us some work jumpsuits and hats and shoes to wear over our church clothes. It was kind of funny, so we took pictures. Then on Saturday we helped finish part of a roof we worked on a couple weeks ago. But we were just helping lift up metal sheeting to go on the roof, so it wasn´t too hard or anything.
This week was general conference! We watched the Saturday Morning session at 6 o´clock at night, which was a little weird. Me and two of the other elders went out to a candy store earlier where you can shovel candy into a bag and you pay based on the weight of the bag. It was cheaper to get 2 kilos than to get just under 2 kilos, so we each had a 2 kilo bag of candy. I´m not sure how many pounds that it, but it´s at least 4, haha. So we had lots of godis (Swedish word for candy) for conference. Sunday morning we watched Priesthood session at 11, Saturday Afternoon at 2, and Sunday Morning at 6. We have to wait to watch Sunday Afternoon when it is online and when we have time. Luckily I got to watch almost all of conference in English. We had a little TV in the cultural hall for english speakers. One of our investigators came for Priesthood session, but his taxi was late so I watched the first part of Saturday afternoon with him in Swedish. I fell asleep during the second talk, haha. My swedish still has a ways to go.
One of my favorite talks was in Saturday Morning session, about knowing which way we face. We need to maintain the standards set by God, and not try to change them just because they go against what man thinks standards should be. The world today tries to tell us that we are wrong because we do not have the same morals and views as them, but that is not right. We can know that we are always right when we are looking towards God instead of the world.
I hope everyone has a great week!
Elder Smith
Pictures:
1) I think I look weird here but I have to show the sweater. Also, I got that infinity scarf(I think that´s what they´re called), but it is too short to wrap around twice and too long to be warm wrapped around once. So now it is just for show, haha.
2) Funny clothes funny faces
3) The leaves are yellow!
4) hipster clothes funny faces
5) Me on the roof with funny clothes
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