This week we got three new missionaries in our area, and two of them are just out of the MTC! It is kind of weird to suddenly have other missionaries who are also just learning Swedish. So far all of the new missionaries seem nice and cool. Sister Smith has been out a little over a year, and will be going home the same time as Elder Stafford.
Last P-day wasn´t too exciting, but it was good. Me and the other elders played a game called Settlers of Catan, which is a board game that one of the elders had. So we had a kind of lazy day, which was nice.
This week we had zone training, so on Thursday we took the train up to Umeå. I felt kind of bad for the other missionaries though, especially the greenies. They had a super long day of traveling from the US, then a train ride from Stockholm to our area, then at 6 am the next day they took another train. Plus we took the train home that same night. So they did a ton of traveling in about 4 days in a row.
Zone training went well. Afterwards we all went to a pizza place to get kebab pizza. It´s a pizza that they have in Sweden that is some kind of meat called kebab, no one is sure if it´s a kind of beef or goat meat. Apparently it is the same as schwarma, if anyone has heard of that. But it is famous among missionaries. And everyone says that Norrland doesn´t have any good kebab pizza, but the place we went to was one of the exceptions. So now I am kebaptized, haha.
On Fridays we have an activity that investigators, less actives, or just people from the branch can come to. It is good for inviting investigators to so that they can just have fun and get to know some members. This week we played a game where you put flour in a bowl and turn it upside down on a plate, then take off the bowl, so it make a dome-shaped pile of flour. Then you put a coin on top. Then you take turns cutting a slice of flour away. You cut as close as you can to the coin without letting the flour beneath it collapse. Whoever makes the cut that makes it fall has to pick the coin out of the flour using only their mouth. So it was pretty fun. One time we got very, very close to the coin on all the cuts, so it was like a tower of flour. Everyone got very nervous at that point, haha. I will email some pictures of it if I have them.
I have a funny story to tell from this week. We invited an investigator to come see the church on Friday afternoon so we could give him a tour and explain how church works. So he came, and we showed him around, and we showed him the baptismal font then sat in the chapel to answer any questions he might have. He wanted to know what the font was for, so Elder Stafford found a picture of a baptism and showed him. Then our investigator got very quiet and thoughtful for a couple minutes, and kept saying "jag vet inte". Then he finally said what he was thinking. I was hoping maybe he was feeling the spirit, but actually he thought we wanted him to get baptized right then and there, so he was freaking out a bit. So we did our best to let him know that wasn´t what we were doing, and that baptism is something that is completely up to him, and is something that we would teach him about before he had to choose. He took it pretty well. He accepted a Book of Mormon in Arabic I think, then said he would need a little time to study it and figure out if he was interested, then he went home. So I guess I need to work on explaining stuff a little clearer.
This week I was able to read the talks from Sunday Afternoon session of general conference, since it was too late at night here to watch it live. There were a lot of talks that I really liked. I really liked Elder Bednar´s talk where he talked about he and his wife watching their son to try to help his brother whose arm was hurt. It was a fun talk, but is also very true. Sharing the gospel doesn´t have to be anything big or official. It is easy if you think about how it is just helping a friend to have what we have. I feel very blessed to be a member of the church, and it is great to see how it can help other people´s lives as well.
I hope everyone has a great week!
Elder Smith
Pictures:
1) Contacting with Elder Ogaard before he left to his new area
2) Finding people to contact with Elder Ogaard
3) Contacting with Elder Stafford
4) We found this view behind an apartment building in Sodom. I think it´s some sort of bay that leads to the sea/ocean
5) We couldn´t find a Sodom sign, so this is the next best thing
6) Activity night with the flour game
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