Busy Week: 3/16/15

This was a pretty good week. Last P-day we went to the world´s biggest IKEA and ate meatballs with mashed potatoes. Then we walked around some outlet stores. At the end of P-day we went to do some grocery shopping, but decided to go to McDonalds first to get some dinner. While we were there a woman walked up to us and asked if we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, except she asked it in Spanish. She didn´t speak much English or Swedish, but we found out she is from Bolivia and has lots of family members who are members of the church. She has been looking for the church in Sweden, and then she found us! We have a sister missionary in our district named Sister Hong who speaks Spanish, so we got her to call the woman and explain how to get to church. I thought it was pretty cool.

     On Wednesday we helped furnish a new missionary apartment. It is only a couple subway stops from where we live, so it´s in our area. It was on the third floor with no elevator, so carrying things up there was interesting, haha. But it is a super nice apartment, so we hope we might get it next transfer. But we´ll see. It has a bedroom and a pretty big main room with a big couch, so it would be pretty nice.

     On Thursday we did exchanges with our district leader and his companion. So I had our district leader, Elder Downing, in our area for a day. It went pretty well. Elder Downing is good at contacting people so we talked to a lot of people. We taught a lesson to one of our investigators named Jan, and it went pretty well. Afterwards we went to Sports Night, which is every Thursday. It was pretty fun, because this week I was on the team with all the really tall and good basketball players. 

     This week Elder Pearson and I made a pretty great discovery. We were at this grocery store called MatDax, which is basically one of the sketchier stores but everything is really cheap so we like to buy some of our groceries there. We were about to check out, and there was an ice cream freezer right next to the checkout line. We found a 5 liter tub of Philadelphia strawberry cheesecake ice cream for only 30 crowns, which is about 4 dollars. It is super good. There´s chunks of cheesecake in it too.

     Another cool experience this week was that Elder Pearson and I went to a place called Skatteverket to get Elder Pearson an ID number for Sweden so he can check out books at libraries and go to medical centers, and one of the security guards there said "Hey I´m a member of that church." It turns out he was a less-active guy who hasn´t been to church in about ten years. We didn´t talk to him much since he was working, but we gave him our card and invited him to church.

     Yesterday was pretty crazy. After church we went to visit the couple that is doing a family history mission here to help give the wife a blessing because she is sick. They fed us taco soup and some cookies. Then we went to a member dinner with all the other missionaries, which was super fun. It is a really nice family who gave us some really good Bolivian rice and bread. Then after that we went with the zone leaders to yet another dinner at another member´s house, and he gave us fried fish and potatoes. I was very, very full by the end of the night, haha. 

     A scripture that I read this week that I really liked was Mosiah 4:11-12, which basically says that when we recognize our own weaknesses and look up to God with humility, then we will always have cause to rejoice. I like this because it tells us that when we are humble and admit our shortcomings, then we will be able to have joy despite these trials. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) Here is a picture of the ward council and missionaries

2) Ice cream!

3) I found some chips that are flavored like me! Haha