Sun Spots: 3/2/15

Hej!

     This week was pretty fun. Last Monday we went to a place called Gamla Stan (the Old Town), which is kind of the touristy part of Stockholm. We walked around for a long time and looked at a couple tourist shops.

     On Tuesday I tried helping our investigator Jan with family history. I´m not so good at it, so it was a little awkward, haha. It took around 20 minutes just to log him on because we weren´t sure which password he used. But overall it went okay.

     On Wednesday we went to an Elders quorum activity to an observatory. A member of the ward works there and is an astrologer. So he gave us a presentation about sun spots, which is what is specializes in. It seemed pretty cool. He used to work for NASA and built a telescope satellite that takes pictures of the Sun. Then he took us to the telescope that Stockholm University uses. We got to look at Jupiter and its four moons, Orion's nebula, the Moon, and the Andromeda galaxy. It was super cool. It was a super clear night too, which almost never happens in Stockholm. Our investigator Jan was there and when we were talking about the weather he said, "Joseph Smith must have ordered it", haha. We told him it was probably God, and not Joseph Smith. I felt bad for Elder Pearson, because he was trying to translate the presentation on Sun spots into Swedish for Jan, who´s English is okay but not great. There were a lot of words that were pretty hard in English, let alone in Swedish.

     On Friday we had Zone Training. I think over half of our zone changed during the last transfers, which is pretty crazy. Tomorrow an area seventy, I think, is coming as part of a mission tour. It should be good, and I will get to see some of the missionaries from the North again. 

      This week I have been reading a lot in the war chapters of the Book of Mormon (the end of Alma) and usually these chapters seem a little less spiritual, but I think there are still a lot of good things to learn from them. Something I liked this week about the 2,000 stripling warriors. It was a miracle how none of them died while fighting in the war. But something I noticed this time while reading was when it talks about how they were obedient to all the commands they were given. This shows that they were not just great guys who obeyed God´s commandments, but that they were obedient and diligent in everything they did. It was part of who they were. I just thought it was cool how living the gospel means that we really become better people, rather than just changing our actions.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) The view from a balcony on top of our building
2) Family History attempt (I´m the one in the middle)

3) Telescope!

4) Panorama of Stockholm. There´s an amusement park behind me, Stockholm downtown to the left, and a cruise ship to the right