Oh Deer! 5/4/15

Hej!

     So this week I saw some deer in the forest. It was kind of weird because we´re pretty close to a big city and pretty much all the animals I´ve seen here have just been birds. 

      Last week for P-day we visited an island called Gamla Stan which is the touristy part of Stockholm with lots of old buildings. That night we had a dinner with a member with the sister missionaries. At the end of dinner she gave us all these Swedish candies called salt lakrits, which is basically super salty black licorice. We took videos of everyone trying it. Elder Dickson and I went first. No offense to anyone who likes salty licorice, but I thought it was gross, haha. It was a hard candy with a filling, so we both bit down to the center, and it was super salty. The sisters tried them after us, and they both spat them out as soon as they got to the center, haha.

     On Thursday there was a really cool holiday called Valborg, where they basically just make a huge fire and everyone stands around and watches it. The zone leaders drove us down to Västerhaninge, where the temple is. A bunch of other missionaries were there and also President and Sister Beckstrand. It was pretty fun to see everyone there. Afterwards everyone smelled like a campfire. 

     We met with a less-active this week named August. He was born in Soviet Russia. He has been less-active for a long time because he didn´t feel very welcome when he came to church. We invited him to give church another chance and just try it out because we have a lot of great members in our ward. And he came to church yesterday! Possibly for the first time in years. I think it went pretty well for him so hopefully he will start coming more often. 

     For a spiritual thought this week I just wanted to share something that I actually forgot about last Monday but it´s something that I really like. We were teaching an investigator last week about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It has five main points: Faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Our investigator said something really cool after we taught this. He said, "It seems to me that if you´re doing the first two things every day, then enduring to the end is something that´s just going to happen." I completely agree. It´s by striving to come closer to Christ every day that we are able to stay faithful throughout our lives. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!!

1) This place is famous for the pink blossoms. But they don´t last long. We found out the hard way... haha it was kind of disappointing

2) Random patches of flowers 

3) Valborg. The guy in the middle is some other missionaries´ investigator that we met.

4) This is a place right by our apartment