Fall Is Coming!- 9/28/15

Hej!

     This week was pretty good. Last P-day we went to a big shopping center area and went to an outlet store. We pretty much spent all of P-day going to different stores in town, haha. 

     On Wednesday I went on exchanges with Elder Kiikko, our district leader. It was kind of funny because we live in the same apartment so it didn´t feel like it was really any different from a normal day until we went out. We had a pretty good day together. We went out to swing by a less-active but they weren´t home so we tracted a while. We also talked to a bunch of people in town. We found out that Elder Richard G. Scott had died, so we watched the video about him on lds.org. Then we had family home evening with the YSA, and watched the video again. As we were playing a card game for FHE, some members came to the church for branch council. We were either not informed about it or Elder Kiikko maybe forgot, but we went to the meeting pretty unprepared, haha. But it went well. We watched the video about Elder Scott again.

     On Friday we went to Södertälje (near Stockholm) for zone training. President and Sister Beckstrand were there as well as the assistants. I got an interview with President Beckstrand and it went well. Our zone training was mostly about chapter 13 in Preach My Gospel, how we can help investigators to feel comfortable and prepared in church and how we can work better with members.

     On Saturday we went out to a small town in our area to help a member work on an extension he is making to his house. It was hard work, but it was pretty fun. It was a super nice day. Most of the time I was nailing boards to the side of the extension. After we were done working the member took us to this big hill that overlooks the town, and it was a super cool view. Then he took us to a pizza place for lunch.

     Something that I really liked from the video about Elder Scott was how he had a great perspective on eternity. Even after his wife passed away, he continued on without a doubt in his mind that he would see her again. This is something that I want to emulate. Things in this life do not always go as we plan, and sometimes bad things happen. But our Heavenly Father knows us and is looking out for us, so everything will work out in the life to come. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!!!

1) Double rainbow!

2) The town of Kisa

3) Elder Backman and me

Brand New Area: 9/21/15

Hej!

     This has been an interesting week. Last P-day we went to Ikea and ate meatballs for lunch. Then we went to a store called TGR, which is kind of like the dollar store, but instead of everything being one dollar it was just a lot of cheap stuff. That night we went to a YSA family home evening activity at a member family´s house, and that was a lot of fun. 

     On Wednesday we had to get up at 4 am to get ready. Elder Larson´s train to Stockholm left at 6, and mine left at 7 so I just waited at the station a bit. It was a little tricky getting onto the train because I had two very heavy suitcases, a backpack, a sidebag, and I also got a guitar at a second hand store a little while back so I just had that sitting on top of one of the suitcases. Luckily the train wasn´t crowded at all so I had plenty of space to get my things on. I had to switch trains once, which was also a bit tricky but it turned out well, and I made it to Linköping without any problems. When I got to the station there were two elders who are in the district who helped me and Elder Backman to get to our apartment. We had no phone because we were opening the area, but the other elders had keys that they gave us. We unpacked a little, and then went exploring. We found some maps, and found the church the old fashioned way, haha. We opened the door to the church, and an alarm started going off. Elder Kiikko, who is one of the other elders in the area, had given Elder Backman a few directions like what the code to the alarm was, but no matter what we did it wouldn´t turn off. So we started running around the church to find a phone, since we didn´t have any way of communicating with anyone. We couldn´t find a working phone, but somehow I pressed a button that got the alarm to turn off. Then we went to the train station and waited for Elder Kiikko to get back with his new greenie. 

     On Thursday we had district meeting in a town called Norrköping. Our district is the missionaries in the Norrköping ward and Linköping branch. We took a double-decker bus to get there. I´m pretty sure it was my first time on a bus like that, so it was pretty cool. We all went out to lunch together after district meeting, and then Elder Backman and I took the bus home. We sat in the very front on the second level, so I got some good pictures and videos. I took a time-lapse video with the iphone, and it is super cool.

     We have started out with literally no one to teach, so Elder Backman and I have been doing a lot of swing bys to former investigators and contacting people in town. So the work right now is going kind of slow, but at least it gives us a chance to be all over the place and get used to the town while we´re finding people to teach. 

     Yesterday we had church. There were maybe 25 people there, so it is a little different from most places I have been. I have been officially designated as branch pianist, so I played the piano in sacrament meeting. It was interesting. There were four songs: One I´ve played a few times and kind of knew, one I´ve heard and maybe played once but luckily it was simple, one that I´ve only heard a few times and had a super hard time playing, and then Praise to the Man which I have played a million times. So I realized I will have to do some more practicing, haha. 

     This week I was looking at lds.org, and there was some article about getting to know the apostles and prophet, where there were short biographies of each of the apostles and the first presidency. It is crazy how many different backgrounds and what amazing lives each of these men has had. I just tried looking on lds.org for the article and couldn´t find it, but I would encourage everyone to get to know our modern-day prophets a bit better. I know that they really are called of God.

Have a great week everyone!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) This is a river right by our apartment. Linköping is a college town, so there have been some fraternity/sorority tug of wars here

2) On the bus

3) A healthy meal put together with whatever food we could find

4) Swedish houses

Transfer Time: 9/14/15

Hej!

     Last P-day was super fun. We went out to a town in our area called Karlskoga to go to an obstacle course place called Boda Borg. We were on our way there and walked past a basket swing, so we played on that for a while. Then we went to Boda Borg. It is basically an apartment building that has been converted into a bunch of obstacle courses. Each course is three rooms, and each room has a challenge that you have to do to be able to move on. It was super fun, but pretty exhausting. On Monday night President Beckstrand called and told us that Elder Larson will be training and I will leave Örebro, but I had to wait until Saturday to find out where. 

     On Wednesday we did exchanges with the district leader and his companion, so I spent the day in Örebro with Elder Bradley, who was in my MTC group. On Saturday Elder Larson needed to go into Stockholm for a trainers´ training meeting and so did Elder Bradley´s companion so Elder Bradley came to Örebro again and we spent the day together. That morning we had a big group phone call with the zone and the zone leaders told us about transfers. I will be going to a town called Linköping, which is about an hour south of Örebro and is in the same zone but a different district. My new companion is Elder Backman, who has been in my district before so it should be a lot of fun. We are going to be opening up the second area in Linköping, and I´m pretty sure we´ll be sharing an apartment with the other Linköping elders. There will be a new greenie in the other companionship so that should be really cool too. The rest of the day was pretty normal, but Elder Bradley´s train back to his area left two hours before Elder Larson was getting back to Örebro. So I was companions with a YSA named Jared who is working on his mission papers right now. 

     This week I was reading a bit in the Teachings of the Presidents of the Church manual about President Ezra Taft Benson, in a chapter called "Beware of Pride." There is a lot of good stuff in there, but one thing that stood out to me was a quote of President Benson´s wife, Flora. She said, "Don´t worry about the world´s opinion of you as long as you´re right with the Lord." It is important to keep in perspective what is important in this life. We are surrounded by the world and worldly things, so it can be easy to get caught up in all that sometimes. But the purpose of this life is to prepare ourselves to return to our Father in Heaven. Sometimes that requires doing things that cause others to judge us or look down on us. But what really matters is what the Lord thinks of us.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) On the basket swing! Sorry I´m not smiling, but it was one of the less-fuzzy pictures haha

2) "flying"

3)A super cool sunset

4) Me and Jared at church 

Surprise Confirmation: 9/7/15

Hi!

    This week has been pretty good. Last Monday we just had a calm P-day hanging out at our apartment and the church and playing basketball a little bit. In the evening we were tracting, and there was a man in the hallway so we said hi. He asked if anyone was talking to us and we said a few so far. Then he said "come in" and opened the door to his apartment. He asked us to tell him whatever we wanted about our faith. To get an idea of his background so we could know what his understanding of Christianity was I asked if he has a faith. He is a Jehovah's Witness, but he said he has always respected the Mormon church. It was kind of funny because at first he wanted us to talk about our faith but then he just talked about his faith for the next 45 minutes. He was a nice man though. He has a lot of beliefs that are very close to ours, but just have some very important differences. He gave us his name and number so we are hoping to be able to meet with him again and tell him about the Restoration soon. 

     On Tuesday we helped clean the church, and then had kind of a normal day until 6, when we had a train to Stockholm for zone conference. We stayed the night with the zone leaders of the Stockholm South zone, so that was fun. On Wednesday we had to walk half an hour through a forest in the rain to get to the chapel, because we didn´t have any bus cards or things like that for Stockholm. Luckily it wasn´t raining too badly. The theme of zone conference was about becoming a Preach My Gospel missionary. First President Beckstrand´s second councilor spoke about how Preach My Gospel went from an idea to becoming a reality. He was a cool guy. He wrote a book called Surviving Hitler I think, and it is in Deseret Book stores. It is about his parents during WWII. After that we talked a lot about how to use Preach My Gospel and how it can help us to become better missionaries. Something Sister Beckstrand brought up a lot is how Preach My Gospel is not just for missionaries, but it is something that can help us throughout our lives. After zone conference we had to go immediately to the train station because our train was pretty soon afterwards. 

     On Thursday the sisters asked us to help them on a lesson with their investigator that had a baptismal date, because they were going to teach him about he Aaronic Priesthood. We ended up waiting at the library for about three hours, because we never knew when he would walk in so we couldn´t really leave. One of the YSAs called the sisters about something and heard about the situation, so he took us all out to eat at a Greek grill restaurant, which was super nice. After that the sisters´ investigator was at the library and we actually had a pretty good lesson with him. 

     Friday was a pretty normal day. On Saturday the sisters´ investigator Herve got baptized! Everything went pretty smoothly. Elder Larson baptized him and was able to do it in French, which is Herve´s first language. None of the bishopric were able to make it so our district leader Elder Bradley presided. There was a good turnout of members though, which was good. 

     Yesterday Herve was confirmed. The sisters never said who was going to do it, but I had a feeling so I looked up the words for confirming someone. Literally right after I was able to speed-read through the words Herve´s confirmation was announced so we went up to the stand. I asked, "who´s doing the confirmation?" and Elder Larson said, "You are." So I was luckily able to check the words quickly again, and did it. The stake president was visiting Örebro this week so he was able to be part of the confirmation circle, which was cool. Later that day we had dinner with a member family and it was super fun.

     This week I was studying the Restoration lesson in Preach My Gospel, and I noticed that there are actually tons of references and principles from the other two "main" lessons, the Plan of Salvation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We usually try to keep the Restoration super simple since it is usually a lot of new information so that is why I thought it was so interesting that Preach My Gospel would include so much from the other lessons. But I think that it is just one way of showing that there is really just one "lesson", one gospel. Everything that we teach people goes perfectly together, and each of the lessons we teach support each other. I am grateful for the gospel and for the modern-day revelation that helps us to greater understand how we can live it in this day.

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) Sister Bourelle got a beaver hat in a package, so we all tried it on

2) A YSA was showing people at church how to do this weird thing with your tie

3) Me at the bus stop after church

Sick People: 9/1/15

Hi!

     So for the first half of this week Elder Larson was pretty sick. There is a member who is a nurse, so she looked at him and said he probably got food poisoning or something like that. But now he´s better, so everything is okay. 

     Not too much else of note happened this week. Yesterday at church our new convert Sami passed the sacrament for the first time. I don´t know who showed him how to do it, but he did everything perfectly. He seriously looked like a professional who´d done it for years. So that was really cool to see. 

     We also have a baptismal date! One of the sisters´ investigators is being baptized this week, and when our investigator Daniel heard about it, he wanted to be baptized that day too. There´s just a few problems though, haha. We got permission to get him baptized this week IF we can teach him the rest of the lessons that he needs and get him interviewed by our district leader. So we´re going to talk to him about it and see how serious he is about being ready to be baptized this week, but if not then we will just have to wait another week or two, which is no problem. 

     This week something really weird happened. We were walking home at the end of the day, and it was DARK. I´m not used to it being dark before we´re already home, so it was a really weird experience. 

     This week our zone leaders have challenged everyone in the zone to listen to or read a talk by President Eyring called "This Day" from the April 2007 conference. I have only read through it once so far, but I´ve also seen a Mormon Message video that quotes a lot of it. I think that something really cool that I noticed in his talk is the message that even if we can´t do much, if we do all we can we will receive blessings not only for ourselves, but we will also bless others´ lives. Each day has so much potential, and I like how President Eyring words it: that each day is a gift from God. If we use the time we have been given in a good way, then I know that there are so many blessings and so much growth that we can experience.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Unfortunately, I don´t have any pictures worth sending out this week :( So hopefully next week I´ll find more exciting things to take pictures of!