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
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