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!

Another Week: 8/24/15

Hej!

     So this week was not really very exciting at all, but it was still a good week. On Monday we spent a lot of time in H&M because Elder Larson needed to buy new slacks. One day we went to the town center to contact, but we only had a little time because something came up. We ended up not contacting anyone, but we got contacted by lots of people. First we got stopped by three teenage girls. They asked who we are and what we do. When we told them we were Americans they were super surprised because they said Sweden is boring, haha. Then a man came up and talked to us. He has been to Salt Lake I think, and was not super interested in investigating, but asked us to pray for him and his wife. As we were praying with him another man came up to us and asked if we could pray for him as well. He was super grateful afterwards, and when he was shaking our hands, he leaned down and kissed us each on the hand. It was a little strange but we were glad to help him.

     On Wednesday we and the sisters had a member dinner. The members lived pretty far away so we spent a while on the buses. It is a family that is originally Swedish but now live in Luxembourg and have a Summer house here. They were very nice. 

     On Thursday we had district meeting, and then we all went out to a pizza buffet for lunch. I got a random bloody nose, but luckily it wasn´t a bad one. During district meeting an elder and a sister companionship each did a skit of examples of a bad and a good companionship study session. They were actually super well-done skits. 

     Yesterday we had a member dinner with a family named the Berglunds. They always try to get us to try new foods when we go over. This time they had us try a super salty black licorice candy. I actually thought it was okay, and Elder Larson finished his but both of the sisters spit theirs out, haha. 

     This week we have been challenged by our zone leaders to listen to or read Elder Bruce R. McConkie´s last conference talk, titled The Purifying Power of Gethsemane. I thought that it was much better to listen to it, because Elder McConkie expressed so much emotion as he spoke. Something that stuck out to me was realizing how much the Savior suffered for me and for all of us. When He has done so much for me, it seems like I have been asked to do relatively very little in return. I feel like I have come a little closer to understanding how much love our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ have for me. I hope that someday I can be able to witness of them with the same conviction as Elder Bruce R. McConkie.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) A hot air balloon!

2) We got 60 Books of Mormon (Mormons Böcker) this week in the mail.

3) We actually didn´t take many pictures this week, so I just have two :/

750 Years: 8/17/15

Hej!

     So all of this week Örebro has been celebrating its 750th anniversary. It is very old. They have had different party things going on all week, so there were always tons of people in town but unfortunately it wasn´t a situation where we could really talk to any of them. 

     Last Monday we just walked around town a bit with the sisters, and later we made milkshakes at the church. Elder Larson and I brought a blender from our apartment. It was a funny blender. It doesn´t have any buttons, but it starts blending as soon as you plug it in. We also forgot to bring the lid, so Elder Larson held a paper bowl over the top and I would plug it in until it looked mixed. Despite the difficulties the milkshakes turned out pretty good. 

     On Thursday we went to a town called Nora to teach one of our investigators named Daniel. Nora is kind of a touristy town, but it is very small. Right by the bus station there was a very pretty lake with forest all around it. Daniel is 19 and comes from Uganda. He is in Sweden playing some sort of semi-professional soccer. He says that he wants to get baptized, but he´s just waiting until he feels like it is time. He wants to be a missionary too.

     On Friday we had zone training in a city called Eskilstuna. After the meeting we went to get pizza. On the way to Eskilstuna a guy on the train started asking Elder Larson and me lots of questions about the Church. We tried giving him a Book of Mormon when we got off, but he refused and said he´d just read it on the internet so that he wouldn´t need to take something that costs money, even if it is free for him. I wasn´t sure what to think of it. Even though online scriptures are great it´s still important to have a physical copy somewhere I think.

     On Saturday Elder Larson and I went to a soccer activity. The ward does soccer every Saturday as a fellowshipping activity, but we don´t go very often because none of our investigators want to go and it´s a pretty big time commitment. We played for about two hours, then came back to the apartment to shower and eat lunch. We both got sunburned and were sore all day, haha. It was fun though.

     Lately I have been trying to get better at recognizing the promptings of the Spirit. I feel like because of the scriptures I often expect the Spirit to be very direct or discernible, like a big revelation. But the Spirit can witness to or guide us in even the simplest and smallest of things. Even just having a feeling of calm while reading scriptures can be evidence that the Spirit is there. I have learned a lot on my mission so far about different ways the Spirit can speak to us. I know that as we pray for help and do all we can to follow the Spirit then we can become more spiritually sensitive and learn to follow its promptings.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) Me and Elder Larson

2) The lake by Nora

3) Hedgehog! By the grocery store

4) This is a portrait that an 8 year-old member girl drew of me yesterday after church. She kept looking at me as she drew, then she said "You have a mustache. Perfect!" I shaved that morning, but I guess it wasn´t good enough, haha.

Newspaper: 8/10/15

Hej!

     Last Monday was pretty busy. After emailing we went to a member family´s house for lunch. Afterwards Filip, our ward mission leader, gave Elder Williams a haircut. They phone can do time-lapse videos, so I videod the entire haircut. It´s a pretty fun video to watch. After that we bought groceries, then a member picked us up to go have a picnic with their family at a hiking place out in the forest. We cooked hot dogs over the fire, then went for a short hike in the woods. There were huge boulders everywhere that we had to climb over and around. It was pretty fun. Then at the top of a big hill there were lots of rocks that are all that is left of an ancient fortress that used to be there about a thousand years ago. It was really cool to see, and there was a great view from on top of the hill. 

     Most of Tuesday was spent visiting members and investigators so that Elder Williams could say goodbye. We were going to swing by an investigator that lives pretty far away, but I saw him in the city when we were on the bus, so we kinda followed him for a few blocks then talked to him once we caught up. On Wednesday my new companion, Elder Larson got to Örebro. Elder Williams´ train left about ten minutes later, so the timing was perfect. It turns out Elder Larson is not half Swedish, so what I was told was false haha. But his dad and brother have both served missions in Sweden, and his dad actually served in Örebro so there are some members that remember him. 

     On Thursday we had district meeting. About half of the district changed this transfer, so things are pretty different than they were last week. Everyone is very fun and energetic, so it will be an interesting transfer. Also, on Thursday morning I was in the newspaper! Some members texted us and said we were in there. The journalist that interviewed us last week finished her article. We are right on the second page. I went to a few stores trying to find the newspaper because it would be fun to have, but we couldn´t find it anywhere. But some members sent us a picture of it so at least I have that. 

     Besides that this week has not been the most exciting. We have been doing a lot of finding work lately, because we don´t have many investigators that are able to meet right now. But on the bright side, it is sunny every day now. Everyone is saying that "real" summer is finally here, haha. I´m just grateful not to need an umbrella anymore.

     This week I was reading in Revelation, and was thinking about how it will be in the last-last-days. I realized that in order to withstand all of the trials that will face the world, we need to prepare now. We know that we will need to be ready to stand up for what is right and make sure that we have the "whole armor of God". In Alma 13:27 it says to "not procrastinate the day of your repentance." To me, repentance means to change our hearts and become more like Christ. If we are repenting now, then we will be able to have a stronger testimony and increase our faith in Christ so that we will be prepared for whatever trials we may face.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) Swedish forest at the top of the hill. If you look closely you´ll see the members´ eight year-old daughter taking a rest, haha.

2) Elder Williams took secret pictures of me while I mowed the lawn at the church

3) The newspaper article. The quotes are not 100% accurate but they are still okay