Transfers: 3/30/15

Hi!

     We got transfer calls this week! I will be staying in Gubbängen for a third transfer, but my companion Elder Pearson will be transferring South near Göteborg (Gothenburg I think is how that´s spelled in English). My new companion will be Elder Dickson, who came to Sweden I think one transfer after me. 

     Elder Pearson and I have both been pretty sick all week. Last P-day we just took it easy and pretty much stayed in the apartment all day, haha. After that we were okay, but still kind of sick. On Tuesday we had an activity where the missionaries went on splits with members of the ward council to go out and visit members. I went with one of the bishop´s counselors named Dennis. He is a cool guy. We went to visit a less active named Gustavo, but before we went we stopped by a grocery store and bought some food to bring. We got samlor, which are a Swedish pastry (I encourage googling them) and Påskmust, which is an Easter-time soda. The visit went really well.

     On Wednesday Elder Pearson and I got to go to the temple. It was my first time being in the Stockholm temple, so it was really cool. 

     On Saturday we had a taco party with the other missionaries at a member family´s house. The members are super nice and have the missionaries over a lot. On the train ride over there Elder Pearson and I met a guy who has lived in Utah! He sat down next to us, and Elder Pearson saw that he was wearing a Utah State hat, so we talked to him about it. He studied there for five years and then came to Sweden for his Phd if I remember right. So that was pretty cool. 

     Yesterday we had a rehearsal for an Easter concert choir that Elder Pearson and I were asked to be in. It was interesting, because I´m still a little sick so I couldn´t sing very well, haha. But it was still fun.

     Also, Elder Pearson and I had been asked last week if we could teach the 12-18 year-old Sunday School class yesterday. We were given a lesson plan, and I really planned on planning it out with Elder Pearson, but I actually just forgot all about it until it was time for Sunday School yesterday. Oops. So we just winged it. It went pretty well, because the topic was the Atonement and we talk about it all the time. It was fun to ask the kids what they thought about the Atonement. When we started we had everyone tell us their name and their favorite food. At least half of them said their favorite food was sushi, which Elder Pearson and I think is really weird. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures! 

1) Me and the other missionaries at a member´s house. From left to right: me, Sister Nielsen, Sister Hong, Sister Allen, Elder Pearson, and a member named Kevin.

2) Me at the temple!

Solar Eclipse!... Kind of: 3/23/15

Hej!

     This week went by super fast for me. Last week for P-day we didn´t do too much, but it was good. We made another meatza with the other missionaries, and this time we took pictures! I´ll be sure to attach one. On Tuesday we did short exchanges with the zone leaders. Elder Floyd and I realized right after we split that neither of us had taken keys to the church to open it for family history night. Our investigator Jan was there early because we told him he could practice piano at the church before doing family history, but we ended up just standing outside for about half an hour. Luckily it wasn´t too cold. Eventually we just went to a library so we could wait inside somewhere. 

     On Thursday President Beckstrand came to our district meeting, and I got to have an interview with him. It went well. That night we did Sports Night, which was pretty fun. Afterwards Sister Hong gave Elder Pearson and me haircuts. She worked at a salon with her mom before her mission, so she is pretty good. It was a much better haircut than the last one that I did myself, haha.

     On Saturday one of the sisters´ investigators got baptized! She was pretty late, so everyone was a little nervous, but once she got there everything went super well. A lot of members came too. 

     On Friday there was a solar eclipse here, but it wasn´t a complete eclipse so it wasn´t such a big deal. There´s a member in the ward who is an astronomer, and he said it was about an 89% eclipse, which is not very noticeable. I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn´t show up very well on the camera. 

     Elder Pearson and I were asked to sing in a choir for an Easter Concert that is going to be in the church. We were recruited because there weren´t any tenors yet in the choir. We had our first practice last night. There were about twice as many men as women, which almost never happens in choir. We are singing some good songs, so I think it will be fun.

     This week I finally went through my scriptures and marked a bunch of scriptures with sticky notes that I will be able to use to find scriptures quickly in lessons. It was really cool to read through a lot of scriptures that all show the love our Heavenly Father has for us and how we are given the scriptures to help us to know how we can come back to Him. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) The meatza

2) We found some flowers while out contacting. Spring is coming (almost)

3) Partial eclipse

Busy Week: 3/16/15

This was a pretty good week. Last P-day we went to the world´s biggest IKEA and ate meatballs with mashed potatoes. Then we walked around some outlet stores. At the end of P-day we went to do some grocery shopping, but decided to go to McDonalds first to get some dinner. While we were there a woman walked up to us and asked if we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, except she asked it in Spanish. She didn´t speak much English or Swedish, but we found out she is from Bolivia and has lots of family members who are members of the church. She has been looking for the church in Sweden, and then she found us! We have a sister missionary in our district named Sister Hong who speaks Spanish, so we got her to call the woman and explain how to get to church. I thought it was pretty cool.

     On Wednesday we helped furnish a new missionary apartment. It is only a couple subway stops from where we live, so it´s in our area. It was on the third floor with no elevator, so carrying things up there was interesting, haha. But it is a super nice apartment, so we hope we might get it next transfer. But we´ll see. It has a bedroom and a pretty big main room with a big couch, so it would be pretty nice.

     On Thursday we did exchanges with our district leader and his companion. So I had our district leader, Elder Downing, in our area for a day. It went pretty well. Elder Downing is good at contacting people so we talked to a lot of people. We taught a lesson to one of our investigators named Jan, and it went pretty well. Afterwards we went to Sports Night, which is every Thursday. It was pretty fun, because this week I was on the team with all the really tall and good basketball players. 

     This week Elder Pearson and I made a pretty great discovery. We were at this grocery store called MatDax, which is basically one of the sketchier stores but everything is really cheap so we like to buy some of our groceries there. We were about to check out, and there was an ice cream freezer right next to the checkout line. We found a 5 liter tub of Philadelphia strawberry cheesecake ice cream for only 30 crowns, which is about 4 dollars. It is super good. There´s chunks of cheesecake in it too.

     Another cool experience this week was that Elder Pearson and I went to a place called Skatteverket to get Elder Pearson an ID number for Sweden so he can check out books at libraries and go to medical centers, and one of the security guards there said "Hey I´m a member of that church." It turns out he was a less-active guy who hasn´t been to church in about ten years. We didn´t talk to him much since he was working, but we gave him our card and invited him to church.

     Yesterday was pretty crazy. After church we went to visit the couple that is doing a family history mission here to help give the wife a blessing because she is sick. They fed us taco soup and some cookies. Then we went to a member dinner with all the other missionaries, which was super fun. It is a really nice family who gave us some really good Bolivian rice and bread. Then after that we went with the zone leaders to yet another dinner at another member´s house, and he gave us fried fish and potatoes. I was very, very full by the end of the night, haha. 

     A scripture that I read this week that I really liked was Mosiah 4:11-12, which basically says that when we recognize our own weaknesses and look up to God with humility, then we will always have cause to rejoice. I like this because it tells us that when we are humble and admit our shortcomings, then we will be able to have joy despite these trials. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) Here is a picture of the ward council and missionaries

2) Ice cream!

3) I found some chips that are flavored like me! Haha

It's Warm Outside: 3/9/15

Hej! 

     This week was pretty good. Last Monday for P-day we went to Pizza Hut with a bunch of other missionaries to celebrate our zone leader´s birthday. Then we all went to the church to play basketball. It was a fun P-day.

     On Tuesday we had a mission tour conference. With Elder George R. Donaldson of the third quorum of the seventy who came and spoke. It was a really good conference. He talked a lot about following the Spirit so that we can really help people with their specific needs.

     On Saturday we did exchanges with the zone leaders, so I was with Elder Floyd for most of the day. It was pretty fun. Elder Floyd is very talkative so we had a good time and talked to some people on the street. At the end of the night we met up at the zone leaders´apartment to have dinner together. We made something we call a meatza, a pizza made of meat. It was super good. We had a bottom layer of ground beef, then tomato sauce, peppers and onion, bacon, cheese, and bacon flavored sauce on top. Unfortunately, we didn´t take a picture, so we decided we need to make it again sometime, haha. For dessert we had american cake with american frosting that Elder Floyd´s parents sent to him for his birthday. American food is pretty good. Elder Held is from Denmark, so it was his first American cake. He said it was really good. 

     This week it has started getting a lot warmer here. Yesterday it got up to about 60 degrees! It was really windy so it wasn´t too warm, but it was super nice to walk outside and not be cold! It´s also light outside until a little after 5:30 now, which is pretty nice. 

     For a spiritual thought I would like to share a story from the book of Helaman in the Book of Mormon that I read this week. Two prophets, Nephi and Lehi, were in prison and some Lamanites were about to come and kill them. But, through a miracle and because they remembered the preaching of their fathers, these Lamanites were converted to the Lord. In fact, they ended up being more converted than the Nephites who had had much more preaching and experience with spiritual things. I think this story is a great reminder that we shouldn´t judge people based on their background. We can never know who someone really is in their heart, and what great things they are capable of when given the chance. We are all children of our Heavenly Father and each have a great potential to do good.

     I hope that everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) My MTC friends! There´s me, Elder Treat, Elder Heiner, and Elder Hemmingsen

2) A cool panorama of Stockholm. Look at the bottom left corner

3) Stockholm again, but with a better picture of me, haha. The sun was out

4) Cake!

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

It's Getting Warmer: 2/23/15

Hej!

     This week was really good. Last Monday we got to go visit the archives where some family history couples in the ward work. They gave us a tour and we got to see lots of the super old church books and other documents that they take pictures of so they can be indexed. It was really cool to see books from the 1600´s. I got a lot of pictures so I will attach a few. 

     On Tuesday we got to do something really fun. A bunch of new missionaries came in from the MTC, about 19 of them, and we got to take them out street contacting on their first day in Sweden! They were all super tired but were doing a really good job of staying awake. I got to go contacting with an elder named Elder Hart. I felt kind of bad because we didn´t find any very positive people, but I got to talk to him about Sweden and he did well at stopping people to talk to them. 

     We had transfers on Wednesday. My new companion´s name is Elder Pearson. He is from Saint George and is a music major, so he´s pretty good at guitar and piano. He´s very talkative, which is pretty nice for me since I´m not so talkative, haha. So far we have been working well together so I think it´s going to be a great transfer. 

     This week we taught an investigator named Jan, who is about 82 and super good at piano. He was practicing hymns on his piano so we sang along. He said we were the first missionaries who have both been good at singing, haha. He and Elder Pearson get along really well because they both know a lot about music and composers. 

     On Saturday one of the zone leaders´ investigators got baptized! It was especially cool because our investigator Jan played the piano for the baptismal service. He played a classical piece while we waited for them to change after the actual baptism, so that was a little different than how it normally goes but it was also kind of cool. President Beckstrand was there and was really impressed that our investigator was involved in the baptismal service. He told him that if he got baptized then he would come to the baptism. I think Jan liked that idea. We´re hoping this has helped him start thinking seriously about baptism. He´s pretty much a member, he just needs to get baptized. 

     After the baptism we went to teach one of the zone leaders´ investigators who is from Mongolia. This week was the Mongolian new year, so they have a whole week of celebrating. When we came to her apartment there were a couple other families there. They were all super nice and gave us some of the traditional Mongolian food. There was meat, which was good, and salad stuff that was good, but we got a very interesting kind of tea, which was not good. It was basically hot, watered down milk with a tea packet and probably a lot of salt in it. It´s apparently the most popular tea among members in Mongolia because it works with the word of wisdom, but I don´t think it´s worth it. Then right after that lesson we had a member dinner, so we were all super full, haha.

     For a spiritual thought I just want to talk about Joseph Smith. Last night during our free hour between nightly planning and bedtime we watched the Joseph Smith movie. It helped me realize just how much hardship and trials the early members of the church went through. I am grateful for their perseverance and faith. Their sacrifices have paved the way for millions of people to join the church today.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures! There are a lot of pictures this week so I´ll try to pick the best few.

1) Stockholm!

2) At the archives with Elder Walker and Elder Bird (Elder and Sister Bird are the family history couple)

3) The biggest book I´ve ever seen. It´s very old. 

4) I got a new phone case since the old one fell apart. I looked at the dots and got a good idea

Sunshine and Transfers: 2/16/15

Hej!

     This week was pretty normal to start off. Elder Walker and I have been exploring a lot more of our new area this week. We found a lot of great places to take pictures of Stockholm while we were out contacting people. This week we have had super nice weather for the most part. It was blue skies and around 45 degrees Fahrenheit a couple of days this week. I literally felt like it was Summer while we were walking around. One day this week we were really behind on contacting to stay on track to reach our weekly goal, so we decided to set a pretty high goal for the day. At first it seemed like we had set a goal that we couldn´t really achieve, but when I got up the next morning I decided that I really wanted to reach that goal. So we went out and got the most contacts of any day in Gubbängen so far. It was nice. Contacting has been something we have needed to work on, since Elder Walker and I are not so socially outgoing, but I am starting to get better at talking to people who might not look like the most likely to receive the gospel or who are scary to talk to.

     On a lighter note, this week I almost completely messed up my hair. I decided I needed to cut it again, and my plan was to just take a little off the sides. Unfortunately, I mixed up the directions for the length to cut the "nape of the neck" with the "back of the head" length. I wasn´t very careful and started cutting before reading the directions fully. So at first I just noticed that there was a lot more hair falling down than I expected, then I glanced at the directions and realized my mistake. So, I ended up having to cut my hair shorter than I expected, but I think I covered my mistake pretty well, haha. There´s just a chunk of shorter hair on the back of my head, but I´m planning on just trimming it again next week when it grows out a bit (after reading the directions a lot better). As I was writing I realized this can be a good spiritual analogy :) Sometimes in life we think we know all that is going on and that we don´t need to read the "directions", or the scriptures. But unfortunately, we are human and sometimes make major errors in judgement. If we are not careful, these errors can cause us to lose control of the situation, and end up somewhere different than we had intended, or with hair shorter than we wanted to have. But luckily we always have a chance to come back, to repent and try again. The next time might not be exactly perfect, but if we follow the directions diligently then we will improve and come that much closer to perfection--or perfect hair. I know that was kind of a silly example, but it just goes to show how we can take everyday life experiences to help us learn more about the gospel.

     This week we found out about transfers. I will be staying in Gubbängen, and Elder Walker is transferring up to a town called Örnskoldsvik, which is in the North. My new companion´s name is Elder Pearson, and I met him before at zone training when I was in Sundsvall. He is a fun guy, and I think he is good at music so I think it will be a fun transfer. I don´t think too much else has happened to write about. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

Pictures!

1) A typical street in Södermalm, our fancy area

2) Downtown Stockholm as seen from our area. 

3) A ski slope in the middle of Stockholm. I hear it´s not great, but it´s still a ski slope in the middle of a city

4) A really cool sunset

5) We taught a less-active man and he has these two birds that he sometimes lets out of their cage.