Nu är det Jul igen! [Now it is Christmas again!] (this is part of a Swedish song)
Now that Halloween is gone, it's Christmas time! And we started by helping out a member set up their Christmas lights. It was fun, especially since they didn't have those little light clip things we have in the states. We had a hammer and nails. That was a first, but it went well, and looked good.
On Thursday we had a Zone Training, but the train we were supposed to be on got cancelled, so we ended up being 40 min. late. It was very good talking about us. Are we Christlike missionaries? We prepared by reading President Uchtdorf's talk, "It Works Wonderfully" and they asked us, "How is your mission working for you?" "Is it bringing you closer to Christ?" "Is it bringing you closer to your family?" We had a wonderful discussion, and set some goals as districts to help us become better. We then got the exciting opportunity to eat lunch with a member in Täby whose mom was baptized by Elder Swenson's Grandpa! It was a great lunch and meeting, but on the way home we had to take a pendeltåg (intercity train) from Stockholm to Uppsala (1:15 hr) standing, then a regional train from Uppsala back home to Gävle where we stood for another 30 min. With our proselyting materials we had ordered and everything.
Friday was the miracle of the week though. Thinking about the conference and everything that's been happening lately I decided to pray about what God wanted me to do here. I read a letter from my brother, and some stuff from my dad and prayed and pondered. Then knowing I often get revelation from the scriptures I started reading, and it happened to be Alma 42. And the inspiration came. I learned a lot of things that I needed to be doing better, and felt an increase of faith, hope and motivation and dedication. Then I discovered that the thing we needed to do, the will of God, was the goals we set at the beginning of our first transfer together; baptize 3 people, and reactivate 2. We hadn't gotten one on either of those and we have one month left. So I asked what we needed to do, and got more that we needed to do: being more bold, teaching focused on baptism, and really talking to everyone. Then I had another cool thought. This won't be possible without the members. Then I remembered a story my brother wrote in that letter about a guy setting a goal to invite 4 people to meet with the missionaries, and the goal being just the invitation, and the 4th said yes. Then another guy tried it thinking, "It can't be that hard to get 4 people to say no." And the 2nd one said yes to him. My brother tried it, and his 4th said yes. So I knew I needed to invite the members of our branch to invite three people to church or to meet with the missionaries or learn more about the gospel before stake conference. One less active, and two non-members. My faith shot up at this point, and I was so excited to share this with others and invite them.
We went out on Friday and were helping missionaries, and being with members most of the day, but had one hour of tracting planned in. So for that hour of planned tracting we took a bus to the area, and contacted people all the way to the bus and on the packed bus. We got off, and the first person we talk to had two kids, and wanted to listen to us, loved the plan of salvation, and the concept of living prophets, and her kid stole the Book of Mormon from my companion and was so ecstatic when he found out he could keep it. They were really positive, then the next person we talked to wanted to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. The next person we talked to had a cousin who was a member and he had read and prayed about the Book of Mormon and got an answer, but wasn't sure what it was. We taught him about baptism, and he said he didn't have time right now, but would contact us in two weeks (we know where he lives though, so in two weeks we'll see if he's busy ;). We got to the first building then, and were out of Book of Mormons already. The first door we knock on says, come back, daytimes are best, yes Wednesday at 12:00 works great. We had to go take a call, and while I was on the phone my companion contacted someone and taught them about the restoration and got them a pamphlet, then we contacted a guy together, and taught him about the restoration and got him a pamphlet, then that kid who stole the Book of Mormon showed up (he's 5 years-old) and wanted to talk to and play with and show off for us. His mom came out and started calling him so we helped walk him home, he gave us each a hug, and said, "See you tomorrow. Hopefully!" Then we went back to tracting, got done, and our time was up after the first building so we started the five minute walk to dinner, and found two more positive people. We were astounded by the results of hard work with faith, prayers and the Spirit.
Saturday was a baptism for a man named Rickard, who the Sisters taught. It was a great spiritual feast, and I spoke about baptism as a part of it. The senior couple from Stockholm that helped teach him while he was down there took us all out for dinner afterward, and it was so great to see how happy Rickard was! That night after telling a member about my little revelation and invitation we were walking home, and I thought to myself, "Okay, Satan, see if you can get one of these people to not be positive." The member said, "Go find someone to teach!" We texted him 5 minutes later after the first person we talked to and said, "Found one!" We had a great walk home talking to everyone we could, and it's been incredible to see how positive people have been lately. We need to do even better though to make this miracle happen. Pray for us. Pray that we can reach our goals and that the people here will be influenced by the Spirit and be prepared for the members to help them become partakers of this wonderful fruit of the gospel.
Have a wonderful week! Keep the faith and fight the good fight!
Äldste Liddle
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