Week 29 & 30---- Going up North

January 03, 2018

Week 29 & 30---- Going up North

God Jul alla!

I hope everyone had a great christmas.

On Christmas Eve (julafton), we went over to an older lady's house (Signild) and ate with her and her son and granddaughter. Watched Calianca (old Disney cartoons that everyone watches on Christmas eve here). That night we took an investigator Pelle (Signild's other son who's 50 ish) and visited a less active member (Emil) in the ward who was alone for Christmas eve. We talked, played some card games, it was a solid stund (session).

On Christmas, we were with the Stake President (church leader who is over the whole Stockholm area) and his family. We played games, watched a few movies, and had some solid julbord (traditional swedish Christmas dinner) food. Got to Skype my family, which was great!

I had a really fun christmas and want to thank you for all the merry christmas emails :)

My spiritual thought today comes from 1 Nephi 21:14-16. It compares God and Jesus to a mother and her child. A mother never forgets her child, and in an even deeper sense, Christ will never forget us. Jesus says we are engraven upon his palms, and for that reason will he always remember us. So hopefully you were able to remember Christ during the Christmas season, and when you've got tough times in life, never forget that you aren't forgotten by Jesus. He loves us.

Week 30

hej gott nytt år allihopa! Happy new year!

This week was super low-key because there's not much opportunity to go out proselyting between Christmas and New Years. But we got the challenge to read the entire Book of Mormon this week (which I almost did) which has been pretty uplifting. I feel like I understand the timeline a lot better. I also realized that it's still nearly impossible for me to stay awake while reading longer than 20 mins so some things never change. I made it through though thanks to constantly drinking water and pounding swedish godies (candy) ha ha

We had an awesome lesson with this family from Egypt. It's not often here that we teach families so it was cool to go to their place, teach him and his wife and little son about the Restoration of Jesus Christ's church and try and help them grow closer to God. We invited them to be baptized when they got an answer and they said yes pretty much before we even finished the sentence (which also is not common here in Sweden). So I was way stoked about that and it showed me that 'det finns ingen slump' or there are no coincidences. We met him for a reason. There are complications with it being dangerous for their family back in Egypt if they were to convert (which is a common problem with teaching immigrants here) so we've got that to figure out, but #blessed anyways.

We had our investigator B (the one from Austria) at church and I got to do a bit of translating to English which was fun. It showed me how much Swedish I know. He came last night with us to dinner with a family in the branch (a small congregation in the church) and to celebrate New Years. They had some tasty dinner, a bunch of fireworks, and a big ol' shotgun which they were shooting off. We didn't get to touch it unfortunately (tyvärr ) because we aren't allowed as missionaries, but fun anyways to watch that stuff.

We got transfer calls last night, and I'm leaving Västerås! I've been here for what feels like forever, but I've loved it here. It's an awesome area. I expected I'd get sent to Stockholm or some place south, but it turns out I'm headed to a city named Skelleftea (shuh-left-ee-oh) which is waaay north. I'll be flying up there on Wednesday and then taking a 2 and a half hour bus even higher to get there. It'll be quite the change of scene. I talked to the elder who will be my next comp who's been there for a few months, and he said that there is like a foot of snow everywhere, not a whole lot of daylight, the northern lights will for sure come out, and that it'll get like -30 or -40 degrees Celsius up there soon. I'll get a true swedish winter this year :)

I'm way stoked to get up there and experience a new city, and even a new culture. I gotta buy some gloves and boots and thermals so I don't freeze my nards off up there.

On a spiritual note, I read a scripture this week from Alma 40:23 which talks about how after we die we will all receive perfect bodies. It says 'The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul. Every limb and joint shall be restored to its body even a hair of the head shall not be lost' That sounds pretty sweet to me. Whether we're goin hard with new years resolutions bc we're out of shape or even have had an accident in life and lost an arm or a leg, we will all get perfect bodies back. God's got an awesome plan for us.

Ha det bra det här året alla! Have a good year!

Äldste Gordon