Week 45/46--- Spring and a Little Ice Fishing

April 25, 2018

Week 45/46--- Spring and a Little Ice Fishing

Hejsan!

Things are lighting up here in Northern Sweden, finally. It's dark around 9 at night and the light when we wake up at 6:30am! The whole city is basically melting now, I'm starting to see the ground here for the first time in Skellefteå.

This week has been full of teaching lessons. I've taught more this week than I have since being on the mission. We've had a few lessons with this guy from Liberia named N who is friends which a convert named A. He had us over and surprised us with some good African food of rice, cabbage and some sort of mystery meat which was nice n spiced up, making my nose run. He's a solid guy, keeps commitments and has been to church a bunch because he works as an assistant for I (a member who needs 24/7 assistance).

Because it's been lighter, Elder Strong and I have gone out running each day for workout which is much needed. I've got my winter warmth hibernation weight to burn off. Feels good to get out, run, and see beautiful Skellefteå.

We've got some cool things going with a part-member family from Colombia. We have been teaching the daughter, Mariana who's 17, since I got here. We started a program for young women called Personal Progress with her this week. We also ate dinner with them, started teaching their 6yo daughter, and I got back into my math tutoring and have started helping the mother, Carmen, out with some basic math. Service is the way to the heart ;)

I had a cool experience a few weeks back that I want to tell about. We were driving back from a lesson and passed an Indian man walking on the side of the road. I felt like we needed to talk to him, but we were in a car and already passed him so I just kept driving. The thought came again, so I waited a few seconds then said to Elder Strong we need to go back and talk to this guy. I flipped a U-y, drove ahead of him and parked in a neighborhood then we basically ran after him. I introduced who we are, said we're missionaries, and that when I drove by I felt like I needed to talk to him. We switched numbers, gave him a Book of Mormon, and finally got to meet him this week. He comes from India but was adopted into a Swedish family here in Skellefteå when he was 5. We had a solid lesson about the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ and he felt like everything we said was true. We're meeting him again this week.

This experience in particular stood out to me because most of the time when I'm prompted to talk to someone and do it, it doesn't really go anywhere (that I know of) or we can never get a hold of them again. This was one of the first times I was able to actually see the result of following a prompting, and we (and God) have some high hopes for this dude :)

Week 46 after photos----------- learn all about Swedish Ice Fishing

A in his Liberian suit

Continue reading for Week 46---Ice Fishing lesson

Elder Strong and I drove out to teach a guy in a town called Skelleftehamn (15mins away) but he was sick and had to reschedule. So after knocking doors in the area, we decided to head home. On the drive back, we looked onto the water (all frozen over) and saw a group of ice fishermen. So I said to Elder Strong "Hey it'd be funny if we went out there and tried talking to them". We flipped around, parked the car, and started out onto the ice to talk to these redneck swedes ha ha. We picked one of them and broke the silence out there and started asking him about ice fishing. After a few mins, he pulled out two small rods already baited and told us to pick a hole and we can try it out. Not wanting to pass up this opportunity, we took our lunch time and spent the half hour chatting with a few of the Swedes on the ice and trying to catch some dinner.

The guy (Jerry) mentioned how he gets jealous sometimes when others pull up big fish. Just a few meters away and about 15 seconds later Elder Strong pulled out a decent sized fish and said "Are you jealous now?" ha ha ha! They got a good laugh out of that. We got a few members of the fishing gang chatting about Mormons, what we do as missionaries, and the church here in Sweden (also got to take home some fish for dinner). Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a fish guy, but Scout Camp taught me how to gut a fish nice n clean so I showed Strong how it's done and he grilled up the fish the next night for dinner😏 It was one of those moments though where I thought "How did I end up here in Sweden ice fishing?".

Facts about ice fishing:

The rods are like little kid toy rods.

They drill the holes with a giant metal screw-like tool.

They usually lay down on a mat on the ice and look into the hole to try and snag the fish with the hook when a big one swims by.

Monday night we had a family night with the Camacho family and made some cupcakes. When we gave the spiritual thought, we went with a message about prayer and did this activity that always is a crowd-pleaser. You draw a stick figure person on one side of the paper, and God and Jesus on the other side (all in regular pen), then you draw a wall in-between the person and God (in erasable pen) and talk about how life sometimes feels lonely, or we don't have anyone to talk to. But if we PRAY! (then you take a lighter and light it behind the paper on the erasable pen part) then the wall goes away and we can get help from God (and the wall disappears). They were all like "wow how'd you do that" ha ha classic. It was a good time with them!

Other than that, we drove down to Umeå for Zone Conference Thursday night and got set up with our new phones! Since the whole zone was there the night before and there wasn't enough room in the Zone Leaders' apartment, we got to stay the night in little cabins in this forest summer camp. Pretty good time meeting up with the boys and seeing how they're all doing.

The Sweden Stockholm mission is now a technology mission so we are geared up with Facebook and some other online tools to help in the missionary work. You will all see me posting stuff on my page but I can't respond to any messages or comments from you all, only people within Sweden. But check out the links I post!

Setting up our smartphones shows me that things like technology can be used for good and for bad. Before my mission, I wasted too much time just dinking around on my phone when now, I realize that there is so much more a phone can be used for. There are great spiritual talks, scriptures, good magazines, but even if you're not a churchy person there are apps to learn new languages, skills, everything! So take some time and instead of scrolling through FB or Instagram for an hour, read something uplifting or do something to increase your knowledge, for that is what's most precious in this life!

Love you guys!

Äldste Gordon