Weeks 51/52--A Year Has Passed....Biking Like 2 Clowns in a Circus!

June 07, 2018

Weeks 51/52--A Year Has Passed....Biking Like 2 Clowns in a Circus!

This week was a good one. Niiiiice n hot here, it's finally Sweden's turn to get some heat. It hasn't rained the whole month I've been in Jakobsberg until yesterday when we had a thunderstorm and it poured while we were out tracting! Everything felt and smelled like Seattle after a good rain. But it's been in the 80's here otherwise.

So now to the stolen bike. So we biked home from the train station and I couldn't find my bike key anywhere! So we figured it'd be at the train station and probably fell out of my pocket. The next morning we bike there on our way out and it's nowhere to be found, and to make it better, Elder Francis lost his key as well somewhere along the way from our house to the train station. We were in a hurry so we put our bikes by the bike locks and did our best to make them look locked up haha that night we get back to the station and Elder Francis' bike was gone haha I felt bad I was laughing so hard because he wasn't even the one who lost his key in the first place... One thing on my mission that I've experienced when I lose something is that I don't worry at all about getting it back because I have complete confidence that God will find a way to get it back to us.

Anyways, we had planned to knock doors so Elder Francis straddles the back of my bike and we take off like two clowns on a circus bike. The people we biked past got a good laugh out of it. We said a prayer asking for some help with what to do, then called the sisters in our area to share what happened. As soon as we hung up the phone, Francis sees two swedish scrubs, probably like 16 doing the same thing we are on a single bike biking towards us. He goes up to them and is speed walking while trying to convince these two boys that it was his bike while they just said back "I got this from my dad" (in swedish) ha ha I realized they weren't going to easily give it over so I ran up and stood in front of the bike and they eventually realized we knew they were lying, pretty funny how everything turned out. Elder Francis got his bike back, I found a spare key to mine, so the only casualty was Elder Francis' stolen bike basket. Not bad :)

I had another cool experience this week that taught me several things. We had taken 2 wrong trains and it was after the time we were supposed to be home and we were pretty much still in Stockholm. I, being impatient, was frustrated with the situation and was ready to be home after a long day. We got on the train and I see a girl walk on. This was Friday night btw so most people are dressed like they are either on the way to or from a party. She sits next to me and I felt like I should talk to her. I wasn't sure if this was a real prompting kinda thing or just my 19-year-old boy self wanting to talk to a swedish girl haha After making random conversation with a spanish couple in broken spanish, I turned to her and started talking. We talked the whole way back about God and I was able to tell her about the Book of Mormon and give her a card before I got off at my stop. I realized I had completely misjudged her. She looked like a classic swedish girl, coming back from some party, not likely to be interested in my message. About an hour later that night, the phone rang and it was her. She asked if we had something at church and we said "For sure! We can meet up tomorrow if you're free". We met and had a really great lesson about the chapter we sent her which she actually read! God puts us places in a specific time for a reason. While we judge, or have our shortcomings (like my impatience) He prompts us to help His other children regardless of who they are.

Week 52

We traveled to an area called Sollentuna to check on a referral (who's from sammamish) and ended up staying in the area to knock doors for a few hours. We set a goal for how many potential investigators we felt we could get, called a member and had her pray for us, then set out knocking. Pretty much every door had someone willing to talk with us. It was honestly one of the best tracting stunds (sessions) I've had on my mission. We met a guy from Australia, super cool and taught him about how the church was restored and gave him a Book of Mormon. We met a single swedish mother and Elder Francis started goin off about Family History work and she loved it... he's the geneology master haha

While knocking doors, we talked to this guy walking by named Harry. He's from Nicaragua! He has been in Sweden for 2 years and knows a bit of english but I had to whip out my rusty spanish with him. Turns out his family is mormon back in his homeland, and about an hour later he walked by us again and we taught him about God's love and he said he'd come to church. He couldn't make it but we taught him last night and gave him a BoM. Way nice guy, I'm studying a bit of spanish at night now to communicate with him and all the other people here who come from South America.

Some elders put on Facebook Marketplace a free Book of Mormon and a guy in our area responded. Saturday we went out to his place and met him and his friend. They both are from Nigeria and the guy who asked for the book (his name is Elvis) almost got baptized in Italy! His friend was baptized already too but was going off about how Jesus was black or doubting the Bible because no one could answer who the Jews really were... meanwhile they were chowing down on some african dough mixed with this fish goop soup stuff haha Elder Francis and I, 2 americans, just sat and watched because we'd never seen anything like this. The two guys were like sweating they were eating this stuff so quick with their hands.

We went to a members house yesterday for a grill-out which was fun. Super nice lady, and her son is 15 and sometimes comes out with us to knock doors.

My spiritual thought this week comes from small experiences I've had during this past week. I've seen several times how God works in mysterious ways. We have missed trains, taken the wrong bus, I almost threw up from some bad food so that delayed us a bit, but each experience ended up leading to us meeting someone who needed to talk with us. Not every conversation ended in some miraculous moment or them even agreeing to meet us, but usually they took a Book of Mormon and said they'd give it a read. God knows where I, Äldste Gordon, need to be and he does some funny things so that I end up being there. It's been cool, maybe a better word is humbling, to see God's involvement among his children here in Sweden.