Week 63/64...Another year older

Subways in Sweden, usually have art with nakedness

Bubbas, best burger!

Playing sports in the gym at the church with the other
missionaries in the Zone

Fall feels like it's around the corner now here in Stockholm. It's slowly getting darker and a bit colder.

The main highlight from the week was from Saturday, we did a "mini mission" with one of the youth here in the ward named Mikael. He's 17 and thinking about going on a mission so we thought we'd show him the life of a missionary 😎 We wanted it to be way good so we hooked him up with a missionary name tag and everything. He came in the morning and ate some breakfast burritos with us (he'd never had egg burritos before, neither peanut butter and honey toast), did studies with us, and then we hit the subway to go talk to people. 

He told us he felt cool just having a missionary name tag on. There were quite a few people who were interested, more than normal to be honest. It's like God knew this needed to be a good experience for Mikael so he threw us some interested people to make the experience even better for him. My thought is we need to have him along all the time haha 

But throughout the day we taught a few lessons, one being the Law of Chastity (poor guy lol) and tracted for about 2 hours. After he bucked up the courage to take a door contact, this pretty good looking swedish girl about his age answered and he just about forgot his swedish haha classic. During the 14 hours we were together, I learned a few things:

1. It would be so nice to have a native Swedish companion because we learned a bunch of new swedish words and phrases.

2. The opportunity I have to be a missionary and to be "set apart" (or assigned) to spread God's word is something I often don't appreciate enough. After being a missionary for 15 months, it feels like I've always been a missionary and always will be whereas the first day I walked in the airport with a missionary tag on I felt so special and determined. It is pretty cool to be a missionary, to have only 1 thing to focus on -- helping other people find faith in God. 

3. The guy we went out with mentioned how it just seemed like we knew everything about the gospel, about missionary work...In reality, this kid knew the Bible a lot better than I did ha ha but what I learned from this is that often others around us seem to be more knowledgeable or doing better with their belief than how it may actually be. If we just compare ourselves and our testimony to that which we see from others at church on Sunday, we're gonna feel pretty bummed. Everyone is at a different place with their faith. Everyone takes a different path to get to know God. Everyone takes different lengths of time to grow their faith. So don't feel bad with where you are at right now. 

It was humbling and reenergizing to do a mini mission. Not only is Mikael now was stoked to go on a mission, but I feel like I left it having a greater appreciation for my calling as a representative of Christ. 

We told our boy to spread the word to the other young men so hopefully we'll get mini missions going with a few of the guys. 

With Love,

Äldste Gordon

More photos....

In front of Swedish LDS Temple

My birthday blender

My Swedish birthday cake

So close

Goofin'

Our mini Swedish missionary

Swedish apples, not like Washington apples