Week 71/722/73...Hej Da to Aldste Craun, Hej Hej to Aldste Strong

November 03, 2018

Week 71/722/73...Hej Da to Aldste Craun, Hej Hej to Aldste Strong

Week 71

I'm pretty low on time. My companion finishes his mission next week so we spent a good deal of the day in Stockholm shopping.

Over the last 5 weeks, Elder Craun and I have been "panting"... basically Sweden, in order to take better care of the environment, places a 1 krona price on each plastic and aluminum can so you can go turn them in and get money for it. So we've been collecting them here and there and today was finally the cash-out today. We walked in with 4.5 garbage bags of cans and walked out 600 krona richer. That money was quickly spent during our shopping spree on a nice swedish winter beanie and Euro style white t-shirt... worth it.

Went on exchanges with a new missionary Elder Clarke in Jakobsberg (my last area). It was fun going out with a greenie who just bears his testimony to everyone no matter where we're at in the conversation ha ha he just comes in with a "Jesus loves me, I love him, and I know He loves you" I loved it. People really paid attention to what he said (probably more than me) because they understood he was new with swedish. Fun day to say the least!

Week 72

Pretty solid week. Pretty much each time I sit down to write my weekly I ask my companion "Hey what was noteworthy about this week" because it gets hard to remember. Sometimes not a ton happens in 6 days to be honest with ya.

We got transfer calls Sunday night, and I'll be staying for a 3rd transfer here in Gubbängen which I'm way stoked about. I love this place, love the members, location, people we work with, etc. and we're about to see the fruits of our labor from the past 3 months here. But I'll get to that in a sec.

My new comp will be Elder Strong (my 2nd companion with the name elder strong). Wednesday we take off to T-Centralen (biggest public transportation station in Stockholm) and I'll say hej då to Elder Craun and a few hours later Elder Strong will get in from an area a few hours south. I look forward to getting to know Elder Strong.

Sunday was awesome, we've been working with some part member families and they are progressing. We teach a family that hasn't been to church all together for a few years, they've got 2 boys that are 8 and 11, and they all came to church this Sunday. It seemed to pump up the ward. Felt nice to have them there for sure.

This week has also been filled with goodbye's for Elder Craun. He's been in Gubbängen for like 7 months now so we've had some meals with members here and there. One of the meals was with the Dufour Family. Sister Dufour spent 4 hours making a swedish meal that's called smörgåstorta. It directly translates to sandwich cake and that's pretty much was it is. Bread is used for the "cake" part, and the filling can be liver paste or tuna and mayo. It's topped w a bunch of vegetables, it's pretty. See photo below.

Life is good, change is happening in the zone as well as the temperatures starting to drop. I went out in my winter coat for the first time this year this week, so the chill is here.

Week 73

This last week was mainly filled with goodbye's for Elder Craun and hello's to my new comp Elder Strong. I went from Luke Craun to Luke Strong.

Monday-Wednesday was filled with member meals including Texas Long Horn and ice cream courtesy of Bishop Hahne (tack tack!), a vegetarian Chinese tofu dish courtesy of Brother Rickard Malmsten (a world-renowned electric bass player--look him up on youtube), and a good ol' winner winner chicken dinner with the Morris family. Spending time with these members made me grateful to be here in Gubbängen; the congregation here has begun to feel like my home ward.

Wednesday morning we cleaned the apartment head to toe to get ready to welcome Elder Strong who transferred here from an area a few hours south called Norrköping. We rushed to this hair cutting place so elder Craun could get his last fade before heading back to the US. He then gave his last prayer at the door after we listened to a Nashville Tribute Band Classic "The Hardest Thing I've Ever Loved to Do" and shed a tear or two together as brothers before we took off to T-Centralen and said goodbye there.

Let me tell ya a bit about Elder Strong. He's got 3 transfers left in the mission (18 weeks) so 2 transfers more than me. He's from Brighton/Sandy area in Utah and is a wiz at the guitar. It's already been fun singing some stuff together. Big shout out to Elder Craun for leaving behind his Irish Flute, I've already learned several hymns and we've got big plans to go out caroling with that in a months time😎 But back to Elder Strong, he's got great Swedish, knows how to talk to people, and is a hard-worker. Unfortunately, the next 2 weeks will be spent on exchanges with other missionaries but I look forward to when we get some solid bond time together.

A main highlight from this week happened Sunday night. We visited a family.We have been meeting with them for like a month or two and sharing fun spiritual messages with them. The father has now come to church each a for about a month and a half now and the whole family came together last week.

Anyways, while planning for our lesson with them Elder Strong proposed a funny idea for a message. So we brought a full tube of toothpaste and asked them to grab their tooth brushes. They came out and we started squeezing the toothpaste onto the brushes, once it exceeded the doctor-recommended pea-sized amount they were like "What are you doing??" as we kept loading up their brushes with so much paste that the bristles couldn't be seen. We then asked them to brush their teeth with it, so with a few gags and a whole lot of slobber and laughs, they brushed their teeth and rinsed off. We then asked, "So you've brushed your teeth with the amount of toothpaste you would use for a whole month. So now you don't have to brush your teeth for a month, right?" Självklart they said no. We discussed how it's the same with a bunch of things that God asks us to do. We can't just go to church once and then let that count for the next month. Bible binge-ing for a whole night doesn't mean we're good and don't have to read for the next week. We have daily access to the "freshness" and peace that can be felt when we do things God wants us to. By the end of the lesson, we had set up a date for these two boys to be baptized at the end of November by their father, so fingers crossed it goes through!

It's been cool working with this family and feeling a connection/real love for them. Relationships like that are the reason I'm doing what I'm doing. To be honest, some things I do as a missionary I just do because I am simply a missionary. But when you build real relationships with people and see them and know them in the way God does, your motivation becomes love.

It even is the same way with those in our lives. Do you always see your friends or siblings or parents or children as God does? When you do, then serving them becomes a whole lot easier.

I'm grateful my mission has taught me that, and I've still got a ways to go.

With Love,

Äldste Gordon