Week 74.....All Saints Day...

Tjabba tjabba!

This week was a fun one for sure! Here are some highlights:

I went on splits (when missionary companionships split up with other companionships)  with Elder Barney from Jakobsberg here in Gubbängen. Buuut we got to go there to pick them up and I saw my main man Antonio from Jakobsberg ward. He's an older guy from Chile that would always stop by with his chihuahua Ninito and give us food. I love that little Chilean man. 

Splits with Äldste Barney was a blast too, we were out tracting on Halloween night and forgot that it was Halloween until we saw a few kids walking house to house... not too many people answered the door, so I don't think there are a ton of Swedes that are ready to give out goodies to trick or treaters (they say bus-eller-godis here instead of trick or treat)

To celebrate Halloween, they have a little bit of trick or treating, but most of what they do comes from American tradition. Trick or treating is becoming more popular and we saw a few Halloween parties here and there. The biggest thing they do happens not on the 31st of October, but on the Saturday after. It's called All Saints Day in English, it's like a Swedish version of el dia de los muertos if you know what that is but way more low-key. It's a day to honor those that have passed on, so a good deal of Swedes buy candles and head to the kyrkogård (cemetery) where their relatives are buried. They light a candle, and set it on their relatives grave and take a walk around the graveyard. People did it throughout Friday and Saturday, so when we went Saturday night the whole place was lit up with candles. It was really pretty. 

We had dinner Sunday night with an elderly member in the congregation here. His house looks like it's from the 70's, and we had a mystery stew that was pretty much sausage, beets, a weird consistency and cold. A meal to remember. See attached pics...

This week I had a cool experience regarding a prompting I received. One day during planning, we felt kind of a block regarding what we should do that day. We decided to head to this certain area to knock doors, but something didn't feel right. I felt like we shouldn't do that. Long story short, I told my companion, and we ended up changing what we did. By doing so, it allowed us to find this awesome lady named Joy (#anotherone) who was interested as well as have one more awesome experience.

While calling through our list of people for the day, Elder Strong brought up someone that had been on the list for a few weeks now so we thought "aw why not, let's call him". He was a missionary here a few years back that hasn't been to church in a while. We called, chatted with him and he said he'd try to make it to church Sunday. We kept going on with the day, not thinking much of it. Later that night, he shot us a text with an audio clip of him singing "Joseph Smith's First Prayer". He said below that he was just recording this song (the dude has a fantastic voice) and right at the end of the song we called. It almost freaked him out because it's been a while since he's had contact with the church. 

Our conversation with him felt like nothing big to us. If we had gone to the area to knock doors, we wouldn't have called at that exact time. Looking back at everything that happened that day, it was clear that the prompting/thought I felt was God guiding us to help specific people during that day. That showed me that when it comes to specific interactions like reaching out to the "Prodigal Son" exactly when he needs it, God directs us. 

Ha en bra vecka!

Med kärlek,

Äldste Gordon 

Antonio, always willing to serve! Great man!

All Saints Day at the cemetery

Trying to crack a coconut. Successful, made a swedish coconut cake

Me and my companion

Sights of Autumn in Sweden

Stockholm subways are the best

Main Shopping street in  Stockholm

Banana con leche before basketball

Mystery stew