Week 75/76....HAPPY THANKSGIVING

November 22, 2018

Week 75/76....HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Hej, Hej Everyone! I'm thankful for all of my family and friends, I have truly been blessed in my life!

Pretty much the whole week the weather has been the same: mid 40's, overcast, and a constant light mist coming down. Last year it was colder by this time so I'm just grateful we don't have to endure the winter yet.

Friday we took a train to Örebro, a city 2 hours from Stockholm and I picked up Elder Barney and we headed back to Gubbängen. We had a bit of a layover in Örebro before hopping on the train back, so we headed in to stan for about 30 minutes. With 30 minutes in stan, about the only thing you can do at 10am is to contact people. It's been a while since I was downtown to talk to people just because we typically talk to people on subways, same with him, but we set out ready to find someone. First guy was kind of a gubbe (old man) but he took a Book of Mormon. Then Elder Barney said "What is our goal right now?" I responded with "Let's find 1 interested person, a young swede" and he pointed and said, "like her?" and points to a Swedish girl in her mid 20's with a dog. We start talking to her and by the end of the 5 minute conversation she said she'd love to learn more and we swapped information. It was cool to see that even with a 30 minute layover, God came through when we had a goal.

Fathers Day was on Sunday here in Sweden so after church the whole congregation gathered around the ultimate swedish fika table filled with cakes and pastries. Swedes loooove their fika. Hearing people speak about their fathers made me reflect back and feel gratitude for having a father that is a jack-of-all-trades. That man can sew, hike, cliff jump, swim, crack a joke, rock a kilt, and make anyone feel valued. Love ya papi❤

It's kind of sad thinking I have just 6 months left in Sweden. I've grown to love Sweden. The people were a bit tough to get to know, but as I've gotten better at speaking Swedish, it's been way easier. They are a good, good people. They just live in different circumstances-- a different world. Different accepted morals, and just a lack of knowledge of purpose in life. You can't blame them for partying, or drinking, having sex, living sambo, smoking a lot, snussing because there isn't any reason not to ya know. Deep down though they have the light of Christ with them, especially the teens here and young adults I feel like are friendly, they want to be more open and sociable with people but the generation that came before them isn't that way so it's harder for them to be that way. It's been interesting learning how Swedes work, learning the culture, the slightly different from america lifestyle. This week I've felt pretty grateful to be here in Scandinavia, it's a cool area of the world. Rich, a beautiful language, and it's even cooler thinking that I communicate in that language without problem.

Week 76

Not sure why I feel the need to start all of these off with either a weather update or wishing you all a good week, buuuut here are the highlights from this week:

It did snow btw.

While planning yesterday, we noticed we had 3 open hours on our hands. Typically we tend to think "alright we can either go out knocking doors early, or talk to people on subways, or maybe go by a less active member and talk to people on the way" but yesterday for some reason my mind kind of opened up. I thought "Our objective is to just get the gospel out there (gospel being word about Jesus Christ and His church) whichever way that may be, and we have 3 hours to do that." Suddenly, an old idea I had heard a few months back popped into my head. This idea is called: Book of Mormon Tower🏰 A man in our congregation here (who is actually from Redmond, WA) served his mission in France and said it was difficult to find success with the normal finding techniques. Their grand idea was to go into stan (down town), set up a table, bring with them tons of copies of the Book of Mormon, and just start building a tower. He said people would stop and look, or ask what they were doing, and it was a great opportunity for them to teach about what the Book of Mormon is.

So we picked up a table from the church, snagged a white board from home and wrote on it "Söker du svar? Hitta här!" (Are you searching for answers? Find here!), and headed to Gubbängen town square with a big ol bag of books. We set everything up, and started building. Everyone that went by looked at what we were doing, and the few times the tower came crashing down we got a few smiles. I even brought my rubix cube just for kicks and a group of school kids came up and asked a million questions as 10 year olds do. We got to tell them what the book was, talk a little about God, then race each other on the rubix haha

By the end of the hour or so we were out there, we had some good conversations, got a boost of energy from switching things up, gave out a book to a man who is trying to stop smoking, and whooped a 10-year-old in a rubix cube solving competition 😎

6 months from tomorrow I'll be on a plane headed back to the good ol U.S. of A. Time has truly gone fast, and I feel like I haven't grown as much as I would've liked. I feel like I am still myself, that my knowledge and belief about and in God and Jesus Christ has gotten stronger.

Love, Aldste Gordon