Week 2 - Teach with the Spirit

I am going to have to use my journal to help me write this.  It is ridiculous how time both freezes and flies at the same time here.  The day seems forever and you can't wait until P-day and the next thing you know it's already here.

       We are learning a lot now, we are finally learning Swedish grammar instead of just chaining whatever vocabulary we know together and hoping it makes sense.  We also have been taking to go over how to teach.  A big part of that is learning how to teach with the Spirit of God.  As missionaries we aren't really the ones teaching.  God is the one who truly teaches people through their feelings and thoughts, we simply get to help.  Last night, Elder Beveridge and I tried that and didn't use a script, we simply followed an outline and said what we felt we were supposed to say.  It works so much better!  The Spirit knows what every person needs to here, so if we follow it, we can't go wrong.

       On the other hand, the Finnish missionary from Sweden has also been teaching us all sorts of funny things he can think of.  Last week he told us a lot of puns and jokes and the Swedish equivalent of 'see you later alligator' which is 'Tack och hey, leverpastej!'  (for those of you who are curious that means 'thanks and hello, liver patte')

       A lot of the days feel pretty similar here but there's always something interesting that happens.  Saturday we were outside for class and we could hear the BYU football game all the way from the stadium.  We thought it was kind of funny.

       Sunday was pretty cool.  In priesthood meeting we talked about how we always talk about repenting as if it's only for sin and is a negative thing.  But we talked about how in a lot of the languages we are learning it translates as to turn, to convert, or to improve.  So even when we don't sin seriously we can still repent as we not only try to stop doing wrong, but improve ourselves and do more right.  It doesn't have to be such a scary thing as we turn ourselves to God.  I also taught our district meeting on the Book of Mormon.  We discussed the power of the Book of Mormon and why it is that it is the keystone of our religion.  Everything comes back to whether or not the Book of Mormon is true.  It testifies of Jesus Christ and does so powerfully, our Branch President mentioned to us that if we could get Scandanaviens to actively read the Book of Mormon, they would be golden investigators.  The Book of Mormon is that central to our religion.  It was a wonderful discussion.

       Tuesday was the day we had devotional and it was by an apostle!  Gary E. Stevenson spoke, and it was amazing the spirit that an apostle brings into the room with him.  You can feel the difference.  He  went through a lot of Preach My Gospel and essentially said that every chapter was his favorite.  We also saw two pictures of the same couple, before and after they started coming to church again.  You could see the difference and the light in their eyes and I am so excited to see that in people as we teach in Sweden.  One of my favorite quotes from Elder Stevenson was when he spoke of when he was in the MTC and trying to learn Japanese and that he prayed so much for help that "I wore my knees out".  On a similar note to what we have learned in class he mentioned that it is important to have the Spirit because in the Armour of God, as we learn about in the Book of Mormon, the Spirit is our Sword.  It was an amazing experience!

       To wrap thing up, as of yesterday, our district is no longer the Greenie district in the zone.  We got 7 new Finnish missionaries and the old Finns leave on Monday.  They have 6 Elders and 1 sister, the sister in our district is excited to finally have an actual companion as she has been solo for the last two weeks.  As of Monday our district will have been here the longest and our zone will have gone from about 40 to merely 20.  I hope we get more missionaries in our Scandinavian zone in the coming weeks.

       I can't wait to share with you what happens and what I learn in the coming week, it's crazy how fast they blow by.

-Elder Ashford

Provo, UT Temple - across the street from the MTC

The picture is from this morning, it snowed for the first time last night and the temple looks absolutely beautiful.

Thanks to his district leader we also got a bonus email with some additional photos. :)  

 This is from my first Sunday.  We did a temple walk and took a picture of our zone and all of our countries.

This one is of our class, and needless to say, was not really planned, 

as evidenced by me not looking at the camera.   

 This is of our zone this last Sunday with just us and the Finns.

This is a picture of our district when the Norwegian teacher subbed for us because our teacher was sick.  

(We were kind of cramped if you couldn't tell)